The view from the hill, a 70s London childhood. Saturdays

No school. No work for Mum. She would be largely occupied creating some bizarre stew as far as I can recall. How odd it is to look back into one's childhood and not really be aware of what the parents, or in my case, parent, had been doing most of the time. Selfishly, I mostly recall her movements when it involved me; something probably quite normal in children, I suppose. Ezra did recently mention to me when we were discussing his childhood that we were 'just there' I don't think he meant it in an uncaring way like we were objects - standard lamps or chairs; we were there and his world revolved around him. 

When she wasn't creating stews of pig heart or other unfashionable lumps of meat she was probably trying to tame the mess of the flat. I did help out however, my main job of the weekend, to go to the washing shop. Furnished with enough coins to buy a sherbet fountain and a copy of the Beano, I would walk down to Colney Hatch Lane's parade of shops, buy the items and enter the fuggy warmth of the laundrette - a largely yellow formica establishment with a row of smaller top loader machines, larger front loaders and the three rumbling industrial scale tumble dryers. Having stuffed the clothes into a top loader I would add a dose from the washing powder machine ( I can still hear the whirring sound as the powder dispensed) add the coins and if it was a chilly day sit down with my back to a dryer feeling the comforting warmth, half listening to the sounds of trouser buttons and bra straps tinkling around the drum. 

Saturdays also meant shopping, usually at the local fruit shop, butchers and all the other little shops which were eventually crushed by supermarkets. The most exciting shop, apart from the woodyard with all its dense resiny smells where I used to buy small amounts of sawdust for my various rodents, was the Greek Shop'. This to my mind is what grocery shops should be like: teetering shelves of exotic packets, tins, cases of citrus fruit, tins of olive oil, paper bags, shoe laces, allotment produce; anything and everything. The shop was always busy with locals chatting about the weather, football, the government and what foodstuffs the owner had managed to procure. Once when I went in under instruction to buy tinned tomatoes a small stampede of housewives were vacating the shop, screams knifing the air. Apparently a black widow spider had been discovered in a box of bananas.

The other shops I recall were an excellent chippy where I was sent at least once a week to purchase a treat of cod and chips - often I would go accompanied by a mouse or two clinging to my jumper which seemed to perturb no one. The bakery must also be mentioned as along with fabulously awful iced 'torpedo' buns it had a special cabinet of broken biscuites which you could help yourself to with an aluminium shovel.

If Mum had the time she would take me and a friend to the swimming pool at Southgate - when she had eventually passed her driving test (another tale). We would scramble into the back of the tank-like, Hillman Minx, each trying to avoid the part of the seat with the protruding spring and Mum would drive to the baths were she would swim majestically in flowery bathing cap and we would shriek along with all the other kids in the deep end. The wonderful trip would culminate in a bag of cheese and onion crisps my friend and I trying to outdo each other in making each pungent potato slice last the longest.

View from the Hill, a 70s London childhood. The Broadway.

On my last post I wandered off following some memory that had suddenly prodded me. I had wanted to describe the actual hill of Muswell Hill and its aforementioned (70s) view, so will now.

If one stood at the edge of the hill near the bus and taxi rank, London in all its myriad of greys would stretch out dizzyingly, the vague forms of distant hills just visible, and of course the magical form of the Post Office Tower, where Andrea's dad was said to have dined out in the revolving restaurant. My God! Such exotic behaviour! But these were the times when going to Spain for a holiday was not unlike Mr Branson's space jaunt - impossible to imagine for anyone I or Mum knew, although I think Andrea's family did go to Benidorm, and they had a colour television. The view from the hill now looks very different with the clutch of steel and glass, gherkin, walkie-talkie and fat penguin edifices rising in the city's middle.

I was conscious of the view from other points too such as the top room of my friend's house just down from the milk depot and from the kitchen of a flat which was the top floor of Midland bank. Like so many early childhood memories, I now have no idea who the people were that inhabited the place, other than I was dropped off there sometimes when I was about five or six while Mum did . . . something. Worked? socialised? I know there was a large wooden canoe hung on the hallway wall and that two of the boys hated me.  I did once ask Mum about who the family were but she couldn't recall either so it remains a small mystery, but enough to make me wonder whenever I see a Midland bank - or not as they are now HSBC. 

