Author: Jag

Reflecting on the bus journey home the other day, I asked myself: what motivates me to keep these pages going? I mean, I’m paying time and money to keep these pages alive, and I get nothing obviously material back in return. Of course, materials aren’t everything are they?

Of course not. It soon became clear to me exactly why. Quite apart from friendships real and virtual, and some sense of arty satisfaction at mashing up words, images and sounds together and sharing them in a brave attempt to convince myself I can be more of an artist than the scientist that I am during the daytime (even though society unfortunately labels me an engineer), there is one thing that made it starkingly obvious. And this was it. An attempt to write up a brief history of my London neighbourhood about five years ago started to attract comments from people who had memories of the area from the past. And then it dawned upon me (actually it fell like a ton of bricks on me) that there’s a whole load of unwritten history out there; stuff that’s locked away inside people’s heads that probably only gets shared in conversations over cups of tea at gatherings of family and friends. Stuff that goes unrecorded forever.

But I realised that a tiny little fraction of an iota of those memories were being captured on this seemingly insignificant “blog” that I was keeping going out of the goodness of my heart. “Out of the goodness of my heart” I kept telling myself. Until I realised that it’s not out of the goodness of my heart, it’s a sense of absolute duty and obligation. When the comments to various postings started becoming conversations between “old Kingsburians” and I realised there was stuff here that you could never even begin to find in the local history section of WHSmiths in Brent Cross Shopping Centre or the local library I got myself the one and only meaningful reason why I just had to keep these pages alive, no matter what. The privilege of hosting Priceless Memories. And I thank all those who share them here, and those who email privately with even more.

I finish this posting with copy of an email sent to me by Ray,who kindly gave me permission to publish his Priceless Memories of his life in my beloved neighbourhood in years gone by:

Hi Jag

In reply to your email, I trust that you had a merry Christmas and have a happy new year.

I read through a lot of your correspondence both from readers and yourself re Route 79 website. I found that a lot of comments were not quite true especially about Kingsbury.

I was born in Edgware, 1939, and lived in Wembley until evacuated during the war and went to Bradford-on-Avon. There are a few years that have slipped my memory but in or about 1945-46 our family moved to Berkley Road, Kingsbury and I remember at one time that I played with Shirley Eaton. At the bottom of the road, station end, was Express Dairy, that the old horse and milk floats, years later I was to work as a milkman at the same dairy.

In early 1947 my family moved to Townsend Lane in the prefabs opposite Elthorne Road. My friends and I often played over on the “gunsight” and also searched amongst the rubbish dump in the fields towards the Welsh Harp for anything of good. In fact I built my own cycle from different parts and sold it to a young lad down the road for £1.10s. I went to Fryant Infant school, I joined the 1st Kingsbury Scouts with Mr Rowbottom as scoutmaster. Then I went to Kingsbury Secondary Modern School on the Edgware Road, Colindale (opp. Colindeep Lane) and once Tylers Croft Sec school (Roe Green) had been completed all the pupils were transferred, sadly the boys were separated from the girls. We used to watch Kingsbury Town football team and Kingsbury Town cricket teams, the latter had their tea room at the bottom of our garden and mother used to do the catering for the cricket teams, she was well known for lovely bread pudding. From the age of 12 I started to play cricket for the second eleven, a few other names I recall, Don Bick (played for Middlesex), Mick Williams, Alan Biddle, the Bashford sisters, Jill and Brenda, one of them used to play for the England Womens Cricket Team.

There was also a young football team called Silver Jubilee Juniors, names as far as I can remember are; Bevan Goodman, Mick Prudden, Bob MacIntosh, Derek and Ray Baggett, Dermot Allen, his cousin Bertie Burgess and Colin Fensome.

. Leaving school I worked for Halfords, Wembley then Harrow until all my friends were called up for National Service so I signed on in the regular army. On returning from Kenya my parents had moved to Mead Court, Buck Lane, Kingsbury Green, new to me. For a temporary job I was a bus driver with London Transport, Hendon garage on the 113 then 183 (Golders Green to Northwood/Pinner) routes.

