Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green

The above is the last line from Chesterton’s The Rolling English Road, which begins:

Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode,

The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.

 

Chesterton was a monumental pain in the backside, and scarily anti-Semitic, but as a Jewish friend said to me, he had a very engaging way with words. The Father Brown stories are beautifully told, and he wrote a number of poems, with strict metre and rhyme, which can touch your heart no matter what your origin. Many of these poems were epigrammatic prefaces to his novels. The introduction to The Napoleon of Notting Hill, begins:

 

For every tiny town or place
God made the stars especially;
Babies look up with owlish face
And see them tangled in a tree.

You saw a moon from Sussex Downs,
A Sussex moon, untravelled still,
I saw a moon that was the town's,
The largest lamp on Campden Hill.

 

Clearly, he was enamoured, as I was as a young fellow, with the mystique of the great city of London. And that is the rather long preamble to another reminiscence from me of my young days in West London in the 1980’s. I lived in Tokyngton in Wembley, just north of the North Circular Road, and just to the east of that section of the Harrow Road known as Dead Man’s Hill. Apparently the name results from the story that bodies of plague victims were buried there, under the ground on which my local, the Harrow Tavern, was later built.

 

The Harrow is itself long gone now. Two of my pals from those days are also gone, Del Wynne and Big John. Ed Debreuque and myself are still going strong, or at least still going. Interestingly, the end of the bar at which we habitually stood was known to the staff as Animal Corner. In view of our collective quiet demeanour, this strikes me as unfair. I have looked for a picture of the pub on the internet and cannot find one.

 

The ward of Tokyngton was around a mile south of Wembley Stadium and on cup final day, it sounded as if the crowd were in your living room. One more thing about Tokyngton. The River Brent is often mentioned as one of London’s lost rivers. Others include the Fleet. These are rivers which now run mostly underground, but the Brent is by no means lost. In Monks Park, Tokyngton, it flows along above ground, roughly parallel to the North Circular Road for several hundred yards.

 

I lived something of a double life then, being a grumpy old man at Animal Corner in my local pub and also being a young fellow in the electric atmosphere of North West London in the 1980’s. There was (and still is for all I know) a vibrant community of young Australians and New Zealanders around there, and this was a major source of parties and social life for me. One piece of music which evokes that period for me is Overkill, by Men at Work:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RY7S6EgSlCI

 

I did a blog on haunting musical pieces a few months ago. I should have included this. It certainly haunts me.

 

That area of far West London had a number of urban legends attached to it. This one is distinctive in terms of urban legend in that it is true. As noted above, I lived in Wembley. I worked at Northwick Park Hospital in Harrow, and I often wondered why a large gasometer in Harrow had the large white letters ‘NO’ painted on it. Was the gas nitrous oxide, I wondered, when I first saw it, but then dismissed it.

 

I later learned that in 1960, a Boeing 707 had landed at RAF Northolt, the pilot mistaking it for London Heathrow Airport. The trouble with this situation is that the runway at Northolt was long enough for an aircraft of that size and weight to land but not to take off again. They had to rip out all the fittings, remove the seats and so on, so that the aircraft could leave Northolt and return to service. As a result, a gasometer at Harrow was labelled NO for Northolt, and another at Hounslow LH for London Heathrow, so that pilots could see this and the error would not occur again.

 

I hadn’t intended to do a blog this week. My plan was either to leave it at a year of weekly pieces, or to perhaps switch to monthly blogs. I am grateful to my good colleagues Daniel Vulkan and Joy Li for suggesting this topic. Let me end with a poem I wrote at the time. I have mixed feelings about this piece of work. On the one hand, it is pretentious, showing off my street cred before taking the trouble to develop any. On the other, it does evoke those days of being young and thinking yourself immortal.

 

MY LUCKY CIGARETTE LIGHTER

Shut the door, hit the pavement,

Off to mass at St Watney’s.

Money in the pocket, smokes and keys.

‘Don’t drink anything I wouldn’t,’

The alsatian roars behind

The Bangladeshi’s hedge.

 

Steam rises from the ground:

Wonderland in Stonebridge Park.

There’s no door on the phone box

On the corner of Wyld Way

And Victoria Avenue; no privacy

To make a call or take a leak.

 

Could’ve been a big stick

Working for the drug companies,

Driving a BMW and Up Yours, Vicar.

On the other hand, could’ve

Ended up down the Embankment

Sleeping in a cardboard box.

 

Drained the oil out the sump

And poured it down the sivor.

Struck a match and sent it on its way

And WUMPH! Took my eyebrows off

And crimped my moustache.

That was earlier today.

 

Round the corner, nearly there,

On the brow of Dead Man’s Hill

The pub looks like a haunted cinema.

Don’t get killed by the four-lane

Or caught by the mad woman

In the bus shelter.

 

In the double doors and Hello Boys,

Pint of lager, light and lager,

Pint of county and how’s your luck?

Hang your jacket on the fag machine,

Put your fags on the bar

And try on Del’s cowboy hat.

 

Leering at the barmaid

And listening to the crack.

Fast Eddie on about Caesar’s Pubic Wars,

And Wes talking through his hat,

Away with the fairies, only firing

On three cylinders.

 

And have you seen my lucky lighter?

It’s a genuine Zippo, runs on petrol,

Lights in a hurricane, wear it swimming.

Got a picture of an oil-rig

Etched in the steel

Inside a red Maltese Cross.

 

Get another in before they shut.

Down the gate the other night,

Sober, I was driving.

At three, North Kensington

Looks bloody marvellous

As you drive through at sixty.

 

And see you all tomorrow

If we’re lucky. Cheerio Marie,

My name’s Stephen and I’m leavin’

With my lucky lighter in my tail

As the lights in the car park go out

And the last bus goes past.

 

And down the road you hear the rattle

And see the flash

Of the electric trains going by.

A shooting star burns out

Over Willesden Wagon yard

In a Wembley sky.

 

Strutting down like Cowboy Joe

From Mexico, an old tin can

Of spaghetti hoops at your feet.

Y’pick it up and fling it

Over the hedge to the Alsatian

And make a wish.