My aforementioned friend's abode was possibly a hoarders house; typically, as a child I just accepted it as how it was but looking back now, the unwashed pans from multiple lunches of tinned macaroni cheese, drifts of books, newspapers, clothes and heaps of unspecified items was possibly unusual. Her mother appeared to possess two records - A night on a bare mountain by Mussorgsky, and King of The Road by Roger Miller. I only have to hear 'Trailers for sale or rent...' and I'm back in that fusty room with its distant view of 60s tower blocks.

One of my strongest memories of the hill was sitting in a cavernous (or it seemed to my seven or so year old self) café which used to occupy a space to the top left of the hill as you came up from Holloway. The place was always thronged with people and waitresses; possibly one of the last Lyons tearooms? Mum would afford us a rare tea and cake and I would sit looking up at the electric bar fires that were suspended in the roofing; an orange glow as warming as Heinz tomato soup on a chilly day. One time when we were sharing a table, the other occupier seeing me drawing something in my book (probably a cat or a dinosaur) offered to teach me about perspective. I wish I had kept the napkin on which he had drawn a railway line, train cables, trees and fences, streaking away and as complex as a Uccello painting.    

We also used to very occasionally frequent the Lantern Café for tea and that sort of butter-soaked white toast that only certain cafés can fabricate, and something that Mum would never allow at home, brown bread being the only healthy option. The Lantern was the sort of eatery that is now a rarity; a place of dark wood, red checked tablecloths, cottagy pictures - warmth, safeness, things shunned from our current restaurant styling of over-lit, sterile grey and white. I suspect as world events compound in complexity the checked table cloths and candles in bottles elements will return...

Cafés apart, another establishment of many memories still stands on the Broadway, Martyns the dry goods grocer. Thankfully untouched by modernisation, its handsome black and cream facade and large windows display a wonderment of dried fruits, cakes, biscuites, speciality teas and so much more. Back in the 70s, Mum, as mentioned in the last post, didn't have much of a food budget (Marmite was a real luxury) but she allowed herself coffee beans and sultanas from Martyns. I would stand in the shop like Charlie Bucket and breathe in the smell from the roasting machine as the beans shoosed and rattled around in their pierced metal drum. I've visited the shop on numerous occasions during my adult life London-wanderings and have marvelled as I've bought a bag of dried pears or peaches at how nothing, really nothing seems to have changed in the shop since I was a kid; a strange unaltered miniature world amongst the continually altering city.

View from the hill, a 70s London childhood.

 I am currently reading Alan Bennet's Untold Stories - I think a present from Andy if you read this.

As I turned the first few pages I found myself thinking different things: why should anyone be interested in the minutiae of someone else's life and childhood? But then why not? All experiences are interesting, to me, anyway. Some folk stifle a yawn as a relative or friend turns pages of a family album - 'that's Aunty Bess in about . . . hmm, 1978, perhaps . . . when she had that job at the first Sainsbury's in East London'; or recent photos lost in a technological maze on an iPhone - 'us in Paris', 'the best pudding I ever had' or, 'Your Dad and me at Sarah's wedding when the cake collapsed.' All human stories, things we can relate to or not; things that provoke memories, cause tears to rise or a smile to stretch.

As often the case, an idea surfaced as I walked the dogs and filled holes in walls this morning, which then refused to be packed away again. My own London child/adolescent-hood. All those little memory chinks that wend their way into most of my writing. How much more would be buried behind the so-many-times replayed recollections. So, between the jobs, Gite construction and editing, I'll write out some of the memories and see what occurs. Bitty, no format - no time for the foreseeable.

The view from the Hill.  

The view being Muswell Hill. One of London's high points and very much my world between the age of whatever age I was when memories started forming until about thirteen when we moved from North London to the gentle rounded hills of Dorset. 

Muswell Hill was the center of everything - school, the pet shop, buses to the West End, the road where Nichola Stott's family lived in their rather handsome Edwardian semi. She was one of my best friends, freckle-faced, long red hair and as tom-boyish as I was. I don't recall much about the house other than the attic where we played and once decided it would be fun to scratch off a large portion of the polystyrene cladding. It had fallen as gently as snowflakes, and we had laughed until almost peeing ourselves. My mother, always feeling in the shadow of house-owners and seemingly established couples generally, had come to remove my seven or so year old self, red faced, apologies streaming. Maybe that was the last time I visited the Stott household. I don't recall Nicola visiting our more humble abode on Colney Hatch Lane. 

