Regent Street and Bond Street

4 December 1995. In the second of this set of articles dealing with a short break in London we remain on the UK Monopoly board's green set but move from Oxford Street to the other two properties!

Regent Street was named after the Prince Regent, later King William IV, and was constructed as a thoroughfare from his residence at Carlton House, to run north to the entrance to Regent's Park. Designed by architect John Nash in 1811 it required the demolition of a large number of properties, but provided work in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars. Most buildings were leased and by the end of the 99 year period of the lease were all unfit for their designed purpose, given the modern trend towards large department stores. Between Piccadilly and Oxford Circuses none of Nash's original buildings survive, the entire street being rebuilt along its original route between 1895-1927.

The Christmas lights were a bit more spectacular than Oxford Street. To a couple of visitors from Blackpool, used to the Illuminations, Oxford Street had been a bit of a "Is that it???" disappointment.

We had a look in Hamleys huge toy store, dodging bubbles and little balsa wood gliders that were being enthusiastically flown by demonstrators around the doorway. Several floors of close-packed toy displays mean you could easily spend a full afternoon getting lost in wonder. Luckily Miss Franny was there to grasp my ear firmly and lead me out again... Awww!!!

And so to Bond Street and a glance at Asprey's Jewellers. It is the only street to run between Oxford Street and Piccadilly. There - did that surprise you as much as it surprised me when I found out? How strange! It is invariably just called Bond Street, though in fact has two halves, signed as Old Bond Street running north from Piccadilly and New Bond Street, an extension forty years after the first bit at the northern end up to Oxford Street.

Originally full of properties selling fine art and antiques, clustered around the famous auction house of Sotheby's, more and more of the properties are today concerned with the art of fashion with branches of internationally famous designers.

Still existing from the days of the art houses is the Fine Arts Society, dating from 1876, whose small arcade we were in when the door opened and a man came out, brushing against me as he passed. I looked up into a well-known face and nodded and as he turned to exit the doorway I realised who he was. Forgetting all about being cool and collected I hissed at Fran "It's David Attenborough!"

She spun round almost nose to nose with him and said "Who?" He gave a horrified glance and dashed across the road to get away from us! Sir David, I'd just like to apologise...!

Apart from the fashion houses, some of the most famous names in jewellers are represented on Bond Street. We have already seen Aspreys. Here is Tiffany and below is Cartier.

You will not find any prices marked on goods in the window and should you feel inclined to ask, it's probably prudent to assume that should you need to wonder if you can afford a piece - you can't...

This is the Royal Arcade, leading off to the west from Bond Street to Albemarle Street. It dates from 1879.

The more well-known Burlington Arcade leads from Piccadilly to Burlington Gardens and was the first of the covered shopping arcades, dating from 1819. The sedate atmosphere is maintained by Beadles in top hats and frock coats and the arcade's rules forbid running, whistling and the carrying of opened umbrellas. The Beadles were unable to stop a gang of criminals roaring down the arcade in a Jaguar car in 1964, where they stopped, smashed the windows of the Goldsmiths and Silversmiths Association and drove off with a fortune's worth of booty.

In the next exciting episode we'll have a look at the Great Squares: Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square and Trafalgar Square.

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London, December 1995

Hobbies tend to go in circles - I'm scanning old photos again at the moment and in the middle of doing some negatives of a holiday we took in London way back in December 1995. Nineteen and a bit years ago!

This was the first time we had stayed in London and the couple of day trips we had had previously can almost be discounted as we did little apart from faint at the cost of stuff. We were travelling by train (talking of fainting at cost of stuff...) and the holiday started to prove interesting even on the trip down.

We caught the 08:30 train from Preston to London on Monday 4 December. We had booked seats but at Crewe an old nun decided I was in her seat and was very ungracious when I saw on her ticket that she had caught the train an hour earlier than she should have done. She thought that the two of us should have moved for her anyway. She sat across the aisle and spent the journey muttering to herself much to the amusement of two young girls sitting opposite. Mind you, we all found it amusing when she locked herself in the loo and had to be freed by the guard... As she made her way (muttering) back down the train, an anonymous voice (but not unlike my own) murmured "Oh dear... what can the matter be..."

We got into London just before midday and booked in at the Kennedy Hotel nearby Euston Station. I think it became a Thistle hotel a few years later. On coming out of the hotel the first landmark to be seen was the Post Office Tower. London was dull and somewhat chilly. It was to become just downright freezing...

