Memories of a West London suburban childhood: West End Lane, Harlington

At this point, I'm 18, so kidulthood is a better title description really. Never mind, we're on a roll.

This is 65 West End Lane, Harlington – south of Hayes, but still in the conurbation – which my sister Natasha and I shared during the the late 80s. It may come as a surprise but brother and sister got on like a house on fire. We had one noisy row, about one of us leaving the heating on all weekend, when money was too tight to mention. Besides, our work and social lives crossed paths irregularly. The flat had a nice garden, (and we, being on the ground floor had exclusive access to it) but the major disadvantage was with the flat was that it was crawling with mould, though this was mainly confined to the kitchen. It was loosely furnished, but rooms were huge and felt (and were) mainly empty.


This is Swans Chinese takeaway, a frequent eatery when living at 65 West End Lane. It did some of the best sweet and sour pork balls in the West of London – well, at least in the UB postcode area. Celebrated here when I received an unconditional offer at Goldsmiths'. It's a shame a skanky, and rather spooky launderette is no longer on the High Street – if a village as small as Harlington can be said to have one. This washeteria was famous for having most of its fluorescents flickering or completely fried, so washing one's clothes meant entering and staying – often alone for an hour or two - in the post-apocalyptic place; a launderette from the dark side. Creeped both myself and Natasha out, which is why I ended up doing the washing, while Natasha did my ironing.

Memories of a West London suburban childhood: Waitrose and the Classic Cinema

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.

Memories of a West London suburban childhood: Mark's flat

We're drifting into young adulthood here - I was 18 years old.

This was the first place I lived having decided (within the space of a few minutes one morning) that I missed London too much and wanted to return. My parents moved to the south coast after the Hayes By Pass started its march across Cranborne Waye in 1987. So I asked a family friend, Mark, if I could stay at his spare bedroom for a few weeks. He agreed, and eventually a few weeks ended up being 8 months. I paid £12 per week to live here. Not expensive, even though the hot water was often not hot, the heating ditto, the carpet was in fact splinter ridden floorboards, and the bed was a more camp than Freddie Mercury. I had an absolutely marvellous time living in such grime (absolutely no irony intended, the time I had was sloppy and chilled – and of course, cheap). Which bearing in mind I was only on £8,300 was probably the reason I could afford to stay on in London. Mark W, if you ever stumble across this blog entry – you were great company in a “Men Behaving Badly eat your hearts out” sort of way. And the half fixed Apple 2 computers, gutted vacuum cleaners and martial arts mags really added layer of squalor to the already squalid ambience I'll never forget.

I like the sign below what would have been the living room window: "NO BALL PLAYING". And just how many TV dishes can you fit on to a building before it falls down?

Memories of a West London suburban childhood: Yeading Library

This is one of my favourite places on earth. At least it was between the ages of eight and fourteen. It was (hallowed ground...) the library on Yeading Lane, Hayes. And what a heaven, this was, an escape, a portal into the worlds of John Wyndham, William Golding and Isaac Asimov. The books were well chosen, by the librarian, a lady then in her late 40s who seemed to have a telepathic insight into what I'd like to read next, and would put books especially aside for me. I had, of course, quite a wild crush on her for a year or so. The Tories will have you believe that this kind of small, suburban library is surplus to requirements. But it is places like this all over the land which allow curious working class kids, as I was, to access to books they wouldn't obtain outside the immediate locality – because when you're eight taking a bus to the main library, in my case, in far away Uxbridge, would not have been possible. So under this lot, I'd have been deprived of books for education and importantly. pleasure. I learned to love books and literature in this building. How dare this government be so casually flippant about the importance loose with such small scale, local resources. Grrrr. Schools next, huh?

Memories of a West London suburban childhood: The Parade of Shops

At the main Uxbridge Road end of Brookside Road is a parade of shops frequented by the Cranborne Waye brat pack.

A nasty angle was required to take this picture, hence the lamp post being right in the way. The alternative would have been to stand amidst the dual carriageway and much as this is a labour of love, I'm not prepared to get whacked by a lorry for the sake of it.