                                                            Colney Hatch lane in the 60s

And it was quite humble. A one bedroom, rented ground floor flat in what is these days a prestigious 40s (I think) block, surrounded by, for London, ample and well treed grounds. Mum shared the front room with her precious piano, table, large armchair (which I recall sitting in and crying while listening to Yesterday by the Beatles), second hand jade green Wilton carpet and her single bed which doubled up as a sofa - long before the days of Ikea Click-Clack. I had the bedroom which was crammed with jumble sale finds, cages of various rodents (depending on the phase), toy cars, and later walls adorned with the usual poster pop beings of the 70s - except mine were all of Rob Davies from Mud. I think I was probably the only teenager in London who preferred his flared cat suits and dangly earrings to Donny Osmond or David Cassidy's toothy grins.

Our kitchen, always warm from stews Mum concocted involving such delights as pigs heart or the marvellously termed, scrag end of lamb, had generous built in cupboards, a china sink, an old green enamel gas stove with chrome metal 'taps', a table and two chairs and a fridge being bought on instalments. Mum, being Mum encouraged my various manias for bringing more wildlife into the already crammed space; often a sweet jar of stick insects or butterfly pupae balancing on the table or sink side.

The bathroom was small, dark and purple but furnished with an ample bath and never ending hot water as all the flats' heating and water were fuelled by an enormous boiler somewhere in the grounds. Mum's stack of 'I'll read them all one day' old Guardian newspapers were for some reason housed in that room. Perhaps she read them in the bath. Those odd knowledge gaps that appear now as I think. Did I know why they were in there? Did she? It's just how it was. Just as we never mused over the spelling of the Fuck Of  that had been shakily scrawled in black paint above the bins at the back of our flat. It had been there for years - part of the block's ornament along with the black crittal window frames and brick framed door entrances.

There, I digressed already. Not so much about the hill or the view but here's a picture for now, although the skyline would have been a little different.

  

Looking over the edge of the nest

It's like watching swallows trying out their wings: launching, bit wobbly, oops, return to the watchful eye of the parent bird, then try again: a little bolder, a little more confidence and then they're off . . .
We've been watching our son trying out his various wings for some time, drumming in a band being the real debut of detachment although he was, and still is happy to return to the comforts - food, familiarity, dogs, etc, and hopefully, us.
Come the autumn, it'll be for real. Him on his own in a flat in a city (luckily not too far away). We've were graced with an extra year of him to-ing and fro-ing as he undertook a foundation art year in our local town, and thus I/we feel a little more prepared for the . . . departure.

                                         


I've talked to several friends about this phase of life with mixed responses from: 'A year on, I still go and sit on his bed and sob, occasionally, to: what a bloody relief . . .
I hope I won't be doing the former and I certainly won't be feeling the latter; hopefully an emotionally healthy point in between with probably the odd pang of worry . . .
Going to look at art colleges with him has brought back many memories of my own forays out from the family nest in Muswell Hill. I think I did all of them on my own as Mother wouldn't have had the luxury of time to accompany me, being on her own and working full time. I do vaguely recall staggering around Exeter with a huge falling-apart portfolio of my stuff and hating the interview. Luckily the one at Farnham was good and I was accepted onto the film and photography course there. Why I mention this is because I never thought at the time, (being young and over-excited about my new life in my halls of residence eight-square meter abode) about what my mother was going though - only child leaving home after a very close relationship of seventeen-odd years.
I have a clear image of waving her off after lugging my wardrobe-sized Wharfedale speakers up to the flat - 'Bye Mum, see you . . . sometime, soonish'. She might have gone and howled in a lay-by, or driven back home and downed a few pints in the local (unlikely) or maybe she managed to control it all, got on with her life and half-listened for the phone, without realising, the flat now so much quieter.
I never asked her how it was for her. Maybe I will on my next visit back although her mind is fairly unlikely to recall much now being mostly on its own planet elsewhere.
Maybe it takes the same thing happening to us to fully appreciate the emotions connected with this detachment. I don't suppose our son will think too much about it, as it should be, but I hope the years we have spent together will leave him with a residual desire to come back and take up his place in the family once in a fairly often while.