We had bought our tickets for Madame Tussaud's by post and were allowed to dodge the queue to go straight in. What a swiz when we realised the queue wasn't all that long anyway! I'm not going to post photos of anything that they are likely to still have on show but here's just a couple of tasters.

Miss Franny sandwiched between politician Roy Hattersley and miners' leader Arthur Scargill. They were on a balcony overlooking a garden party scene which featured then current top film stars Bob Hoskins and Hugh Grant shortly after his highly publicised and sadly interrupted dalliance with American prostitute Divine Brown.

Not yet 30, Kylie Minogue was at this point still much loved for her appearances in Australian soap, Neighbours, as much for her singing. The iconic hot pants of Spinning Around were still five years in the future. Chris Evans looked as though he had been modelled in the act of stooping to speak to her and there is lots I could say but won't about the suit...!

We enjoyed the rooms with past and present royalty and the tour finished with a short ride through a sort of steam punk London, probably before the term "steam punk" came in to being(?) We came out into winter and decided to walk down to the West End shops.

Our route took us through some uniform and rather unappealing streets though, behind some of these windows in Harley Street, people were making in that one afternoon more money than I would see in a year or three...

And so we reached Oxford Street. Routemaster buses were still to be seen in profusion, though equally in evidence were other more recent double decked buses. At least the horrendous far-too-long bendy buses had yet to infest the capital.

We had a look round a few of the larger shops, bright and seasonal with Christmas goods. This is John Lewis. Easily spotted, he is the one turning away from the camera behind the table on the top floor...

Coming down the escalators in Debenhams where some awesomely large Christmas baubles were hanging down the stairwell!

We walked the length of the street to Marble Arch and then came back down the other side of the street, starting to feel cold and a bit peckish as the sky got darker. The Christmas Lights came on and we decided to have a look at the posh end of the West End shops and find Bond Street. Which we shall, in the next entry, bumping into a rather well known face!

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A Chilly Visit to York

Blimey! The 27th of January and not a single blog post until today in 2015! Sorry folks! Busy doing other things, but some of those things will form the basis for more entries over the next few days with a bit of luck.

Last Sunday saw our first proper outing of the year when we got into the car and set off across the Pennines to York. Notwithstanding the M62 being a mess of roadworks and speed restrictions, we arrived late morning and decided to go into the excellent York Castle Museum.

This is the famous museum with a street. Shop and other building fronts have been collected and set up in a street setting with the sound of horse hooves and displays of contemporary goods in shop windows. There are also a set of period rooms from the 1600s right up to the 1950s. The final room depicting the 50s bears an uncanny resemblance to my grandparents' living room from that time. I'm never really comfortable with publishing lots of photos from museums so will limit myself to the above and a couple of items that form a more temporary display of toys and childhood, both of which have personal memories for me.

The first was this - a 1950s toy called Ball Mosaic which was as simple as they come. A perforated sheet of cardboard and a small collection of shiny coloured balls that sit on the holes and can be arranged to form patterns or pictures. A sheet of paper shows a few samples to give ideas. And then the child is only limited by his or her (or parents') imagination!

The second item is a John Bull No.6 Printing Outfit. These comprised of a couple of wooden (later red plastic as shown) holders into which you fitted small rubber stamps, each of which was of a letter of the alphabet or a number in reverse. A pair of tweezers was provided to pick up the letters but invariably you would try to pick up a row or a word and squeeze the tweezers too hard, catapulting letters all over the place. Once you had spelt out your message with the letters, you stamped the face of the letters on an ink pad and then on a piece of paper to print your message.

This was a great hit with all little boys who liked to get messy and, I'm sure, a disaster for all mummies of the time who would unwrap this present for her offspring and happily anticipate ink blots all over her carpets, tablecloths and furniture... Luckily the letters soon got lost and the toy thrown away!

In 1969 I used the remnants of my John Bull Printing Outfit to print envelopes for first day covers of the stamps commemorating Prince Charles' investiture as Prince of Wales.