The driving was too easy so I tried my hand with Express Dairy, by now they had electric floats. Opposite Mead Court was United Dairies, (this is where several of your readers have been confused). I wanted a mans job so I went driving for British Oxygen, East Lane, North Wembley.

A few other names apart from Shirley, Julie or June Rogers ( I believe she was a singer) lived in the Buck Lane area, one of Lonnie Donnigans group lived in K Green, Charlie Watts went to school with my brother.

My cousins husband who is a fireman in Wembley informs me that Wembley is divided into two areas and once you cross the “border line” one notices the very distinct difference in life. The Asian side are not very health and safety wise, there is a lot of potential fire hazards but these people are not all that concerned.

I married in 1966, moving to Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Dorset, Surrey and to Somerset where I now live and am enjoying a happy retirement.

Unfortunately last June I had a stroke followed by two minor ones, that has left me with losing some of my memories, but bits and pieces keep coming back.

At the moment Jag that is all I can remember but I hope that it is of some help, if there is anything that I can do to assist you on your web-site please do not hesitate to contact me, same goes to any of your readers.

Kind regards

Ray

If you haven’t visited the new London Transport Museum yet then you might want to; it’s an excellent place to while away a Sunday afternoon. I did exactly that this weekend just gone, courtesy of a few very sociable fellow flickrites who gathered there to browse and take pics and generally just share the experience. Whilst most turned up with some serious photographic gear, I turned up with my mobile phone and snapped away as usual. Click on the green button in the Shockwave Flash image below to load a musical montage of some of the low-fidelity pictures I took and uploaded whilst there.

Click the same green button to advance through the pics. The musical accompaniment is an infectiously bubbly track called “Deewana” by Alyssia featuring Dee and the Punjabi Hit Squad, which is itself a real hit on the London urban desi scene at the moment. (Punjabi Hit Squad are THE pioneers of urban Asian/Western fusion beat) Turn up the volume, tap your feet and enjoy!

It’s a about a mile long and cuts through residential Kingsbury, London NW9, from Honeypot Lane in the West to Stag Lane in the East. People live here; the road is almost one hundred per-cent residential, save for a row of schools that provides for one of the largest concentrations of school-children in the country. (You can imagine what the traffic is like here during school-run hours.) The Jubilee Line runs beneath it. A village called Roe Green extends right off it. It’s served by London bus route 305, which for the first part at least, can be flagged down or stopped anywhere you like. Not that there’s anywhere for the bus to pull into; because people live here you see, and so their cars live here too. And these days a lot of people have cars, and a lot of people have more than one car. So a lot of people who live here sacrifice their front gardens for concrete driveways so that they can put their cars somewhere. And still the road is chock-a-block lined with parked cars. So most mornings at around half past eight, amidst the huddles of children marching their way to school, you will see huddles of lazier children at the Honeypot Lane end waiting for the bus, flag it down from between parked cars, board, and then alight less than a few minutes walk further up. A procession of cars will follow the bus all the way, each one complete with child clutching lunchbox and book-bag.

Think about the step-change you need. Stop. Stop thinking about the useless stuff. Like what to cook for dinner tonight, or what to do with all the clutter that’s building up on your Facebook profile. Or what’s going to happen next in the book that you’re reading. Stop worrying about the guy who jumped a red at the traffic lights outside Tesco in Slough, or when you’re going to get round to tippexing your house number on the front of the wheelie-bin. Worry about where you’re going next, and what you’re gonna do if you don’t sort out that BIG STUFF that’s been niggling at the back of your mind. Because it’s not longer at the back, it’s at the front. And soon you’re going to be losing sleep over it. You don’t need this. But it’ll remain there. It has a legitimate leave to remain. An indefinite entry-visa. Unless you do something about it.