Checking out the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Nimes; one of the three colleges applied for.

January London wanderings

 . . . As ever, based vaguely on a 'map' of one of my book character's movements, workplaces and habitation.
On venturing out in the early morning, I considered the fact that I really should spend part of my sacred day going to see some art. London is stuffed with it and magnificent museums, theatres - all aspects of culture, but somehow I felt over-compelled to continue my mission of stalking Hamish's (present main character) London life-map.

          

              Perfect day for a tad of psychogeography . . .

After porridge and tea in the excellent Bloomsbury café situated beneath my favourite home-from-home, the St Athan's hotel, I walked swiftly( at first) in the direction of East Finchley before getting distracted by a thousand or so details of my favourite city that I had never before observed. The Keystone Crescent (previously Caledonian Crescent - better name, methinks) for example.

 

How had I walked about WC1 so many times and overlooked this architectural wonderment: smallest radius of any Crescent in Europe, and unique in having a matching inner and outer circle.
First on my desired locations for Hamish's life was a small, black window-framed book shop and turning into Leigh Street I found it - perfect in every way, from to its teetering piles of books to shadowy small courtyard; perfect, except it's already been used (I discovered later after checking) in a   BBC (dark) comedy series. Damn. But I suppose there's no rule to say I can't mentally move into the shop too . . .



Continued walking to King's Cross and turned into a road that used to house a decrepit building/photographic studio where I often worked as a stylist back in the early 90s, running up and down the metal staircase with props and parking tickets. It had long gone, replaced by a boring dull-bricked hotel called sleep-u-like or some such thing; even worse, the beautiful little Italian deli at the end of the road was sadly empty, possibly waiting a wrecking-ball (sob). The downside of these nostalgic wanderings - missing buildings of my earlier London years, now gaps in the jaws of the city or morphed into uniform sleek edifices of marble and glass.



Continuing up the Caledonian Road, I caught a bus as my feet were complaining and arrived at Archway where I caught another bus to East Finchley, sitting at the top/front enjoying the pigeons'-eye view of scraggy shops, mustard-bricked terraces and hurrying commuters.
A florist shop figures highly in Hamish's life - a series of floral apologies and love messages, and I'd found the ideal establishment: 'Josephine's', established well before the decade the book is set in.



I skulked about a bit and spoke to one of the florists but unfortunately the manager wasn't there; not that I needed to speak to them but I just like to find out a bit of history surrounding my potential locations.
Onto Muswell Hill via Fortis Green road where I chose a house on Western Road that would fit the style I had imagined for my character's flat.

                             

  

A couple of unchanged shop interiors 

Muswell Hill . . . place of my childhood up until thirteen or so; everything is still so familiar, and many places unchanged - the old pet shop, Martyn's, the marvellous old coffee/tea/dry goods shop with its coffee roasting machine still in the window, and the parade of shops on Duke's Avenue where I wish to place 'Lily's' taxidermy establishment. Old chemist chosen, I checked out a few charity shops, caught the 134 back to Russell Square and meandered into the sub-real district of Bond Street with its shop displays of obscenely-expensive shoes and handbags fabricated to carry life's essentials of a single lipstick and a gold American Express card.

  
 smaller than a hedgehog 

 
Mm, comfy



A . . . beige shoe with special powers?

After walking around snarling quietly at such excess, I went into Liberty's, mainly to look at their staircases' carved animal newel posts and the changing rooms on the women' clothing floors.
Hamish experiences a very spontaneous 'act' with his new lady-friend in one of these cubicles which I had imagined as large, spacious and full of William Morris wallpaper; in fact they were smallish, mirror-clad and possibly installed in the late 70s?
A beautiful man with skin like the most perfect cup of coffee (drink, not cup) and an exotic silver necklace informed me that he didn't know the date of the changing rooms and I would have to ask the store designers. There didn't seem to be any about so I had another gawp at shoes that cost 800 pounds plus, and went back outside in search of TEA in an old Italian, formica café, the likes of which of course sadly don't exist now, bulldozed into the past by Starbucks, Neros, et al.



