Oxford Street – derrickjknight

A Knight’s Tale (97: I Branch Out)

These photographs from April 1986 were taken by staff members on my last day as Westminster Social Services Area 1 manager as I prepared to continue my working life in a freelance capacity.

Here I stand in my office in the former Victorian Paddington town hall,

and here I am signing a few documents. Through the window behind me can be seen the old St Mary’s Hospital, which like the town hall has been largely demolished and converted to Housing Association dwellings.

I doubt that any Social Services Departments can today afford the luxury of spacious accommodation for all staff, such as the splendid manager’s office, on the walls of which I was able to hang many family photographs,

Louisa came to see where I had been working. We stand in front of portraits of, clockwise from top left, Michael, Sam, Louisa, Auntie Gwen, Matthew, Dad, and Jessica. One of Becky is obscured by her sister’s head. The other two are of me running in a marathon and in a twenty mile race.

This brought to an end twelve enjoyable, if very difficult, years in post.

For the next 24 years I remained self employed. My major tasks were personal individual and couple counselling; consultation to helping agencies including Local Authorities; supervision (mentoring) of other professionals; group work, such as for training and support; and various chairmanships, including those of Adoption and Fostering panels; and the occasional Social Work task, such as preparation of assessment reports for a court.

I have already mentioned that my former Director of Social Services surprised me with a contract for one day a week across the board in my old Department. The Coping with Violence course featured earlier was one task from Westminster.

Jackie was simultaneously ironing and watching television on the afternoon of 2nd July 1987. It was then some years since we had last seen each other. The header picture of BBC News which was broadcast that day was a full face portrait something like this one

taken by my brother Chris. Despite the shock to my then ex-wife, I don’t think any items of clothing were burnt.

You may well ask where I am and what I am doing there. Well, I am in a side-street just off Oxford Street in Central London. So close were we to the main thoroughfare that the watchers in the window must have been in an outlet in Oxford Street.

During the morning notices fixed to the bath announced the event and the charity, Westminster Mencap, of which I was a Committee Member, for which donations were sought.

Volunteers poured in the various ingredients and stirred them into the consistency of porridge. It was a pleasantly warm viscous mixture into which the chosen victims lowered themselves for their allotted stints.

Two slang words for a prison sentence are in fact ‘stir’ and ‘porridge’, which fact you may or may not find interesting.

Most people dressed down for the performance. It was Chris’s brilliant idea that I should approach Moss Bros to ask them to donate an ex-hire morning suit, complete with topper, for the event. I therefore dressed up.

Derrick and Jane Reynolds in bath of porridge 2.7.87

The system was each of us would spend ten minute periods, with a minute or two changing over. My temporary companion was Jane Reynolds, the then Director of the Association. That wasn’t particularly arduous, now was it?

Tubs of rather colder water were provided for a clean up afterwards. There was no shirking that.

Finally, my niece Fiona was on hand with a collecting box, hopefully relieving spectators of the money they had saved in the Selfridges sale on the other side of Oxford Street.

This Charity was one of those renting space in the Area 1 building. It also became a consultancy client of mine, so I regularly visited their rooms in the former Town Hall. It was not long before I joined the Committee which got me into the above fine mess.

Up West

CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE. REPEAT IF REQUIRED

This morning I scanned another dozen colour slides from my Streets of London series. These are from May 2005.

Sussex Place W2 leads into Hyde Park Gardens Mews where these two young girls enjoy the company of a small pony. Ross Nye and Hyde Park Stables are two nearby riding schools, so such scenes are commonplace in this street just minutes from the park.

Oxford Street W1 is a famous shopping street. Accessorize is part of the Monsoon Accessorize empire started in London in 1973 by Peter Simon, a market-stall trader. As suggested by its name this outlet specialises in accessories considered to blend well with the feminine styles that remain popular to this day.

Jessica and Ann are both wearing Monsoon garments in this photograph produced in France in September 1982. I’m not sure about Sam.