Words have always been a romantic preoccupation of yours, speaking far louder than your actions ever could. But it’s time to face the truth: There were many times in your life when you left it to fate and you got lucky with the consequences, but you’ve been lucky far too long, and one day it’ll come back and bite really hard. Actually, it already has, but you’re in denial. No more. Do something. Think about it.

And take care crossing the road whilst you’re at it. A good citizen waits for The Green Man.

I followed that bead of sweat
To the small of your back
From the nape of your neck
Lightin’ it up
With every drag upon my cigarette

The opening lyrics to a song called Slow Train to Dawn by UK band The The from their Infected album released in1986.

Fast forward to Paddington Station, 2008; I’m running for a fast train to Slough:

There’s a place in my neighbourhood not far from me where as you walk up the street that seems to go uphill slightly, when you get to the top you will be astonished by the view.

There’s a guy who lives in East london who has a jam jar with 33 folded-up bits of paper in it. Each bit of paper has the name of a London Borough written on it. And each month (amongst much, much more great stuff on his blog pages) he pulls one out at random and visits that borough and writes about it. But he’s done it 15 times already. So there are only 18 boroughs left. Until yesterday that is; he pulled out Brent! (Which is mine!) That guy is Diamond Geezer. Check out his mini-review of the London Borough of Brent.

Some people just can’t be bothered. In this case I think it’s not too much of a problem due to the fact that there is plenty of space, but conventional rules are just that: you follow the rules because everyone does, and it’s only if everyone does, that the harmony of “order” that so characterises human intelligence and civility gives rise to community and sense of belonging.

It might just be harmless, but the action of this customer in the car park speaks volumes about attitude. “I’m alright Jack” means that others will notice the same, and practise the same. Order breaks down and this leads to chaos, anarchy and everyone unto themselves and not a care in the world for others. Perhaps I’m reading too much into it ….

… or perhaps I’m just becoming more grumpy as I get older. 🙁

In London when it rains, it rarely rains all day, every day; for days. But when it rains at this time of the year it really rains. One minute darkness, wind and torrential rain, the next minute sunshine, and the next minute rain. They call it “squally”. I call it annoying.

The wipers on the windscreen don’t wipe fast enough sometimes it’s that hard a rain.

… up to the Sky.

All I know is that I pay them too much. And, oh, for so little. I forgot the parental control PIN the other day and got so frustrated with it that I missed the film. Can’t remember what it was that I wanted to so speculatively watch instead of News 24.

And then they sent me a letter saying that they were sorry that I had cancelled Sky Movies. This alarmed me somewhat as I don’t recall asking them to do that. Especially as I am waiting in anticipation for Kill Bill Part 2.

It’s existence is to be a place to discard the tea-bag and teaspoon after the tea in your mug has been mashed to your perfection.

You’ve changed.

In your own mind it’s only a little change. Not as dramatic as the 7 changing to the 8 you thought. No. Much more subtle than that. You thought it would be a little like an alternative frame, taken a fraction of a click to the left or right of the one taken earlier. You really thought nobody would notice.

Only, you didn’t notice yourself because you thought it about it too hard. Over and over; you conditioned yourself not to notice it. But I did. Because you see the change as something discrete, whereas I see it has something contiguous. And when you see it like that you realise the shocking reality that the change is much more noticeable than you thought.

A slight perturbation in life can lead to indescribable opportunities. If you have a brimful of optimism about this then click on the red button below (and turn up the volume).

“Everybody needs a bosom for a pillow.”

Music: Brimful of Asha (Fatboy Slim Remix), by Cornershop, 1997. (A British band lead by Indian singer Tjinder Singh raised in UK East Midlands town Leicester.)

It’s great when you switch from The Metropolitan Line to the Northbound Jubilee Line at Wembley Park and there’s a Stanmore train just arriving.