I liked this very much but preferred the idea of paying the electricity bill

The weather had now decided to revert to standard January precipitation so I got on a bus and enjoyed looking out at the blurry traffic lights, headlights, window display lights, bus lights, etc, until I got to Russell square and ran back to the hotel with saturated feet and perused the internet for theatres/cinemas within slopping distance.
Three hours or so later I emerged from Tottenham Court Road Odeon wondering why I had spend 14 quid on seeing LaLa Land - sugar-sweet, silly, zilch story, and the dancing . . . well, maybe better to watch a re-run of Mr Kelly splashing about in the studio rain.



Man in bus shelter who had perhaps just heard on his smartphone who had made it to the Whitehouse



Bus window condensation-art

Memories

Odd, is it not, how memories are formed and how they 'ignite' on/at the sight/smell or taste of something.
While putting the Christmas tree decorations away yesterday I found the little Father Christmas 'starfish' that has always been on any tree from my childhood onwards.
I thought back over the years: the flat in Muswell Hill, the house in Dorset, our various establishments where the decs have moved with us, Mum having stayed with us each year and happy to let her own tree-decorating end.
Before I wrapped Father C in paper I took a moment to really look at the materials he is made of, consider how many trees he might have been hung on, and actually, what age he must be.
My mother said she didn't really remember where the decoration had come from but was certain it had belonged in her grandmother's house, or possibly had come from some wealthy establishment where she had been 'in service'. Old then! for sure, and the most important part of the Christmas preparations.
The box of tinsel, lights, baubles etc is closed now, F.C carefully placed inside; back into the attic.
Goodbye till next year, then.

                                  

Diets don't work

They just don't. There, said it.
I was watching Telematin this morning, while attempting to go through my morning exercise routine and encouraging The Boy to do the same, when a really stupid ad came on for slimming cereal, then another for a species of cream that you smear on your legs to reduce flab, and then yet another for pills that you can take to 'burn off' the fat.
It's all such utter crap. Whatever the latest study has revealed, we are meant to move about a lot and not eat too many buns: that's it!
The slimming industry is a fiendishly lucrative one whether it be pills, meal replacement drinks or Martini flavoured breakfast cereal, and can also be dangerous . . . a friend of ours actually had to go into hospital as she had been imbibing a series of flab-annihilating potions in order to slim manically for a wedding. She was dangerously de-hydrated and almost lost a kidney. She did look a little thinner after a couple of weeks of hefty antibotics and throwing up a lot.
I have vague recollections of going with my mum to 'weight-watchers' in the 1970s. Held in a hall somewhere in Muswell Hill, the faithful would congregate and be in turn weighed and talked to about how many calories they had found or lost during the week. Mum did reach her target weight and was awarded a special brooch commemorating the event. She then sallied forth into the world of buns once more and put it all back on again.
You have to want, really want to do it, actually change the way you eat and exercise. Fad diets - Eating grapes and spinach for a week or gorging on flash-fried veal won't do it; boredom will soon set in and cake-lust with it.
It takes time too. I always find after winter, when I emerge blinking into the daylight, that to shed the desire to stoke up on bread and butter pudding or Mark's wicked cakes is almost impossible, but over a few weeks and a few hazardous checks in the mirror, something clicks and the want to feel/look better takes over - sometimes.
This year has been better; it took a few months but I'm back to what I weighed last summer, and I want to loose the wobbly thigh stuff, so onward and forward; I may fail when the chill sets in again, but I hope not.
So, the moving about stuff . . . cycling, swimming, walking, yoga, housework, taking the stairs, gardening, sex, whatever; it all helps, and more so if you have a routine that you can stick to so that if you collapse into a Death by Chocolate and three brandy & Babychams of an evening, you can burn some of it off again the next day, rather than: 'Shit, oh well, I might as well go for the kebab and chips this lunchtime.'