We came out of the museum to a dull and cold day and this view of Clifford's Tower, the keep, and only surviving building of William the Conqueror's castle apart from some curtain wall which also forms the town walls. The mound, or motte, never fails to impress me and the castle has seen some horrendous events in its past. Here in 1190 some of York's Jewish community including wives and families barricaded themselves from rioters in the tower. With either forced conversion to Christianity or, more likely, death at the hands of the mob staring them in the face the men killed their families and set fire to the tower, committing suicide. Those who escaped the flames were indeed killed by the rioters, many of whom owed money to the money-lending Jewish society. Following the massacre, the rioters broke into the Minster and burned the records of their debts.

Here also in 1537 on the orders of King Henry VIII, the leader of the Pilgrimage of Faith, Robert Aske, was executed slowly and cruelly by being hung, festooned in chains from the walls. Without a noose, with no drawing and quartering of his body, he remained alive in his chains until he died of exposure and thirst, this taking days of agony. The good old days eh...?

We had a leisurely lunch in Gert & Henry's, a 16th Century building near the Shambles (shown). Some American girls came down to pay at the counter which was near our table. "How is it still here?" asked one on being told the age of the building. "It was built well..." replied the owner. A biker couple in their late twenties came in for lunch, she being in leathers so tight and well-fitting, that the mere sight warmed me up far more than the excellent food!

The Shambles is a fascinating street to wander down. It contains some very old buildings with overhanging upper storeys that come so close to each other at the top that it would be almost possible to shake hands across the street.

Windows have tiny panes of glass in sturdy frames and street lighting is noticeable by its absence. In fact the only downside is that the street attracts lots of people! But if you go there yourself, you can hardly complain at that...!

We walked the full length of the short street and back again. Then a slightly rash decision to walk through the shopping centre on our way back to the car park.

Walking down Stoneygate we pass Mulberry Hall, another ancient building from 1434.

90th Birthday Party

Last Saturday we played for one of our own. Miss Jeannie's mum, Joan, was 90 years old and we gathered family and friends together at our favourite Blackpool venue, Coast Riders under the care and catering of our good friends Pete and Janet.

There was a fabulous buffet laid on and I have to mention the Southport bikers' club members who turned up with a huge bouquet of flowers for Joan. She didn't seem to want to take up the offer of a ride on the back of a motorbike, but I'd swear it was declined with a twinkle in her eye...!

Here's the birthday girl with Peter and Miss Jeannie, her son and daughter on the two sides and Elaine, her son-in-law's sister and Miss Franny adding their congratulations.

We tried out a couple of the new songs, knowing we were amongst friends, but "Happy Together", "Keep On Running" and "I Like It" sounded so right that I'm sure audiences in 2015 will get a chance to hear them!

And just in case you think that at the grand age of ninety the birthday girl would stay off the dance floor - think again!

Andre Rieu Concert, December 2014

On Saturday we drove over to Leeds as we were booked (since last February!) to see Andre Rieu and the Johann Strauss Orchestra perform at the Leeds Arena.

I was wondering who would be performing as soloist this year - Carla Maffioletti had left to work in opera. I was hoping, but no, Carmen Monarcha was sadly absent.

The Platin Tenors, Gary, Bela and Thomas were there though - unthinkable not to have them really!

Before the show started we saw a rather familiar face in a red dress take her place in the audience and sure enough the dramatic music of Espana Cani signals the arrival of a pantomime bull which subsequently chases her out of the arena! There's a fabulous postscript to this bit of comedy that I have never seen featured in Andre's videos. I shan't give the game away but it was very very funny!

With neither Carla nor Carmen on the bill, one of the soloist parts was filled by Anna Reker, usually to be found in the small line of the choir at the rear of the stage. Anna, originally from Ukraine, was joined on stage by the Trio St Petersburg and sang a rousing version of the Russian folk song that we are more familiar with in this country as Mary Hopkin's Those Were The Days. This had everyone singing or at least "La-laa-ing" to and she received a huge round of applause for it. The Trio St Petersburg were back a little later with their breakneck speed playing of Zorba The Greek.

Familiar again from some of the videos we've seen, the Berlin Comedian Harmonists came on. This close harmony group have some fabulous voices and I like the touches of humour again and the rollicking final song with the ladies of the choir miming the rowing of boats at the rear!

Mirusia Louwerse was the most familiar of the female soloists and got a great reception from the audience.

Laura Engel, the Dutch-Chilean soprano, made up the third of the female soloists for the concert. She gave us a good performance of Besame Mucho early on in the evening.

