16. English Traditions

Us Brits are very proud of the ancient traditions that have developed and been retained throughout a thousand years of history. We love to parade them at every possible moment in front of the visiting tourist, not that we give a monkey's whether they like it or not. We like 'em and that's good enough for us, but if the visitors go back home and tell their mates to come over and bung a few bucks, francs, or liras into the UK coffers, well, all the better for us.

The must be sense of the 'Come to Britain' tourist propaganda program are too well known for me to enlarge upon here, but I think a better job of presenting us British to these foreign visitors, would be done if we got 'em away from Buck House and all the bods who make such a palaver about changing over to guard it, and got them round a few places that are truly representative of this Sceptred Isle.

Like a picket line at British Leyland, a traffic jam in the Edgware Road, a bus queue practically anywhere, a casualty queue at any hospital, the gents in most boozers, and so on ad infinitum.

There is one place I would plump hard for the visitor to visit, and that is the artists exhibition which is held every Sunday along the Bayswater Road. This is an exhibition in the truest sense of the word. Here, anyone who fancies that he has created something that they can flog to somebody, can hang it on the railings of Kensington Gardens from the Broad Walk to nigh on Marble Arch, if they can find a space.

I may have mentioned it before, but in case you missed it, I'll tell you that I was pupped in Paddington, a stone's throw from Queensway, or Queens Road as it was called then. In fact, I did my first paper round from a shop which stood where the Queens Ice Rink is now sited. The whole area was so English that it could well have been the original setting for "Upstairs Downstairs".

Queens Road was an English bastion, firmly planted by it's broad base in Westbourne Grove, with it's long taper of genteel shops, lorded over by the imposing edifice of Wm. Whiteley, which always waved the Union Jack from its dome towards the end of the road as it embedded itself into Bayswater Road. Foreign persons were definitely not encouraged, and ragged arsed herberts as myself were only allowed up there before seven a.m., in order to deliver the papers to the upper crust residing in Inverness Terrace and the roads around. All for two bob a week including Sundays.

All very English and democratic, as Wm. Whiteley sold off yesterday's stale bread and cakes to the deserving poor living on the wrong side of the Harrow Road across Royal Oak station if they presented themselves at six a.m. with a tanner and a shopping bag round the back entrance. Must look after one's own, you know.

I don't think that Queens Road ever recovered from being debased by the building of the Queens cinema bang opposite, during the thirties. It tolerated the Roxy in Westbourne Grove as a concession to progress, anyway it could pretend to be unaware of it's existence, being round the corner, and it knew that a high standard of hygiene was maintained, as the usherettes, who were always dressed in black, came round at regular intervals and sprayed the audience with Flit guns.

I hadn't been along the Queensway for many years, until the other Sunday, when my wife and I went to see if we could buy a picture at the artists exhibition in Bayswater. We drove up Inverness Terrace from Porchester Road and parked at the end and started our long trek from the Broad Walk along the park railings towards the end. It took nearly three hours, with stops for ice-cream and hot dogs, which were sold from vans and barrows parked among transport of every make and age. Creations of every form of art hung from the railings or stood on the pavement. Etchings, oils, rubbings, collage, pencil, water colours, pictures made from watch and clock works, nuts and bolts, everything imaginable. Modern art, some of which looked as if the artist had sat his or her bare bum in a tin of paint and slapped around all over the paper. You could almost hear the seal clapping it's flippers. Representatives of every creed and culture were there in abundance, all trying to flog their own peculiar form of culture.

Only one thing was held in common - a mistaken idea of the value of their work. We saw a set of water colours of the Pool of London, one of which we liked, and promptly looked for the vendor. A bloke with a mass of matted rats' tails on his nut and a terrific Zapata moustache waved a half sucked lolly at us from the van he was sprawled against, and said, "You interested, man?" I said yes, how much was he asking, and he replied the big one was £60 and the others £48 each. I said that I didn't want to buy a Renoir, and I'd give him £10 for the one I liked, whereas he shrugged and said "That's the price, man" and resumed sucking his lolly. I thought that if he stuck to those prices, he was liable to be eating lollies for the rest of his puff and wished him a good morning. I added, "Mr Picasso", but very softly, as he looked a mite fierce. Probably because he was a bit fed up with a monotonous diet of inflated ego and Mr Whippy.

We badly needed a cup of char, so I said we'd stroll down Queensway as there was always a decent tearoom somewhere along there. We walked the length of Queensway past Hungarian, Armenian, Italian, Indian and the inevitable Chinese restaurants all doing roaring trade and filling the air with continental and oriental pongs, most of which were very mouth-watering but we didn't fancy eating many of the queer looking objects hanging in the windows, most of which seemed to have been cooked in varnish.