The second picture was taken from the marginally safer top deck of a 427 bus – sadly the “real” 207 moved on from being a Routemaster to a single deckered bendybus. The parade used to contain, from left to right: a Spar (preceded by a Co-Op complete with lovely clanking Sweda tills with spinning numbers a la fruit machine). Next door a shop no-one knew what was inside because it was never open, a greasy café (called I think, Hayes Gate Café), a Martins newsagent, a chemists, a sub post office, a shop called Ajay's which we simply referred to as “The Indian Shop”. This shop had the distinction of being open until 10pm – whoopee. Next door was a shop whose purpose in life was to act as some kind of money magnet for kids. There was usually a couple of games (Space Invaders, Galaxians, Quasar, being the ones I remember) but it also seemed to specialise in dodgy deals of the insurance or loan shark variety. To be honest, I haven't a clue. Finally, there was an Indian restaurant of the flock wallpaper school of décor.

Memories of a West London suburban childhood: Brookside Road park and field

Popeye Park

The Field

Yeading Brook Bridge

Yeading Brook


A bit of a memory difference between Natasha and I. She thinks this the park was called Popeye Park, at least by the local brats. It was simply known to me as “the park”. Perhaps it was a generational thing, though there are merely two years between us. But when you are kids, two years can be a long time. Pleased to see it's here, more or less unchanged.

And unchanged also is the bridge over Yeading Brook. Not sure why us kids used to hang out by the bridge. Closeness to the park was definitely an obvious good reason, plus the open and generally empty car park meant you could do some really cool bike stunts such as wheelies and skids without having to deal with real traffic as the road comes to a dead end at the bridge. Much as it pains me to admit doing anything as public as dogging, I had my one and only taste of car sex here. But I'm not saying with whom!

The field. Once over Yeading Brook you end up in a place we just called “the field”. It goes nowhere useful. It is simply a buffer zone between Hayes and Yeading proper. And nowadays it looks pristine compared to the scrubby dump it was in the 70s and 80s. I've seen burnt out cars, motorbikes and even a fire blackened Bedford coach parked on the grass. The place felt forlorn and pointless to me, but it seems to have revitalised itself.

Memories of a West London suburban childhood: Cranborne Waye

The big house

The nice end of Cranborne

Swan necked street lamp

The nice end of Cranborne Waye

150 Cranborne Waye

150 Cranborne Waye. Home sweet home for 18 years. The house looks a bit tatty compared to how it used to be. Mum's green fingers made the place a riot of colour when we were there – azaleas were her thing. The house looks small, and hemmed in by the two bay windowed dwellings either side. The lumpy roof is caused by the loft conversion. Huge windows are on the back of the house.

Original 1950s (?) swan necked street lamp. A rare breed these days, though New Addington near Croydon still has plenty to spare. The white cased HPS fitting doesn't do it any favours. I much preferred the orange LPS lamps, and because Hilling don Council didn't exactly spread them close together, our road always seemed quite dark and almost secretive compared to those of nearby friends.

A little patch of green. My favourite end of Cranborne Waye. Speaking of which, “Waye?” Please!!! Why the extra E? I have been told I've made a mistake spelling my own address when a child. Wrong. The twee-est part of a tweely named road.

The “big house”. No-one knew why or how this house got to be placed alongside a load of Warren Bros designed 3 bedroom terrace houses. And people who lived in it were a secretive bunch. Well, I suppose because they didn't have kids, we never found out much about them.

The back bedroom. (Grr, it needs creosoting). Dad built what was known as the Summer House in 1985 or so, which was an extended shed big enough to count as a reasonably sized bedroom with en suite toilet and sink. And despite him not intending it to be used for anything but a place to escape to in the summer heat, I kind of moved in permanently. It was my bedroom and quasi recording studio for two years. My abiding memory of the place was waking up at 4am during the night of the '87 hurricane, feeling the wooden panelling dancing, and thinking, “oh, I wonder what's going on?” and falling back to sleep immediately. The other memory was finding our chicken (yes, I that was the clucking kind of bird you tend to smother with southern fried coating) doing a kamekhazi (sorry, the pun was intended The other memory was finding our chicken (yes, I that was the clucking kind of bird you tend to smother with southern fried coating) doing a kamikaze .He saw a chicken reflected in the water of the toilet, dived in for a fight and drowned his stupid bird brained self. Sophia, my littlest sister, was traumatised for months following the bantam suicide.

Short story: Soldiers

A leap into the unknown here for me. Having written a few stories for private viewing only, here is a short story I wrote about my locale, or close to it anyway, that I’m sharing with the net.