We found ourselves sitting under the snow machine. So by the time the Christmas tunes had finished playing we were covered in the stuff! Everybody around us seemed to be throwing handfuls over each other, so we joined in! It doesn't half stick to you... Even having done our best before coats went on at the end, we got back to our hotel room after the show and soon the floor looked a mess! We tidied up as best we could... A brilliant night, I'll be waiting for next year's tickets to go on sale!

The Perks Family Photo Tin 2

As I trawl through the photos from an old toffee tin belonging to Fran's side of the family, I wonder how many mysteries will I leave behind for my descendants to ponder over in years to come. I can't count on this blog still existing, a century after I'm gone. I'm not sure if anything stored electronically will still be retrievable by then. If you were to go back to 1914 and ask someone then how best to store something safe for 100 years, they would say "Put it in an old toffee tin..." and would probably add, "...and bury it in the back garden!"

One thing has become clear - there's a lot more photos than I thought there would be! Let's have a look at a few. This time most of them will be folks I don't know - family, friends, colleagues or acquaintances?

To start with, there's this. Not a single female other than babies. Plenty of cloth caps in evidence. Some fine moustaches too! This is a mixture of men though. Although the three piece suit is not necessarily a pointer to prosperity - because most men had one for best, what the men wear under all that worsted cloth seems to say this is a gathering of different classes. From the bare-headed gent in the centre with the winged collar and narrow tie to the chap seated to the left of him who wears a closed-necked dark shirt, clogs and a heavy-duty jacket with large buttons.

At the back centre two chaps look like office workers, with lighter suits and ties. They are the only two bare-headed apart from the gent we've already mentioned at the front. Elsewhere we can see neckerchiefs and cravats and a muffler or scarf on the right. A couple of watch chains are in evidence and a briar pipe on the right contrasts with a white clay pipe on the left. A society or works do? The photo is likely to have been taken in Rochdale.

We met the two lads at the back in the last article I think. Frank on the left, the cheeky chap and his brother, the rather more reserved Bob Perks, Fran's Dad, on the right. Two younger siblings (I think!) have joined the family.

It would just kill the atmosphere of some of the photos to clean them up too much! Frank again - a bit younger than in the previous photo. I bet the photographer despaired over the facial expression, but someone loved this photo enough to have it hand-coloured.

Rochdale mill girls at a guess. There's a look of the Brophy side of the family in the girl on the right, it might even be Ellen Brophy, but I'm saying that without even knowing if she ever was a mill girl. If anyone recognises family or friends, please get in touch to advise of names/places/dates etc.

We originally thought this might be Peggy's mother, but her sister said it was another sister and great archivist that I am I can't remember the name she said... This was presented in a frame with metal sides and an oval cut-out, but I've scanned the entire photograph here, uncovering the Rochdale photographic studio name and given it quite a bit of cleaning up. Cleaning some of these photos is almost impossible unless I spend hours and hours on each. Any photo printed on lustre or silk photographic paper shows up either a pattern (silk) or lots of light dots from the raised stipple of lustre paper.

And here's Fran's mum, Peggy herself, seated in the centre of this group who we presume are colleagues. Peggy spent some time as a mill girl, but then ended up (as did Bob and Fran until we got married) working in a leatherworks on Queensway in Rochdale.

Final one for this time shows two children who are total strangers. I don't have any clue who they are. The chap at the back looks slightly familiar though and quite seasonal I suppose. The little lad is hoping for a Hornby train set, but the little girl is just hoping to get away as soon as possible!

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The Perks Family Photo Tin

I've spent a few hours recently going through an old toffee tin of photos from Fran's side of the family. I suspect a lot of families will have something similar. Maybe an old album, maybe a box, maybe a biscuit tin... It contains photos going back to at least the 1930s and possibly 1920s. Some of the people shown are totally unknown and with next to no chance of finding out who they are unless someone reading this recognises a great aunt or whatever. Some we do know. The main characters binding them all together are this couple...

This is Robert Walton Perks, who we shall call "Bob" from now on. In this late 1930s photo, taken by a Walkie-Snaps operator in Blackpool, he strolls along the Promenade in front of the Central pier with the old 1930s lifeboat house behind him and his sweetheart, possibly by then his wife, Margaret (Peggy) Birch. This is Fran's mum and dad.

Some of the photos - as will be the case with many such collections, thrown together loosely in a tin or box - are in a bit of a state. Many are torn, scratched, dirty. Some are fading to white. A few were not properly fixed during the processing and are fading to black! I'm not expert at this, but I've managed to repair some of the damage to bring back some of the lost detail.