It wasn't until we got nearly to Whiteleys that we found a Wimpy Bar, tucked coyly back from the road but still valiantly flying the English flag, metaphorically speaking*. The place was full of people of every race bar ours, all nattering  their nuts off in their own lingo, excepting a clergyman seated by himself in a corner. As he seemed to be the only link left with Queensway's past, we sat on the next table and ordered two cups of tea, but were out of luck as they only had espresso coffee. Well, we settled for that, sub-consciously strengthened by the vision of the Church in the next table. However, thing are never as they seem, cos as we got up to leave, I saw that the magazine he was so intent on, was not the local parochial news, but the latest edition of Men Only. Perhaps he was meeting the Devil on his own ground, but as blokes dress themselves in anything these days, I don't think so.

Still, I definitely would recommend the artists exhibition as a must for the foreign visitor, who wants to soak himself in some English tradition, and whoever he is, he'll also find some link with home there.

Notes: 
I've edited this piece quite heavily, and, in trying to give it some coherence, I may have lost the point of the original.

Whiteley's Department Store met its demise, closing in 1981, and  re-opened in 1989 predictably enough as a shopping centre. More pleasingly, the Sunday Bayswater Road artists exhibition continues to run, having been established for over 50 years. See  https://www.bayswater-road-artists.co.uk/

* Wimpy Bar - the well known chain of fast-food restaurants, is, of course, actually American and only came to Britain in the 1950's when Lyons obtained a license to use the brand. 

15. The Crew Cut

This time he meant to do it and no mistake. How many times he'd reached this very same pitch of determination, well, it just didn't bear thinking about. It always seemed so simple, figuring the whole thing out in the quiet of his room. He's simply walk into the shop, say what he wanted, get the job over and done with , and walk out again. As easy as that. Of course, there were one or two details that had to be worked out.  After all, it would be asking a bit too much, expecting it to work out just as you imagined it would., in your mind. No, you could bet your bottom dollar something would turn up out of the ordinary run of things, and there you'd be, nerve gone at the very moment it was needed, and that meant another couple of weeks or so, of going through all the old rigmarole of telling yourself how easy it would all be and what was there to worry about anyway. To say nothing of what the boys would say if he boobed again. He'd just about has enough of having the mickey taken out of him, and besides, he had a feeling that they all though him yellow, although not one of them had had the nerve to say so, at least, not to his face. Bit too handy with his fists, and they knew it. Some of them had good reason and all.

Still, he'd said often enough what he'd so some day, and all the cleverness in the world with his fists wouldn't wipe the sneers off the gang's face every time they knew he'd got windy again. So there it was, now or never, more for his own self respect than anything else, with  the details gone over and over again and no reason why it shouldn't be dead easy. Naturally he hadn't chosen a shop near home where he was known. That was obvious. And dinner-time, he reckoned, when there was less chance of any customers , was about the best time. A stroll past, first of all, taking a quick look in the door as he went by, and if it was empty, then about turn, in the shop, straight up to the bloke and tell him what was wanted. If he could sound as though he was used to being obeyed , and not used to being argued with, then there shouldn't be any trouble. Then give the bloke what he held in his hand at that very moment and out again without any fuss or hurry. Even if anybody did see him coming out, it wouldn't matter than much, as there were thousands of chaps who'd look like him these days, and there was no reason why he should be at all noticeable.

Funny how hot his hand felt in his pocket, making the hard metal slippery with sweat. Well, that's how it was and it wouldn't be long now. There wasn't anybody near the shop so it looked as if he was going to be in luck.

Now then, straight past and a look in the door out of the corner of his eye. Didn't seem to be anyone there as far as he could see, so about turn as if he'd suddenly remembered something, and in the door.

The bloke was sitting on a chair in the corner reading a paper and when he hear the door ping it's little bell, looked up with a big smile of welcome on his face, which quickly changed as he realised right away what he'd come for. Nor for it. The old familiar pounding heart was by now banging like mad, as he felt his determination to really have a go this time slipping away again; then in a flash he saw the boys jeering and saying "Yellow", and he started to give the command he'd practised so often, but before he could get the first word out, the bloke was on his feet with a big lump of wood in his hand.

He looked enormous now he was standing and that curt sentence so authoritative in front of a mirror, froze in his throat as the bloke said: "Blimey, some people never learn that I don't cut kids hair on a Saturday; don't know why your mothers will keep sending you. Still might as well do you while I'm slack, I suppose. Hop up, Trim up and make it tidy, eh ?".

He nodded miserably as he clambered up on to the board that the bloke had put across the chair, and handed over the shilling he had clutched in his hand.

One day he would ask for a crew cut, and get rid of those hateful blonde curls for good.





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Notes: I'd completely forgotten about the board they used to put across the chair when cutting kids hair!  I used to get mine cut at Peter Lazou's in Grant Road, Wealdstone (see the picture - seemingly now Blue Star Afro-European Hair Stylist).  Zero chance of me ever opting for a  crew cut though!