A stroll round to Queen’s Rd to buy some parsley for the Moules Marinere I’m cooking later, took me past two corner shops and prompted me to record the others in the immediate vicinity. Within an area that can be no bigger than an acre there used to be myriad shops selling pop, crisps and sweets, limp vegetables and alcohol, some cashing in on the video rental boom in the mid eighties. Most have changed use to domestic houses now, but here’s a selection that I can just about identify. I’ll release them over the next month, individually, to keep up your excitement!
SW1 Hairdressers has not been in the current ownership for long, and has the look of a business in decline. There is a heavy mesh at the window to keep out intruders, but it has the effect of frightening off, would be customers, as you can’t see into the darkness they cause. The shop used to be an unlicensed ‘one armed bandit’ emporium back in the early ‘80’s, then an Antique Shop, before becoming a Hairdressers about 15 years ago. Up until recently it was run by a very camp man and he catered for the blue rinse brigade and was always busy. You could hear him gossiping from my house 200 yards away. “Ooooooooooooooooooooo, really!”
2 comments:
I was going to say that whatever else happens, the upstairs of shops tend to stay the same. But it looks as if this too has been blitzed here. Oh for a shop that doesn't change every week. Soon the only permanent retail residents will be the wretched Carphone Warehouse.
When I was domiciled in the locale of Queens Road, in the late 1990s, I recall a particular corner shop from where I purchased a jar of peanut butter....the expiry date of which was the early 1990s!
This continude a personal habit of buying things long past their use-by date that included houses, cars and a couple of wives.
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