The view from the hill, a 70s childhood. Shopping.

We didn't do a lot of this. In previous posts I mentioned the shops of Colney Hatch Lane and the marvellous emporium of Martyns in Muswell Hill. In my early childhood, supermarkets were just beginning to sprout - tentative forays into consumer's mind . . . get everything in one place, no need to visit a butcher, greengrocer and bakers . . . Thus, an early Sainsbury's planted itself onto Muswell Hill, opposite the Odeon cinema and strikingly visible as one arrived up the hill on the 134 bus. My mother, fairly loyal to the local shops did make an occasional visit, the chief purchases I recall being Eden Vale yogurt (three flavours of strawberry, lemon and toffee) from the very small and no choice chilled section; pretend bacon strips, and the battered tin basket. This was my favourite bit of the Sainsbury's tour, a wire cage containing dented tins, often without labels meaning one might open one to find cat food, pineapple or beans depending on how lucky or unlucky one was.

                                                Muswell Hill Sainsbury's under construction

Clothes shopping was fairly non-existent; an occasional angst-ridden trip to the West End shop, Swan and Edgar where I would lie about on the carpet and draw while Mum perused clothing rails. As it was a rather exclusive department store I can't imagine what she would have been trying to buy, her budget being minuscule. Marks and Spencers was occasionally visited for her standard teaching outfits. I can still recall the zany swirls of turquoise and purple of the nylon shirts, the fabric sparking with static as I pulled them from the launderette's tumble dryer on wash day. I was forced to wear the depressing school uniform of pink and brown (ugh) crimplene at Junior school, and blue patterned cotton for secondary school so shopping for my clothes was fairly trouble free. Every few months I would however make a bus trip up to Oxford Street with a friend where we would gawp at fashions in Chelsea Girl and if enough pocket money/ paper round money had been saved, a small garment might be purchased.

Most shopping other than food meant jumble sales; events both Mum and I adored. A scan of the local paper would reveal what church hall or leisure centre was holding a sale, and we would turn up in the Hillman Minx to be first in line. We (me, Mark and Ezra) very much continue this practice, although the local paper announcements have been largely replaced by a nerdish online French site for nearby 'Vide Greniers' a close proximity to the boot sale. Jumble sales provided clothing, books, sometimes plants and always bricabrac. Mum's teapot collection had to be regularly culled . . . I'm just looking up at the shelf above our sink now, and, yes, I've obviously inherited that trait . . .

Strange to think of the shopping process back then. No internet browsing, no credit cards, no shop loyalty cards or buy now-pay later; nothing even like Argos. Mum would save up to buy a bigger item, or possibly buy something like a fridge on higher purchase instalments from John Lewis. But we just didn't buy very much, and shopping didn't figure as a leisure activity. Mend and make do. Buy what you needed and mainly in the locality. Reckon we'll be heading back that way in the not too distant future. 

 

Yorkshire meets the west coast of France

Somewhere on this blog is a sub-blog called Building-I-Like or something, or maybe it was just Building number 1,2,3,4...etc. I can't find the last entry but here is a contender, or at least the name, anyroad.

I can hear my ex's lovely Doncaster Dad saying this house's name with his warm, broad accent. 

'Home-like, aye, it's reet nice being' at home like.'

But it wasn't occupying a piece of Yorkshire land, instead, tucked away down a side street in a small seaside town not far from Nantes.

It doesn't really work in translation. 'Domicile-aime' or 'habitation-aime'. Maybe they had been residents of Doncaster or Leeds. Probably not. 

New tricks and revamped sofas

Yep, old dogs and mothers can learn them - tricks. Son and I are continuing work on the gîte project, each day a small challenge as although he has done a year of carpentry at a good level, working with wood, stone and renovation rather than new build . . . well, we've had a few hours of panic and angst.

Various builders and friends have appeared and made suggestions about the correct way of doing things which is ultimately confusing as I want to follow everyone's advice and have almost no experience, but we are both learning, rapidly. Yesterday we managed to fix the support beams for the floor into the wall using scarily long bolts and evil-smelling resin stuff - not very ecologic compared to the stone motoring we were doing before. Today we placed two cross beams and I drilled/hammered out excess stone to prepare for tomorrow's beams.

