Posts
Finding affordable accommodation as a postgraduate student
was not so easy, even then.
I tried bedsits in East Dulwich and
Baron's Court, but soon settled on not-so-sunny Goodge Street (Goodge Place, in fact) off Tottenham Court
Road.
Towards the end of the sixties, when I returned from Greece
and found a proper job, Sutherland Avenue in Maida Vale proved convenient (Warwick Avenue tube) and
comfortable (a short spell at Ealing was much less appealing). At that stage I was working in Portland Place, opposite Broadcasting House. I also spent a period in Cartwright Gardens, in between stints in Ethiopia.
Returning from Kenya at
the end of 1977, I finally bought a house. The main requirement was that it
should be close to a Piccadilly Line tube station, as I was working near Russell Square- in Tavistock Square .
A sense of TV history
BBC Studios, Alexandra Palace, August 1946
(from Penguin Music Magazine II, 1947)
(from Penguin Music Magazine II, 1947)
The suburbs!
Not Adrian Mitchell's or John Keats' Hampstead.
Not Betjeman's or Hopkins' Highgate.
Not Dannie Abse's Golders Green ("The whole suburb is very repectable...For my part, now and then, I want to scream", he writes in the poem Odd).
Not Stevie Smith's Palmers Green:
"Suburbs are not so bad I think
When their inhabitants can not be seen,
Even Palmers Green" (Stevie Smith, Suburb).
Not Bloomsbury (although I
went to work there in the late 70's; in later years - the early 90's - to Trafalgar
Square/ The Mall, just by Admiralty Arch).
OK , it wasn't far from where I lived to Kenwood House or Hampstead Heath.
"From that Heath it is still possible to see the views which Constable painted, of elms, ponds and sandy hollows, and the far blue hills of Surrey to the South....It is still possible on an autumn evening in Flask Walk, or Well Walk, or Millfield Lane, or Fitzroy Park, to get the atmosphere which inspired Keats and made Middlesex into Greece for him" (John Betjeman, 1967).
It wasn't quite like that in my corner of North London, although there was a flavour of Greece.
On this cold first day of April, I think of Sylvia Plath's Parliament Hill Fields:
"On this bald hill the new year hones its edge".
"From that Heath it is still possible to see the views which Constable painted, of elms, ponds and sandy hollows, and the far blue hills of Surrey to the South....It is still possible on an autumn evening in Flask Walk, or Well Walk, or Millfield Lane, or Fitzroy Park, to get the atmosphere which inspired Keats and made Middlesex into Greece for him" (John Betjeman, 1967).
It wasn't quite like that in my corner of North London, although there was a flavour of Greece.
On this cold first day of April, I think of Sylvia Plath's Parliament Hill Fields:
"On this bald hill the new year hones its edge".
What I miss most is the British Library. I've grown out of Camden Town
When I do go to London
for a few days, I stay at a club near Green Park and St James's Park.
I haven't been back to North London .
I never want to drive around the North Circular Road again. I can live
without going home on the Piccadilly Line during rush hour or late in the evening,
or taking the tube to Heathrow.
London's still great, in small doses.
The fact is, most of my working life was spent overseas, in cities like Sydney, Stockholm, Prague, Nairobi, Addis Ababa and Thessaloniki.
North London never really felt like home.
But there is sometimes a Waterloo Sunset moment of nostalgia.
Muswell Hillbilly
Original Kinks LP track
Before my time: The Fishmonger's Arms, 287 High Road, Wood Green. Lonnie Donegan first performed there in 1951. He sang Frankie and Johnny in the interval. See gig guide.
Watch the wonderful Free Cinema film Momma Don't Allow, Part 1 (1956), and Part 2. Filmed in Wood Green, at Wood Green Jazz Club, 1955. BFI information. For Ottilie Patterson singing the blues, Blues Knocking On My Door, see part 2 (0.54-4.30). The film was shown at the NFT as part of the first Free Cinema programme on 5 February, 1956. On September 11, 1956, the Teddy Boys started rioting when The Blackboard Jungle (featuring Bill Haley's Rock Around the Clock) was screened at The Trocadero Cinema in London. "The hypnotic rhythm and the wild gestures have a maddening effect on a rhythm loving age group and the result of its impact is the relaxing of all self control" (Reader's Letter, The Times, Sept 12, 1956). "In 1956, the film, Blackboard Jungle made its premier at the Trocadero Cinema at Elephant & Castle in South London. It was then shown thereafter at Cinemas throughout Britain. At the end of the film, the song 'Rock around the Clock' was played and at the Trocodero, Teddy Boys danced with their girls in the aisles and when cinema staff attempted to stop them, they rioted and ripped up the cinema seats with flick knives" (www.edwardianteddyboy.com/page2.htm).