It’s a bit of urban horror, with a sprinkling of psychogeographical angst thrown into the pot.

http://bit.ly/ql6Ac0

Some background info:

In July 2007 I had an interview with my future boss, someone I had a happy working relationship with until 2010 when I left to go travelling with my wife. The interview was somewhat unconventional in that it was based in of all places, a pub. We sat down over Diet Cokes and she interviewed me as though we were in her office. Question 13 was “are you evil?” (Come now, admit it, that’s a cool question). This venue was chosen as a result of awkward logistics, eg, the building where her company is based gets locked up at 5.30 and since I was already working in central London, arriving there in time wasn’t a realistic option, as I didn’t want my then- present employer to know I was job seeking.

So we agreed the venue, the Britannia, in Barking, East London, also known colloquially as the titty bar because of its stone mouldings of bare breasted sea nymphs outside. The route to the pub took us through a subway and into a housing estate, which is pretty much described in the story as the portal and the flats respectively, though obviously I’ve never been inside any of the blocks. My imagination was captured by this unusual underpass, as the main character Burton is too – what is the purpose of the lighting? I never got to find out whether the installation was ever given a name or was just one of those ways to splurge some end of budget money on the arts. I’ll add a picture to the blog if it still exists these days. I also sensed the bleakness around this locale, atomisation and isolation built right into the fabric. The ideal setting for a short story of urban malaise, I thought, somewhat cheerfully, since if there is one place I feel comfortable writing about, that's it.

few days later, I’d written about one quarter of the completed piece. It got abandoned when I couldn’t think of a decent way to end it which didn’t involve huge amounts of death; never a bad way to end a story, but I wanted something different to try; a bit less predictable.

The locations are most definitely where they purport to be, the rest of the story comes from the author.

Hazel is the name of the mum-in-law I never had (because me and her daughter split not once but a rather careless three times. What an encyclopaedia of London knowledge Hazel was. In fact she was possibly the most knowledgeable Londonist after Peter Ackroyd, or at least more clued-up than anyone else living in Battersea at the time. So a wee doff of the cap to her.

My formal knowledge of psycho-anything is not so hot, but my experience of human nature isn’t so bad. So any psychologists reading the final part, who thinks “fuck, that’s wonky bullocks” – you’re right, I know, so please correct me on the “isns’t and I’ll thank you profusely and in public on this blog.

Hop Farm Festival - the audio report parts 1 and 2

It only took me a week, but it's been one MF of a week (and M-F doesn’t stand for Monday-Friday, dammit). So, had to be put on hold for the time being, even though I'm only doing a bit of cutting and pasting for this entry.

Right, before your ears are a couple of Audioboos (audio blogs, essentially) of the Hop Farm Festival which myself and a few friends were fortunate enough to have our fat arses at last weekend.

And here....they....are.

http://audioboo.fm/boos/404014-tour-of-hop-farm-music-festival
A quick audio tour of the festival

http://audioboo.fm/boos/404019-ocean-colour-scene-at-the-hop-farm-festival
Ocean Colour Scene - my festival fave

We interrupt this rant...AGAIN

Oh irony of ironies. I write a blog entry about how annoying it is to be part of the great 2 million claiming banker's get-out allowance, when...hang on, haven't we been here before?

Oh yes, the deja vu is justified - we have. Last blog entry. And the reason why I'm wriitng (or copying and pasting) all over again is because I've been offerd some MORE work. At this rate, I'll be back on full time fiarly soon. This time, it's support work: up to 30 hours per week of it. Mostly admin, but work I've done before (in the mid 90s) and thoroughly enjoyed.

There are a number of conditions which need to be ticked and tucked away before I can start. I'll know by tomorrow afternoon, and so I'll write more about what's expected of me, if it comes to pass that it is. Otherwise, it's back to Jeremy Kyle and mindless app form fillage. So wish me luck. Cross your fingers - and write more it in the fullness of.

Forced unemployment: or, "we interrupt this rant to bring you"...

Oh irony of ironies. I write a blog entry about how annoying it is to be part of the great 2 million claiming banker's get-out allowance, when for a short while, I have become one of those who isn't. The work I've been asked to do is a rather intensive one day training course which is going to require from me a whole week's worth of prep-work, so I am going to speculate that the amazing, scintillating part 2 article accompanying you've guessed it, part 1, isn't going to get written until after then. By which time I may have been offered some kind of full time work (two offers, but the fat lady hasn't yet opened her cavernous mush yet, let alone exhaled joyously, so I'm still only at the crossed fingers stage).

Let's see. In the meantime, I there will be a festival update coming soon, if not imminently.

(In case there is any doubt within you, dearest reader, I am not complaining).