everywhere, hoping for another glimpse of the red-ringleted young woman who had ridden so furiously into the tavernâs courtyard. I pretended that I wanted to look at the books, but Friar Isidore hurried now. He took me hesitantly by the elbow to guide me towards that big gate. Did it, like some Inns of Court, still shut at dusk? A few oddly dressed women stopped their gossiping to glance with greater interest at the two of us. He opened the gate just wide enough for me to squeeze through, cautiously glanced out and waved a worried goodbye. âGodspeed, Master Michael!â
With its exotic scents and queerly dressed people, this area was more like Soho than the City. I hurried up towards Grays Inn Road. My footsteps gave off that strange muffled echo which defied location. Fog made the world timeless and spaceless. Of course I knew the route well enough, up to Holborn and from there to Brookgate Market, but I was coughing heartily by Chancery Lane. The more I saw of Alsacia, the less my lungs would be able to tolerate the familiar atmosphere of my boyhood, even though I had walked through worse pea-soupers. When the Clean Air Act came into force and it became illegal to burn the coal or coke which gave our fog its distinctive smell, the cities of England lost much of their lethal magic. We would never again see the coalman on his regular rounds, his sacks being counted in, hundredweight by hundredweight, to a million domestic coal holes. His work became a rural or posh-peopleâs trade, along with chimney sweeps and the old reliable street services, like knife grinders and crumpet men you once saw every winter. They were the common cultural-map references we thought would always endure. They vanished before you could turn around, like story papers and gobstoppers. And toy soldiers. While my mum worked I was even looked after by the horse-gypsies who had stabled their livestock in Brooks Mews. They had taught me to ride their ponies through the nearby streets and, like my aunty, tell fortunes with tarot or ordinary playing cards. A few years later, they were gone, absorbed into the rest of the community, lost in the fog of the past.
In 1950 I was in Gamages buying boxes of Messrs Britains lead soldiers in all their glorious uniforms of empire and by 1970 I was fingering plastic GIs and wondering what had happened to all that gold braid, scarlet and navy blue enameled onto tiny hollow-cast military men. Sometime between 1957 and 1963 the world changed completely. I donât think anyone noticed. After the war our world had been generally dull, poor and safe, much like the Depression 1930s. Even when they became Teddy Boys, the racetrack gangsters hung out in two or three pubs we all knew and avoided. By 1965, when money brightened it up, everything became fantastic and more dangerous. The TV seemed to reflect this. Unemployment was part of the cause. We lost the sweets factory, the Old Holborn factory, Cadburyâs chocolate biscuit factory, and the B&H dairies all in a couple of years. No wonder the air smelled so sweet. Then warehouses became worth more than the stuff they stored. Houses and factories became âreal estateâ. We got more crime, but there was also full-colour advertising, headlines on the front page, umpteen supplements, soft porn on page three, extra TV channels, home-grown horror comics, the Vietnam War and Technicolor Hammer films.
Making my way through that particular fog, enjoying it as I always did, I could pretend I was in a movie, especially one of the Hollywood Sherlock Holmes stories. Many of my early memories were actually of movies. Anyone was allowed into the cinemas before they made âuniversalâ and âadultâ certificates. Long before they needed an X certificate. The movies were nearly always in black and white and full of fog. It took me years to realise there were other kinds of films. My mother liked musicals, too, but I associate my childhood visits
With its exotic scents and queerly dressed people, this area was more like Soho than the City. I hurried up towards Grays Inn Road. My footsteps gave off that strange muffled echo which defied location. Fog made the world timeless and spaceless. Of course I knew the route well enough, up to Holborn and from there to Brookgate Market, but I was coughing heartily by Chancery Lane. The more I saw of Alsacia, the less my lungs would be able to tolerate the familiar atmosphere of my boyhood, even though I had walked through worse pea-soupers. When the Clean Air Act came into force and it became illegal to burn the coal or coke which gave our fog its distinctive smell, the cities of England lost much of their lethal magic. We would never again see the coalman on his regular rounds, his sacks being counted in, hundredweight by hundredweight, to a million domestic coal holes. His work became a rural or posh-peopleâs trade, along with chimney sweeps and the old reliable street services, like knife grinders and crumpet men you once saw every winter. They were the common cultural-map references we thought would always endure. They vanished before you could turn around, like story papers and gobstoppers. And toy soldiers. While my mum worked I was even looked after by the horse-gypsies who had stabled their livestock in Brooks Mews. They had taught me to ride their ponies through the nearby streets and, like my aunty, tell fortunes with tarot or ordinary playing cards. A few years later, they were gone, absorbed into the rest of the community, lost in the fog of the past.
In 1950 I was in Gamages buying boxes of Messrs Britains lead soldiers in all their glorious uniforms of empire and by 1970 I was fingering plastic GIs and wondering what had happened to all that gold braid, scarlet and navy blue enameled onto tiny hollow-cast military men. Sometime between 1957 and 1963 the world changed completely. I donât think anyone noticed. After the war our world had been generally dull, poor and safe, much like the Depression 1930s. Even when they became Teddy Boys, the racetrack gangsters hung out in two or three pubs we all knew and avoided. By 1965, when money brightened it up, everything became fantastic and more dangerous. The TV seemed to reflect this. Unemployment was part of the cause. We lost the sweets factory, the Old Holborn factory, Cadburyâs chocolate biscuit factory, and the B&H dairies all in a couple of years. No wonder the air smelled so sweet. Then warehouses became worth more than the stuff they stored. Houses and factories became âreal estateâ. We got more crime, but there was also full-colour advertising, headlines on the front page, umpteen supplements, soft porn on page three, extra TV channels, home-grown horror comics, the Vietnam War and Technicolor Hammer films.
Making my way through that particular fog, enjoying it as I always did, I could pretend I was in a movie, especially one of the Hollywood Sherlock Holmes stories. Many of my early memories were actually of movies. Anyone was allowed into the cinemas before they made âuniversalâ and âadultâ certificates. Long before they needed an X certificate. The movies were nearly always in black and white and full of fog. It took me years to realise there were other kinds of films. My mother liked musicals, too, but I associate my childhood visits
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