Bridge House was 6 storeys high and you could access the roof. The view from there was amazing. You looked down onto the top the Roundhouse, across Camden Lock market towards Camden Town, the West End, the Post Office Tower. Early 70s rules on Health and Safety decreed that a waist high metal bar around the perimeter of the roof was sufficient prevention against a young child falling to his death. So my parents let me go up there on my own. Or at least, didn't stop me from doing so.
At ground level there were scary concrete sheds for residents. It was unusual for anyone to have a car. Dad had a bicycle which he kept in our concrete shed, but I wouldn't go in there due to the infestation of killer spiders. I say 'killer'. They were daddy-long-legs spiders and tended to remain static. But I was sure that if I'd gone in there, they'd jump on my back like in that final Jon Pertwee storyline in Doctor Who.
Next to Bridge House was a pub. And my parents must have known the managers, because I was allowed to go round there and play with their daughter outside of opening hours. It was an intriguing and exciting play space for kids, full of scruffy luxury with its dark red interior, strange sofas and beer-soaked carpet emitting an enticing odour. The daughter was slightly older than me and far more forthright. She once pinned me to the carpet in order to kiss me, then proceeded to count each kiss. She got up to 40. So it wasn't just my first kiss with a girl, it was my first 40 kisses.
We didn't have to walk far to the shops, just across the road and next to the tube station. The sweet shop obviously held the biggest attraction for me, especially the bubble-gum machine outside. You needed the wrist strength of a weightlifter to turn that bloody knob on the bubble-gum machine. There was also one of those large charity boxes chained up outside the shop, a figure of a boy in callipers, a sign encouraging you to give to 'spastics'. Spastic was such a 70s word, but got banned later, because of its association with people who had disabilities; but we tended to use it just for people who were a bit crap at something. The sweet shop was run by Monty, one of those friendly chaps who enjoyed talking to kids. Nice bloke, but come the 1980s he probably had to stop being friendly to kids as people started to get paranoid about that sort of thing being a bit noncey. Most of the time it wasn't.
There was a grocery shop where there had been a dairy on the corner next to the tube, where Chalk Farm Road split into Haverstock Hill and Adelaide Road. We were in there quite a lot. Sometimes I was in the barbers over the other side of the road. And on a rare occasion, Marine Ices. I couldn't get over Marine Ices. A restaurant just for serving ice-cream. I've never known the like of it. It was still going 40 years later when I was working in Haverstock School, but it moved location during that time. The barbers was still there too, but under different management, a right moany bastard. As for Monty, well, he'd also gone by then. Hopefully into happy retirement and not paedo-jail.
No comments:
Post a Comment