Below: Oaklands Road Primary School, which I attended from September 1962 to July 1969. Happy days!
Below: this was the parade of shops, just round the corner from our house on Croft Gardens. From left to right: Lawrence the Butchers (now a private house); Oaklands Hardware; DeVee Hair Fashions...
Below: ...now a 'Polski Sklep', this used to be Tanner's newsagents and confectioners; then W.J. George the grocers; and then with brown paper bags, earthy spuds and chromed scale-pans, the greengrocers.
Below: and on the corner of Oaklands Road and Grosvenor Road, the Grosvenor pub, the air outside heavy with the smell of spilt ale and stale tobacco smoke. Built in 1904, by the time I was a boy, the pub was just over half a century old; a passage of time lesser than that which has elapsed since the early 1960s. Up Grosvenor Road, I discover that legendary British-motorbike shop Reg. Allen on the corner of Hatfield Road, closed this summer after 60 years in business; the premises will be turned to flats.
Hanwell of my childhood - below, the public library on Cherington Road. I walked in expecting to be greeted by the smell of floor-polish and well-thumbed books, the sight of elderly gents browsing the day's newspapers in silence, but was disappointed - the building's interior no longer contains that smell which I can so vividly recall and can so readily bring to mind. Much as level-access is welcome, the ramp does upset the visual proportions of the front elevation.
Below: next door to the library, another building that was important in my childhood. This is Cherington House, built in the late 1830s, which during the 1960s served as an NHS paediatric clinic. I'd come here with my mother to collect bottled orange juice and cod-liver oil, and to have my baby brother weighed.
Below: usually we'd go home along the Uxbridge Road, sometimes down Boston Road (below), a run-down area then as it is now.
Below: a brief familiarity; from September 1969 to May 1970, I'd travel dach day to my new school, Gunnersbury Grammar, by Piccadilly line train from Boston Manor station to Acton Town. Paint Your Wagon was showing at the cinemas. The smell of that early autumn, my last in Hanwell, 1969, I can recall it as though it were yesterday. And then we moved to West Ealing, and new routes to school were found. But for nine months I'd stand on the platform here every morning and await the Cockfosters train.
The platform dates back to 1883, while the station building on Boston Manor Road is a Grade II-listed Charles Holden design from the 1930s.
This time last year:
Jeziorki - swans and bonus shots
This time three years ago:
A conspiracy to celebrate
This time four years ago:
The Mythos and the Logos in Russia
This time five years ago:
Going mobile - I get a smartofon
This time six years ago:
The world was meant to end today
This time seven years ago:
First snow - but proper snow?
The time eight years ago:
Dense, wet, rush hour snow
This time nine years ago:
Evening photography, Powiśle
This time ten years ago:
The shortest day of the year
This time 11 years ago:
Bye bye borders - Poland joins Schengen
1 comment:
"To connect where I am from"......so many wonderful resonances in this sentence and in these final lines. In a strange way, its narrative tone and Lud-locus reminded me of the opening lines of Machen's 'The London Adventure'.
Very stirring thoughts for this darkling season.
Frater Ambrosia III
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