There are probably not many periods when there are no maintenance works going on along the street. Here the pavement is receiving attention. The shop on this corner is The Body Shop, like many others, no longer British.

According to Wikipedia: ‘The Body Shop International plc, trading as The Body Shop, is a British cosmetics, skin care and perfume company that was founded in 1976 by Dame Anita Roddick. It currently has a range of 1,000 products which it sells in 3,000 franchised stores internationally in 66 countries.^[2] The company is based in Littlehampton, West Sussex.

The company had been owned by the French cosmetics company L’Oréal between 2006 and 2017. In June 2017, L’Oréal agreed to sell the company to the Brazilian cosmetics company Natura for £880 million, subject to Brazilian and US regulatory approval.^[3]’

A less ambitious trader sells fruit at the corner with Woodstock Street.

Bill Kenwright’s revival of the musical pictured showing at the New London Theatre at the corner of Parker Street and Drury Lane ran for two and a half years from 2003-2005.

Wikipedia tells us that ‘The modern theatre’ completed in 1973, ‘is built on the site of previous taverns and music hall theatres, where a place of entertainment has been located since Elizabethan times. Nell Gwynn was associated with the tavern, which became known as the Great Mogul by the end of the 17th century, and presented entertainments in an adjoining hall, including “glee clubs” and “sing-songs”. The Mogul Saloon was built on the site in 1847, which was sometimes known as the “Turkish Saloon or the “Mogul Music Hall.” In 1851, it became the Middlesex Music Hall, known as The Old Mo. This in turn was rebuilt as the New Middlesex Theatre of Varieties, in 1911 by Frank Matcham for Oswald Stoll.^[1]

In 1919, the theatre was sold to George Grossmith, Jr. and Edward Laurillard, refurbished and reopened as the Winter Garden Theatre.’

Mary Poppins ran from December 2004 to January 2008 at The Prince Edward Theatre on the corner of Old Compton Street and Garrick Street W1.

In December 1967 and January 1968, Shelton Street, just outside Old Brewer’s Yard, was one of the locations for the Doctor Who series ‘Web of Fear’.

This window in Earlham Street, Seven Dials, has the look of a fairground hall of mirrors.

It was clearly break time in Wardour Mews W1;

people chose to eat in at the Café Roma in D’Arblay Street. Gypsy Stables, the tattoo parlour at 37 Berwick Street, with its entrance on D’Arblay Street, must have been in the vanguard of our contemporary passion for permanent pellicular pigmentation.

www.eyestorm.com is an on-line art dealer selling a wide range of works. Having moved from Pollen Street, its physical gallery is now in Clerkenwell Road, EC1.

Scattered throughout London remain a number of small green huts. They are cabmen’s shelters introduced in 1875 to offer drivers of horse drawn hackney carriages an alternative to pubs in an effort to ensure they would not be drunk in charge. Captain George Armstrong, editor of The Globe newspaper, enlisted the help of the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury and several other philanthropists in order to form the Cabmen’s Shelter Fund which provided these. Today’s black cab drivers can still avail themselves of them. This one, in Warwick Avenue, W9, is in Little Venice, near my former counselling room.

“Up West” is a phrase indicating a trip to the West End of London, which is where most of today’s streets are located.

Paniza 2000 is an extremely good Spanish wine that was one of the contents of Ian’s Christmas case. It was an excellent accompaniment to Jackie’s lamb jalfrezi and onion rice with Tesco’s pakoras, onion bahjis, and vegetable samosas. The Culinary Queen was content with her customary Hoegaarden.

Fundraising

Feeling a lot better today, I was able to get up early for a visit from a BT contracted engineer. I have to report an improvement in BT’s service. Despite the wait for an appointment for someone to check the Youview box, Spencer, the specialist, arrived on time, carrying a new box in case of necessity. In the event the problem was not in the box itself, but in one of the cables supplied with it. It was replaced and all is now working. The engineer used a tablet for the multitude of ‘paperwork’. This required three signatures from me, all to be made with my fingertip on the screens. All I could produce were disjointed, widely different, squiggles bearing scarcely any resemblance to anyone’s monicker, let alone mine. This is apparently quite normal.