1956 was also notable for the first stage performance of John Osborne's Look Back in Anger (8 May, 1956) and the character of Jimmy Porter:
"Oh heavens, how I long for a little ordinary human enthusiasm. Just enthusiasm -- that's all. I want to hear a warm, thrilling voice cry out Hallelujah!...Hallelujah! I'm alive!"
"I suppose people of our generation aren't able to die for good causes any longer. We had all that done for us, in the thirties and the forties, when we were still kids. ...There aren't any good, brave causes left."
Meanwhile, over in Tupelo, Mississippi, some classic sync sound footage.
1956 was some year. I didn't move to London until ten years later. I was full of enthusiasm.
Fishmonger's Arms, 287 High Road, Wood Green
Teddy Boys at the Fishmonger's Arms, 1971
Map details from London AZ
One of the best North London gigs I ever experienced was given by the great Carl Perkins, at The Royalty, Southgate, on 20 April, 1978. This photo comes from another concert there on October 9, 1980:
Put your Cat Clothes on!
Another good North London venue was The Rainbow, Finsbury Park, where I saw Jerry Lee Lewis.
Here's a poem I published in a poetry anthology in London in 1967, which expresses what I really came to feel then about living in a big city (and it probably explains why I left for Corfu in the summer of 1967):
London's still great, in small doses.
The fact is, most of my working life was spent overseas, in cities like Sydney, Stockholm, Prague, Nairobi, Addis Ababa and Thessaloniki.
North London never really felt like home.
But there is sometimes a Waterloo Sunset moment of nostalgia.
Muswell Hillbilly
Original Kinks LP track
Before my time: The Fishmonger's Arms, 287 High Road, Wood Green. Lonnie Donegan first performed there in 1951. He sang Frankie and Johnny in the interval. See gig guide.
Watch the wonderful Free Cinema film Momma Don't Allow, Part 1 (1956), and Part 2. Filmed in Wood Green, at Wood Green Jazz Club, 1955. BFI information. For Ottilie Patterson singing the blues, Blues Knocking On My Door, see part 2 (0.54-4.30). The film was shown at the NFT as part of the first Free Cinema programme on 5 February, 1956. On September 11, 1956, the Teddy Boys started rioting when The Blackboard Jungle (featuring Bill Haley's Rock Around the Clock) was screened at The Trocadero Cinema in London. "The hypnotic rhythm and the wild gestures have a maddening effect on a rhythm loving age group and the result of its impact is the relaxing of all self control" (Reader's Letter, The Times, Sept 12, 1956). "In 1956, the film, Blackboard Jungle made its premier at the Trocadero Cinema at Elephant & Castle in South London. It was then shown thereafter at Cinemas throughout Britain. At the end of the film, the song 'Rock around the Clock' was played and at the Trocodero, Teddy Boys danced with their girls in the aisles and when cinema staff attempted to stop them, they rioted and ripped up the cinema seats with flick knives" (www.edwardianteddyboy.com/page2.htm).
1956 was also notable for the first stage performance of John Osborne's Look Back in Anger (8 May, 1956) and the character of Jimmy Porter:
"Oh heavens, how I long for a little ordinary human enthusiasm. Just enthusiasm -- that's all. I want to hear a warm, thrilling voice cry out Hallelujah!...Hallelujah! I'm alive!"
"I suppose people of our generation aren't able to die for good causes any longer. We had all that done for us, in the thirties and the forties, when we were still kids. ...There aren't any good, brave causes left."
Meanwhile, over in Tupelo, Mississippi, some classic sync sound footage.
1956 was some year. I didn't move to London until ten years later. I was full of enthusiasm.
Fishmonger's Arms, 287 High Road, Wood Green
Teddy Boys at the Fishmonger's Arms, 1971
Map details from London AZ
One of the best North London gigs I ever experienced was given by the great Carl Perkins, at The Royalty, Southgate, on 20 April, 1978. This photo comes from another concert there on October 9, 1980:
Put your Cat Clothes on!
Another good North London venue was The Rainbow, Finsbury Park, where I saw Jerry Lee Lewis.
Here's a poem I published in a poetry anthology in London in 1967, which expresses what I really came to feel then about living in a big city (and it probably explains why I left for Corfu in the summer of 1967):
No comments:
Post a Comment