If you live in London and you haven’t eaten out at Yautcha then you haven’t lived! If you haven’t been to a London-based Michelin Star restaurant before then this is the one that you should try first. And if you think it’s going to be extortionately expensive then think again! (You can eat for and drink here for under £20 per person, which makes it excellent for a holiday/birthday/anniversary-celebratory treat!) And if you like all-day Chinese-style dim-sum with a gourmet twist then Yauatcha is the place to go.

Apologies in advance to any veggies or folks who don’t eat certain types of food; but quite apart from the delectable dim-sum assortments and green teas served by the “extremely fit” (so I’m told, whatever that means) male and female wait staff; the thing to make sure you have (if you can eat it) are the baked venison puffs and jasmine tea smoked ribs. These are an example of what makes dining in London one of the best things in the world! (Ask for a table in the middle on the bottom floor and don’t be put of by the arrogance of the 1 hour 45 minute sit-down time limit.)

If I’m taking the tube to Ealing Broadway I have to change from Picc Line to District at Ealing Common. It’s only one stop, but it’s tremendously frustrating when train after train after train Westbound is a Picc Line going back the way I came from instead of a District one. And when a District Line does eventually arrive it’s always going soooo slow.

Anyway, some music to accompany the above pic. Click on the green button below to load the tune and then click play. It’s a really nice easy-listening song called “Aaja Sajna” (which means “Come On Darling” by a London-born Asian (South Asian) singer called “Ajay“, who has worked with people like Apache Indian, Gregory Isaacs, Jamiroquai and The Brand New Heavies to name but a few.

Interestingly the lyrics to the song are a mix of Hindi and Punjabi, but the chorus line is really easy to sing along to. If you don’t speak Hindi or Punjabi but you’ve always wanted to sing an Indian song (go on, I know you’ve always wanted to) then why not sing out during the chorus lines? I have provided an “Englishified”-phonetic rendition to help make it easy to sing along to below:

Ah Jah Sajerna – Bull ow
Ah Jah Sajerna – Book caro
Ah Jah Sajerna – Meh ball or
Ah Jah Sajerna – Gee nay lugger da

We don’t do ads here, and gosh I wouldn’t think twice at refusing to get these pages drawn into being a tick in mega-corporation PR plan, but plain old-fashioned intrigue got the better of me and I thought it only fair to make a brief comment here in return for attending a free “bloggers” screening of a Fox Searchlight film called “Juno” (which was apparently scripted by a “blogger”) at the Fox office in Soho last night. What they call a “screening room” is in fact a little cinema in their office, how good is that? I couldn’t hang around for the after-party so took-off soon after the curtains went down, but wrote my review on my mobile phone on the tube home:

It was an interesting film. Definitely a “different” story. About an edgy American home-town high-school girl called Juno who is pregnant. The story follows the trials and tribs of her life throughout her pregnancy and preparations for giving the baby to affluent young couple who agree to adopt the baby. Primarily a comedy, the film does quite well at pulling off a highly-stylised humour in a very North American fashion, but also deals effectively with the “serious” emotional bits too. (There are a few Kleenex moments in there). The music plays an important role throughout the film: it’s mostly progressive “folksy”, mostly acoustic-alternative stuff that works well with the screenplay. In fact the music is probably one of the few things about this production that attempts to “iconify” it, the others being the character Juno herself (acted by Ellen Page) and her parents who I thought delivered the most credible performance in a film riddled with in-credible scenarios. (Remember it’s a comedy – for subject matter that would otherwise not be in real life). And as comedies go, I would say that it’s at the better end of the scale. Although I did notice a lot of the audience laughing out loud to jokes when all I could do was muster a smile. But smile I did. Overall prognosis: good film, I would reccommend it. Definitely doesn’t try to be a blockbuster, and probably not “iconic” enough a movie to make you want to watch it over and over again, except for a few really hilarious moments. In short: I probably would recommending adding it to your DVD-by-post rental queue and I would definitely sit down to watch or record it if it was showing on FilmFour at some point in the future.

Other bloggers at the preview who have reported:

Hydragenic
Buzz Attitude
Annie Mole
Ham at London Daily Photo