You see the concrete Waitrose and the Classic Cinema from this shot taken from a 427 bus? No, because it's not there any more. What replaced it, a Lidls, would have been far more welcomed by my mother in the 1970s, as Waitrose wasn't any cheaper than it is now. My family was fairly typical Hayes demographic. So why was it located there at all? Regardless, this is where the bulk of our shopping came from, as well as the equally defunct Bejam next door, since she didn't have a car, and the Sainsbury's in Hayes Town (always a capital T – it was a different world entirely to north Hayes - lower case n – North Hayes only exists for the purposes of estate agent marketing, and snobs.
The Classic was a flea pit even back then, and remained so throughout its existence. Films seen there include Close Encounters, ET, Bambi and Grease – though that might have been watched at the ABC in Ealing Broadway. It seemed to show a lot of soft-porn towards the end of its life. More usefully (for a kid anyway) It did sell Kia-Ora during the interval, and sweets on the cash desk – a practice I'm glad to say still continues at the Picturedrome in Bognor, my parents' local house.
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