And the sofa . . . our old second hand kitchen sofa has long had uncomfortable flat seat cushions, the feathers crushed under 70 years or so of various posteriors and more recently, greyhounds. Allowing ourselves a morning off from building we went to the fabulous Saumur Emmaus - veritable department store of donated everything you can imagine - where I bought four very large cushions for a euro and on our return re-stuffed the flagging seat cushions. Result, very happy dog, and me; as the sofa is now hyper comfortable. Next up, the sitting room couch...

The view from the hill, a 70s childhood. School route perambulations.

I must have been from a very early age, a flaneur, a wanderer, an observer of minutiae, without being aware of it, possibly born from the way of getting to school - never a car journey. I can't recall exactly when Mum did acquire the Hillman Minx/tank after eventually passing her driving test but it was certainly never used for dropping me off at said establishment. 

                                                                          11 year old me

The school run for me was a long walk, probably made longer as school itself was something I would always wish to put off as long as possible. The journey started with leaving our block of flats, admiring the enormous English Oak that spread its evergreen leaves like a protective cloud over the gateway, down Colney Hatch lane, crossing over without getting run over. 

Small digression here. I did once get run over by, and for some reason I remember clearly the car - a dark green Ford Zephyr. I don't know how and why the brain chooses to retain certain memories but this one was certainly well-etched. The thud of me against bumper, the tyre squeal, car door opening, scuffling of desperate man as he knelt and then scooped me up, turning and no doubt staring wildly about - 'where's this kid from? Help me!' Someone must have known, or maybe I was able to tell him as I recall passing under the tree, down the path and the door of the flat being opened. Odd that I can't recall more than that. Mother must have been in a rabid state of panic and fury as she had no doubt told me a zillion times about using the crossing...

Colney Hatch lane, and the righthand road I would take towards school

On a normal day when I wasn't being run over I would take the zebra crossing, shudder at the sight of the dentist surgery (another tale) and take one of two routes both equally enticing for an unwitting studier of suburban London house-frontages and gardens. I still find the same fascination for front gardens which tell so much of the occupant's lives as I did then: ragged hedge or groomed, stone chippings, manicured grass, a cottage garden in Haringey or a dumping ground for a house already overflowing. At that time most people still had front gardens, a car if owned firmly resigned to road parking, very few gaping gravel expanses waiting for the metal occupant to return.

The majority of the houses I passed were probably 20s and 30s, this part of Haringey having exploded into expansion after the first world war. Bay windows, a touch of Tudoresque non-structural black-brown beams, an occasional false shutter or two after someone's tentative foray over the channel; painted woodwork - just before the era of aluminium ugliness and the later creeping white plastic tide. Blue doors, purple, red, green - that sort of dark London green that could have been distilled from privet and moss; usually the original doors that would have been supplied with the house, and mostly, sanded, undercoated, protected and repainted.

One of the houses had a then unusual feature of large wind-chimes. I can still hear the slightly mournful clonking sound of the large bamboo pieces, as eerie as a fog horn as I approached up the slight incline of whatever the road was. I have since been back, tracing the walks, the wind-chimes of course long gone, the dread of school thankfully also long gone.

I sometimes wonder if I can trace back the origins of my wishing to write about dystopian times to those walks; reflective time with no chatter from friend or parent, a time to consider even in my early adolescent-hood, (a period of life concerned with acquiring forbidden platform-soled shoes or who was in the top ten) what might happen in the future. Just as the being-run-over incident had been laid down in my mind I recall another moment which seems to have been a catalyst for these thoughts. 

The day had been dim grey, the stick in my hand damp as I ran it along a clapboard moss covered fence: clack-clack-clack. A huge tree rose above the fence, a few brown leaves still clinging to its branches. I stopped the clacking and stood for some time just staring at the tree, aware that my feet should be moving in school direction but ignoring the unwelcome urge. 'What would happen if trees just didn't wake up in the spring?' The words still hang in my mind as clear as clean glass; that twelve year old me's thought budding into possible future stories. Supposing trees and bushes, plants in general refused to put forth leaves - some sort of silent protest about human's assumption that nature existed for their benefits. 

