Landmarks

I seem to remember as a child, thinking of myself as a child and therefore before the age of twelve but not quite having any signposts, there were summers of laburnham mornings. I the runner of errands, found myself on the 97 bus to town, to collect my father's cigarettes from my uncle.

My uncle managed a large and prosperous tobacconists next to the Midland Hotel. If there were not signposts there were landmarks. I got off the bus (alighted in transport parlance). I remember the warning printed by the rear platform, not to alight while the bus was still in motion. Everyone did it, leaping in the air to a running alightment. They also swung on, clinging to the pole as the bus moved off landing breathless on the platform, just in time. Life on the rear platform of a double decker bus was hazardous. Many was the time I stood on the platform clinging on for dear life as the bus made a sharp right turn, threatening to throw me into the road. Of course one showed a brave face, grinning into the wind, hair blown back. It was in fact a grimace of sheer terror as I hastened to scramble inside the lower saloon. Saloon indeed, but that was what it was called. "Riding on the platform is prohibited" was another instruction which was was only observed in quiet times. In the rush hour it was uniformly ignored.

I alighted at Mamelocks, the music shop on Oxford road, pausing to note that Boosey and Hawkes seemed to have a large showing and the allusion always made me smile, envisaging as i did, drunken clarinette players. Opposite was the Refuge Assurance building, now The Palace hotel and on I went up into Oxford street, past the Tootal building noting the array of neck ties and cravats wholesale only, the Gaumont Cinema and the Gaumont Long Bar. Later I was to know the Long Bar as an habitual, notorious, late night resort of Les Demoiselles de la nuit. However when I visited, in the company of a few cronies, we were disappointed by the vista of the usual suspects, tired and dusty old men.

I passed the Odeon opposite and arrived In St Peters Square, the site in 1819 of the Peterloo Massacre. In august of that year the residents of Petersfields were joined by sundry elements to hear a speech on parliamentary reform. The crowd grew so large, that the city magistrates were fearful for the preservation of public order and read the riot act, calling in the dragoons. Many women and children were among the hundred and forty injured and about eleven men were reportedly hacked down and slain.

The Midland Hotel is on the left, a prestigious hostelry at that time in the fifties, product of the London Midland and Scottish railway, with it's huge Central Station to the rear. Looking into the square was the Central library. Having arrived here I crossed the road to my uncle's shop on the corner of Peters Street.q

This was more than a mere tobacconists, more an emporium of gentlemen's accessories. Having spent so long on the journey the description of the shop will have to wait for a later post. Suffice it to say that it was a sight to see and a scent to savour.

JL March 10 08:41