Whereabouts this week……

This week I am on a course for 4 days…in London. So my blogs are dependent on The Company’s “not quite 3G technology”. This is a technical challenge, but hopefully I’ll be able to incorporate some of the spirit of the London Bloggers, like Inspector Sands at Casino Avenue, Onionbagblog Man and Diamond Geezer.

No doubt the fun will start with South West Trains and good old London Underground, both of whom have yet to qualify in my cast group of The Total Fucking Bastards by virtue of the fact that I don’t use them that often. As an ex-Londoner………no….. lets say I am an exiled Londoner, because the London bit never leaves you and I have done my utmost to keep my London-ness and accent intact from the onslaught of the local bastardised dialect where I live.....I find myself looking back with rose tinted glasses at the place, although after a few days back visiting I can't wait to get away again to the countryside with it's clean air and comparative lack of traffic.

I’m staying near Kings Cross, so that could be an interesting starting point!

Anyway in this weeks visit to my home territory here are lists of 10 things I love about London and 10 things I hate about London

Things I Hate about London

1.) The North Circular road – absolutely soul destroying bastard of a road
2.) The City – or at least the workers there - a bunch of arrogant, free loading crooks
3.) Oxford Street – a once glorious shopping paradise now reduced to cheap tat shops
4.) Waterloo Station – a shithole, nuff said
5.) Highbury – the home of The Arse, the biggest single thorn in my side for 32 years
6.) Buckingham Palace – Not the building, but it’s occupants - I’m a Republican so this is hardly likely to light my candle – would make a great museum though
7.) The London Underground – which, ironically, is in my list of things I love. I hate it because it’s unreliable, smelly, run down and doesn’t run all night. I’ve been stranded too many times due to cancellations and breakdowns.
8.) Capital Radio – a once proud London station reduced to a commercial, soulless, community spirit drained, corporate, accountant run bollocks station.
9.) The blacked out fence around Heathrow – fucking killjoys stopping me seeing the planes as I drive past
10.) Wandsworth’s one-way system – makes the North Circular seem like paradise

Things I Love about London

1.) The London Underground – a national treasure, massively depleted due to successive decades of under investment. No other country in the WORLD has an underground like ours – spend money on it (new stations, new rolling stock, new rail and signalling), pay the staff more, reduce the fares, extend it to more sites South of the river and run it 24/7, whatever it takes – and fund it publicly!
2.) The Thames – cleaner than ever and an awe inspiring sight wherever you see it from.
3.) Stamford Bridge – yeah, wonder why this is in there – the HOME of football!
4.) Southall – the best Indian restaurants in the COUNTRY. If you haven’t eaten here then you haven’t had a real Indian.
5.) Routemaster buses – reliable, efficient, fun, full of character and how can you ever replace the ability to hop on and off at will?
6.) The Greenwich foot tunnel – dingy, scary, damp, marvellous
7.) Covent Garden – the best place in any City, anywhere (with Amsterdam’s Liedesplein a very close second)
8.) Westminster Abbey, Tower Bridge, The Tower of London, The Houses of Parliament, the BT Tower, Canary Wharf, The National Gallery, The V&A, The Natural History Museum, St Paul’s Cathedral, The Science Museum, Tate Modern, The Tate, Battersea Power Station, The Dome, The London Eye – all architecturally stunning or interesting sights - yeah I’ve cheated a bit there, but I’m limited to 10 entries alright.
9.) Hyde Park – is this really in the middle of the city?
10.) Heathrow Airport – noisy - but for little boys (of which at heart I am still one) a fascinating place. Not an airport, but a proper Town in its own right.

Places I remember fondly from my own area of London

1.) Northolt Grange Youth Club – many fond memories of the girls, the disco’s and the fights.
2.) Grosvenor Fields – a park next to Grosvenor Avenue – football, bikes, fights, girls and a place to smoke without getting caught by parents
3.) Goshawk Gardens – the street where I lived until my parents decided to shuffle off of this mortal coil before I’d hit 18.
4.) Charville School – a strange little nursery, primary and junior school. It backed onto my garden and so getting in each day was a case of climbing over the fence and I was there. Mr Mcleod the caretaker used to chase us away when we played football in the playing fields during the holidays – silly old fucker – potentially stopped me from being the English Charlie Cooke!
5.) The Grange Youth Club – the Hayes equivalent of the Northolt one, bigger, better building but less welcoming. Used to host the Interspin disco’s which allowed underage smoking and plenty of girls dancing around handbags.
6.) The Carpenters Arms - my local pub for 8 years until I got married (the first time) and then had no money. I served 4 years behind the bar, serving local villains, local idiots who thought they were villains, boyfriends of girls I was also….errr….assisting and especially the local constabulary (Friday and Saturday nights, after hours until the early hours of the morning)
7.) Uxbridge town centre – the only thing to do on a Saturday afternoon. Teenager does the same excursion with her mates to our local shopping town – some things never change.
8.) Oscars – a nightclub (disco we used to call them) in Greenford. It guaranteed either a fuck or a fight, sometimes both.
9.) Steve’s Burger Bar – the finest burgers and pizza anywhere. Always packed out after the pubs were shut.
10.) The EMI club – no, I didn’t work for them but we used to go there in 6 or 7 cars from the Carpenters Arms, meet a load of geezers and birds from Townfield and Barnhill schools (our rivals when we went to school – both now defunct), drink loads of lager and then 12 cab loads of us would go to the White Hart, a pub/disco in Southall for fun and frolics.


Later, Grocerjack