Just over on the unfashionable end of Queen’s Road, the other side of the traffic lights, is this nicely preserved off licence. I can just about remember this being a shop about 25 years ago, but it has been a house since then. Hat’s off to the owner who has kept us wondering: ‘Whatever happened to Kimberley Ales’, all these years. Well! I’ve just looked and the brewery was in Kimberley, Notts and was bought out by Green King, who, as recently as 2006, closed it down as it was not cost effective. So there you are. Thanks to Martin Cordon, of Kimberly for the picture of the brewery.
16 comments:
Oh dear. This was the offy I went on about as being the forerunner of Mr. Patel's. Nice to see the name Kimberley again though, with or without my chopsticks.
Oh. Wasn't Kimberley Ales a girl at Dolly Coddler's on Narborough Road?
Greene King need firebombing.
Oh Ron how true. I'll hold the matchbox and the petrol can.
Ron lives in an offy
It's probably not right to keep moaning about duff replacement fenestration - so I won't. BUT - what a fantastic building, real purpose built stuff this. Corner site, generous shop front, sepertae residential access, back yard with double doors - ooh, do you think it's still laid to setts with a four way fall to cast iron gulley trap ? .. and the two story garage/store with road access at two levels, I've a feeling there may lurk a few wooden 6 quart beer crates up there, and below, a Ford Pop' for Sundat outings down the A6 to Wickstead Park.
I love that "...four way fall to cast iron gulley trap...". You see, we're actually THERE with Diplo, as he points with his rubber-tipped stick and lights up another Capstan.
Actually studying this scene has got me thinking I'd really rather like the "above the shop" life. To make it work it'd have to be cycle repairs. Deliveries of Romac, Dunlop, Dawes, Raleigh and Timken being carefully checked into the stores, the clipboard pencil secured with string. The back door of the shop ajar so as to be sure of hearing the kettle atop the gas. I instinctively feel there ought to be a young apprentice beavering away in the workshop, his eyes glued to dial guage on the wheel trueing jig .. " right there Mr Diplo, tell Mr Ashley I'll drop it round on my way home tonight.. oh and can you let Mr Fibonaci know his new tyre's fitted - nasty one that.."
Diplo: perfect picture.
We must ask Spandex Pete for reflections on that fabulous bicycle repair shop in Ashby-de-la-Zouch (whose name I shall remember seconds after I post this Comment). That was/is a corner shop. If it has turned into a des res then that's a shame but so be it. In another twenty years it'll be an Aromatherapy Acu-Gearbox Center (sic) and we can have a good moan about that.
Change is the only constant. We must embrace it. (Cue outrage).
ps Ron Combo should embrace change, even if it's only his pants.
oh lord - stick ferules - tricky area and very easy to get it wrong. With a blackthorn thumb stick the durable fibre negates the use of a ferule, with ash or a hastily plucked hazel fellow i do tend to prefer a used 12g shell. The rubber ferrule I feel to be more the preserve of the NHS issue cheap-as-chips walking cane which simply isn't my style - at the moment.
Fuck me, what are you lot on? Can I have some?
I once purchased a typical corner bicycle shop. In it, I found the cycle equivalent of crumbled expanded polystyrene, or perhaps hole punchings: it's spokes. Spokes in corner cupboards, under the carpets, behind skirting boards....dispropotionately more spokes are produced than wheels in which to lace them.
Eric Ellam, Fred. He rode a Gents bike with 28 inch wheels into work each day. "Once you get this rolling, nothing will stop it". he once told me, as I negotiated for a replacement inner tube for my Moulton.
Ah yes, Ellam's cycle shop. Page 175 of Unmitigated England.
I looked on your blog for the Ellam's bike shop photo: it doesn't have page numbers (!), only the month and year: do you have the date?
Post a Comment