Palmers Greek Part 2

Palmers Green Triangle was half a mile and two bus stops north of where we lived, so you’d never walk that far if you could help it.  It was uphill too. I once decided that I’d look pretty fucking cool if I jumped nonchalantly off the 29 before it came to a complete halt opposite Woolworth.  The subsequent stumble and unacrobatic head-over-heels - as my still-travelling body met a very static and very hard pavement - was neither nonchalant nor cool. Nor pretty.

There weren’t many reasons to venture to the part of Palmers Greek that I erroneously assumed had once been the village green.  That assumption was based on its central location, the proximity of the train station and the Triangle itself, a concrete central reservation that bore no signs of ever having been a pre-industrial hub of the rural community.  I think it just came into existence by accident, because of how Alderman’s Hill forked as it met Green Lanes, and having done so, a local town planner was thus inspired to exploit the space by plonking ladies’ and gents’ subterranean public lavatories there. Nothing else, just the bogs.  Unlike aforementioned counterparts near our house, these were in use, but I never had recourse to take advantage either because I was good at holding it in or Broomfield Park was nearby or I equated public lavs with ‘perverts’.

(As an aside, ‘pervert’ was a wonderfully comfortable and even slightly cosy inclusive term for a plethora of sexual deviants, thus robbing us of the need to distinguish between paedophiles, cottagers, molesters, flashers, swingers, kinky sex participants, sex shop customers and your average user of porn, either actual porn or convenient substitutes such as the Gratton or - more desperately - the Argos catalogues.)

The only pull factors the Triangle held for us were Woolworth, Superdrug and an Asian off license. Woolies sold chart singles for under a quid.  Superdrug stocked those cheap toiletry gift boxes that served every family member’s Christmas present need.  The number of Brut Talc and After-shave sets I bought or had bought for me in the 80s would suggest that I was a significant source of income for both Henry Cooper and Kevin Keegan. And then there was the off license. The received wisdom of the time was that Asian shopkeepers wouldn’t ask your age if you wanted to buy booze, hence the choice of retail outlet for anyone well under 18 looking to enjoy a bottle of Woodpecker cider in the dark confines of Broomfield Park on a Friday night.

At the time there was only one local pub that you’d graduate to after outgrowing the park and that was The Fox, five minutes up from the Triangle and no questions asked about your age as long as you were out of nappies.  Being served alcohol here at 17 was what distinguished it from the underground gents. It’s the only place where I’ve been in a team that’s won the pub quiz, and that says far less about our general knowledge than it does about what was lacking in the minds of the regular clientele.  And I spent the final hours of the 1980s there on a New Year’s Eve piss up that was so enjoyable that at a quarter to midnight I pissed off to buy a pizza and sat eating it on someone’s garden wall as it quickly lost its warmth in the wintery night air.

Such was the retail and leisure attractions of Palmers Greek.  In part 3, I will move on to explore some other tedious old shit about the place...