We're not really sure who this lady is. We think it's 1930s. She bears a bit of a resemblance to Ellen Brophy, Fran's Great-Aunt. If it is her, she was instrumental in bringing the young Peggy up as a child.

Here's a family photo, taken after a wedding, judging by the button-holes worn by many in the photo. Perhaps the bride and groom are the couple in the centre of the photo, Clifford Barker and his wife Edith in the cloche hat. Ellen, Edith's sister, is standing next to her in the photo and I wonder whether the little girl, right at the front, is a young Peggy.

In the 1970s I used to collect football coupons, calling in every week to Ellen's house who always asked me in and made a fuss of me if it was raining. At Christmas a glass of sherry would be pressed into my hand (in several houses actually - I was in danger of being over the limit even if I only took a quick sip to be polite!) Sometimes a young girl, my future wife would sit ignoring me on the sofa...

By the time I became more well known to the family Clifford and Edith were in their 70s. He was the elder statesman of the family and was always asked to give a little speech at any occasion, no matter what it was. He would always rise to the occasion, after a modest attempt to decline, saying to me, "I don't know why they always ask me..." Then he would say something flattering and appropriate to the person or couple of the moment and raise a toast to their health, prosperity (or memory...) A lovely gentleman.

By the time Peggy was old enough to work it was only natural that, as a Rochdale girl, she would go to work in a mill. Even I can remember all the mills in Rochdale. My Nana, who had worked as a mill girl used to astound me as a child by sitting with me on the upstairs of a bus, having a conversation with someone at a bus stop, simply by mouthing and lip-reading. Mills were such noisy places that you couldn't hope to hear anyone speak inside one.

Bob, seen here standing shyly next to his brother Frank, hailed from the Wolverhampton area. Born in 1918, in the closing year of the First World War, his background, I am led to believe, was a bit more basic. There's a marked difference in the photos that we think of as Bob's family, than those of Peggy's. Famously (at any rate in the memories of Fran and her brother, also named Bob) he once refused to open the door of his Rochdale home to some of his family who had come all the way from Wolverhampton to see him.

This photo could in all honesty be of Rochdale folk, but we think it is of some of Bob's family. These are what you would call good, honest, heart-of-the-land folk. They've known rough times and have come through them. And though they may well have told Granny to stay in the house out of sight, that's not going to stop her peeking through the curtains and grinning at the camera!

What a shame none of these photos has either a date or a name scribbled on the back... Many of the photos are tiny. Passport-sized dog-eared prints. They don't stand too much enlargement even if they are in focus to begin with!

This is a young Bob standing with ... well, it could be and probably is, his mother and grandmother, but we don't know.

This is quite a poignant photograph from the collection. Bob joined the Leicestershire Regiment of the Army on his 19th birthday in May 1937. His Service Certificate, which we still have, shows that he was stationed in his home country until 14 September 1938. He spent eight months in Palestine then was transferred to India in May 1939 where he spent the first and second year of World War II. On 12 February 1941 he was moved to Malaya, arriving there the following day. One year and two days later, he was captured by the Japanese.

Bob (next to the end on the right, front row) spent three years, 239 days as a Prisoner of War of the Japanese. He spent some of that time in forced labour on the infamous Burma Railway. Whilst not actually working on the bridge over the River Kwai, he did work with gangs cutting some of the clearings. Bob would never speak about his experiences. Just once was he to say privately to me how awful was the treatment given to the native slave workers. Given little food, they had to shin on ropes down cliff faces, plant explosives and climb back up before the charge went off. Many did not have the strength to climb back up and either fell off, or were blown up by the explosion.

Whatever else Bob saw or endured went to the grave with him. Peggy would tease him into his seventies, saying, "Oh, Bob won't talk about the war, will you Bob? What did the Japs do to you?"

"Nowt!" would come a grunt. And I couldn't help but think, "Nowt that you would want to remember..." Bob was liberated on 11 October 1945, was brought home to England the following day and was discharged from the Army in Shrewsbury in May 1946. His testimonial reads: "This man is cheerful willing worker. Honest and sober. Displays intelligence when interested in a job. For more than 3 years was a P.O.W. in Japanese hands."

We'll meet Bob and Peggy again.

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