Yesterday BT, the provider with the most complaints, bought EE, the one with the least. Maybe the new acquisition has worked a little magic.

Much as I have been drawn to venture out in the glorious sunny, yet cold, weather I have seen through the windows this week, I am still not up to it, so I undertook more scanning, this time moving forward a couple of decades to an event covered by Chris on 2nd July 1987. Having looked for one of Elizabeth’s ‘through the ages’ series, I discovered that number 69 was from Chris’s series:

As I have a portfolio of 37 prints my brother gave me after the event, I scanned a selection for this post. You may well ask where I am and what I am doing there. Well, I am in a side-street just off Oxford Street in Central London. So close were we to the main thoroughfare that the watchers in the window must have been in an outlet in Oxford Street.

During the morning notices fixed to the bath announced the event and the charity, Westminster Mencap, of which I was a Committee Member, for which donations were sought.

Two slang words for a prison sentence are in fact ‘stir’ and ‘porridge’, which fact you may or may not find interesting.

The system was two in a bath for, as far as I remember, each ten minute period. My companion was Jane Reynolds, the then Director of the Association. That wasn’t particularly arduous, now was it?

Tubs of rather colder water were provided for a clean up afterwards. There was no shirking that.

Finally, Fiona was on hand with a collecting box, hopefully relieving spectators of the money they had saved in the Selfridges sale on the other side of Oxford Street.

Fish, chips, and peas from the freezer was what we enjoyed for dinner this evening. We then watched the opening match of this year’s Six Nations rugby tournament. This was England v. Wales at Cardiff. England won 21 – 16.

A Double Six

Our High Streets are dying. Those in the smaller towns seem to have more Charity Shops than any other single outlet. Even Bournemouth’s Castlepoint yesterday failed to produce a particular present about which I must, at the moment, be discreet, for fear of the intended recipient sussing.

Before Jackie drove me to Southampton Parkway for my London trip we therefore did some research on the Internet. Carrying this information and my memory, I sought suitable shops once I arrived at Waterloo. This involved walking the length of Lower Marsh; back to South Bank; across the Golden Jubilee Bridge to Charing Cross; along The Strand; and finally up St Martin’s Lane. All to no avail. Both the Lower Marsh and South Bank establishments were now Japanese restaurants, and the other two had become coffee shops. In the words of the song ‘Fings ain’t what they used to be’. The Internet information had been posted in March, and I had seen the South Bank and Strand stores thriving within the last eighteen months. Were I to reveal what I was looking for I imagine my readers would speculate that on-line shopping has done for these businesses. I may let you know my quarry after 25th December.

On South Bank there was an extensive and thriving Christmas fair.

On 19th July I had seen Charlie Chaplin striding along to his performance venue. Today, at his pitch, he was receiving significant gleefully embarrassed attention.

On the way to Charing Cross underground station to take the Bakerloo line to Baker Street where I changed to the Jubilee line for Neasden, I passed a crowded Trafalgar Square, in which the French seem to have acquired a stake. Their emblem was in temporary residence on the otherwise empty plinth.

Norman’s lunch consisted of tender, meaty, roast duck; red cabbage; carrots; and a tasty vegetable and potato bake with which we shared an excellent Italian red wine. A latticed plum flan was to follow.

Afterwards I took the Jubilee line to Bond Street where I alighted for Oxford Street and the last throw of the dice in the game of ‘Find the Present’. I threw a double six, so I won’t have to give up and buy it on line.

I continued along Oxford Street, where it was snowing Christmas lights,to Oxford Circus to catch the Victoria line to Carol’s. Regent Street was equally spectacular.

Later, I took my usual route back home from Rochester Row. Jackie was, as always, on time to meet me at Southampton Parkway.