Seymour Court. Our flat being last on the right.

 

The wavering mind

Don't know about you but I sometimes have days where I can pass from near bliss to gloom within a few moments, usually happening after some tedious email or a bit too much internet wandering.

Yesterday, I was pootling along quite happily doing jobs, leaf-raking, making lists, bit of writing, bit of admin, sweeping out our building site (gite project) when I sat down to check my emails - at the moment I have to curb the checking as I have sent out quite a few submissions to literary agents . . . anyway, I sat down and poked the computer into life to find: a rejection, written with excessively bad grammar it must be said; a desperate offer from Ryanair to claim a last bit of Greek sun, something from some smug bugger called Kelvin offering revamp my website and . . . our insurance company doing a special offer on funeral planning. That was it, I could feel the tendrils of gloom reaching out to me and within twenty minutes I was fully into: 'What's it all about' mode - relatively easy in our current times when every click onto the Guardian page reveals more planet-devastation, cruelty, misuse of public money and general chaos. 

I tried full on clearing up, more rigorous admin - even digging into the recesses of the in-tray, serious bank account reality check - (not a good move), researching about insulation in afore-mentioned gite (scary, cost-wise), but although the waters of depression had been stemmed and just a light trickle was escaping I decided more radical action was needed: a bike ride up to our bio veg growing friend and to offer help in exchange for supper-veg. And it worked, as it always does. An hour and a half later I had helped him weed his lines of lettuce with a very impressive 'hoe with wheel' item, and picked 'bouquets' of parsley and coriander for his market trip in the morning. Not a huge thing but somehow the gloom simply evaporated, partially though the exercise and mediative nature of working with soil and plants, partly through helping someone else rather than dwelling on one's own inadequacies and worries.

I returned with my carefully chosen misshaped veg so not to take away from his beautiful market produce, made a huge garlicky salad and enjoyed a peaceful evening with Ezra, rounded off with an episode of Detectorists -another gloom evaporator if you haven't had the pleasure of watching the series.

 

  

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.

Birthday happenings.

As the family are totally bored of hearing, last year my birthday - and a big one at that - was utterly rubbish, due to neither of them being at home and us having just moved to the Loire and knowing no-one. It was however saved by lovely neighbours coming to the rescue with wine and suchlike.

This year was and still is very different; both special folk here and we've had a great day. Before breakfast I was ushered outside to see Mark's present - an amazing one in the form of an established Ginko tree - Mark is currently outside in the rainy dusk digging a hole for it. Ezra presented me with two packages, one containing a tiny handmade bag he had fabricated from a small piece of tapestry I had found at Emmaus, and the other . . . I was fairly speechless, a jacket which he had made from more Emmaus fabric complete with buttons from their excellent stock and embroidery made also by himself. I've always admired folk who can make clothes and he certainly has an interesting experimental time ahead of him with his old electric sewing machine.

Lunch was in a moroccan restaurant we have passed many times on the road to Tours - excellent tajine and pastries of the day, then, at my request we visited the tank museum in Saumur . . . yes, weird choice but we park near it every time we go to a favourite recycling place and I just thought, well, why not. There were a lot of tanks. Many, many tanks, fearfully heavy (10 - 65 tons) sparking with weaponry from simple rockets to nuclear warheads (inert!); anti-tank missile craft, amphibious craft, jeeps, hospital trucks, maps of where various wars happened and an awful lot of war game nerds playing highly complex games involving moving around small tanks, trees, cardboard explosions etc on huge sand covered boards. They also had a large croissant supply and a table laid out with wine ready to go - set in for the day and evening. So, done that . . . probably a one off, but a truly extraordinary collection, and apparently, the place to go if you happen to be shooting a war film and need tanks.

Well, the Renault was getting on a bit

We retuned home with cakes and I lit the kitchen wood burner for the first time this year as the the lashing wind and rain was announcing the true start of autumn.