That's one of the keys points for me: have treats. If you don't allow cake or puddings sometimes, they become huge, quivering unobtainable yearned for-objects that will torment every waking moment of your life until you finally crack and eat a tub of Raspberry-ripple-choc-chip-fat bastards-delight on your own by the light of the open fridge at 3am.
The opposing views on what makes flab is interesting. I went to Slimming world with my cousins recently as I was staying with them. The main theme seems to be eat as much fruit, bread, pasta, etc, as you like but hold a cross up to any sort of fat and back away from it screaming. Other diets say eat as much fat as you want but purge the evils of bread, rice, cake and starch generally. Confusing . . .
Everyone is different and everyone burns stuff off at different speeds. Mark is tall and thin and could eat cake all day and nothing would happen. He can still fit into trousers from 1975. I think he worries it all off. I can just smell cake and the calories leave the oven, absorbing themselves surreptitioulsy into my thigh-flab. I get worried too but somehow it multiplies the fat cells.

Anyway, for anyone who is interested, this is the Hot-house regime.

At least half an hour of exercises first thing: a combination of stretching, yoga type stuff, crunches, lunges, etc; all easy to find on the internet - we had a lovely lady, bed and breakfast guest staying recently who showed us another load of exercises with weights - so useful, and these have been added in.
There is no excuse not to do this. If we have to be out of the door at 7.00am we do the routine at 6.00am. It's so ingrained now that I feel really unhealthy now if I miss a day.

Dog walk - if you have one, or cat/gerbil/on own; preferably up an incline of some sort.

Breakfast: eat whatever you want within reason, a whole lemon meringe pie, maybe not, but have the toast and butter not some vile '**** I can't believe it's not cow-substance, thing. Breakfast, as my Aunty Olive always said, IS important.

A good lunch, but maybe on a smaller plate than you might have usually; eat slowly, and don't stare at the computer/eat while driving with one hand on the wheel at the same time.

Another walk somewhere/bike ride/swimming session, etc.

Small supper, and if possible don't fall into the snack trap (this is my big challenge) crisps, chocolate, cheese, in the evening when watching TV/reading, whatever.
Salad is good for this: make a massive bowl of lettuce, other veg, nuts, fruit etc. It takes time to eat and the desire to nibble is overcome -  plus you sleep well if Beatrix Potter was right about lettuce being soporific.

Cut down on the booze. It's always easy to forget how much sugar is in wine, beer etc, not being as visual as say a cream-laden chocolate eclair, but it certainly is there - 120 calories in a small glass of red.

The main thing is to change everything a bit, not just latch onto a new diet. It feels good to notice a reflection that looks a bit more muscly and a little less 'puckered', and it feels good to have a few less aches from carrying the extra few kilos about. Kilo = bag of sugar . . . quite heavy.

Well, some ideas from the totally non-perfect but a wee bit more toned-up members of the Hot-house.

Time for some toast I think . . .

Little things

Small highlights in a day. Insignificant perhaps, or not.
In a world of objects created for convenience and speed, I'm glad there are things like this still around. I can remember going to the Greek corner shop in Muswell hill as a child on a mission to buy fruit and picking up blood oranges each with its wrapper of brightly printed rustling paper: scenes of blue skies and glittering mediterranean countryside stirring an idea of travel in me - the Isle of Sark being the furthest I had travelled at the age of eleven or so.

Walls, hot from the day's sun, the oasis of cool in the shade of a tree, diving into a lake: summer memories brought back from a glance at the bowl of fruit in our chilly kitchen this morning.

Last bit of London trip.

134 bus to Muswell Hill.
Relieved to see the fabulous old coffee and tea store was still there (Martyns). Then on to Seymour Court, Colney Hatch Lane for a bit of nostalgia.

'Yer tis, where I lived from a wee baby to 13 years — left hand  ground floor flat.

Nice shared garden, Mrs Catchpole upstairs, mad woman opposite who collected milk bottles, and the first time I saw a nude man - I went to feed Mrs can't-recall-her-name's cat, and her boyfriend walked out of the bathroom dressed in . . . nothing.
Other memories: cockroaches in the kitchen, local shops, pet mice, purple irises, communal bins, Victoria plum tree, Hillman Minx, scrag end of lamb and radio 4.

I was going to follow the route I used to walk to my scary school (Bounds Green comprehensive), but will have to do it next time as it was time to move on to Waterloo and the train to Poole.