• Well, it's been a time! But a recent exchange on the FB page called Winchmore Hill and Palmers Green Memories has suggested me to write this post about toilets at 9DR...Not that I hadn't mentioned the subject before... See here and here. There's even a discussion somewhere about the smell oh of the toilets recaptured at our home, perhaps because we have a toilet top made of wood which reminds one's nostrils of the old wooden top of the upstairs toilet at 9DR. Anyway, the FB group was mentioning the toilets in Broomfield Park, and many simply couldn't remember them. Some said the picture showing them wasn't taken in Broomfield, and others said yes, it was indeed in the Park, at the bottom of the playground area! Here's the picture that triggered the buzz (thanks Hils Davis) :

    Toilets

    It's perhaps the unusual angle at which the photo was taken which puzzled some members of the group. I remember these toilets vividly, and even their weird unused interior. So when Jo described them, along with the anecdote she adds to confirm their existence, it really made me laugh:

    I can confirm they were there. We were told never to use them because they were not very clean. One day my sister was desperate so we crept in only to find a rough looking man exposing himself. We just ran!! But we didn’t know much about such things and never told anyone!

    (then I asked her what about that desperate need? And she answered that they rushed home, and that she doesn't remember anything else! ^^)

    At 9DR, the upstairs toilets was so high that I remember my feet dangling from it when sitting there, and the cold inhospitality of the place because it didn't have any heating. I think I still preferred it to the one downstairs though, because that one was close to the kitchen and more conspicable - you couldn't stay there and read, for example! People in the busy kitchen would know you weren't being as well-employed as they were. And also the flush wouldn't work so well in the downstairs toilet.  Those of you reading this probably also remember with a sort of dread the outside toilet at 7DR. I didn't use it often, because of the awful feeling of somewhere cold, damp and reserved to older people whose practises I didn't know. Strange how all of this is still vividly there.

    Do you have toilet memories of 9DR? (strange question I know...!)


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  • Here's a recent post by Jo on Facebook where she remembers the days when she would go to school on foot. I thought I'd post it here!

    Idly reminiscing, as one does when one is alone, I was looking back on the winters of my childhood. It was frequently very cold; we often had snow. But even in 1947 School was always open. We walked there wrapped up in warm winter coats and if it was snowy, we wore wellington boots with thick socks. We were allowed out in the playground at break time, and if our gloves were wet, as they often were with playing in the snow, they were dried out on the radiators before we went home for dinner at midday - walking again! When it was very cold, the free milk in third of a pint bottles froze and had to be thawed out in our tin mugs before we could drink it. But it was still delivered! Mind you, this was in London. Maybe rural areas were more affected and children were not able to get through snow. However, I can’t help thinking we were a hardier bunch of people then. We didn’t have cars to get stuck in the snow. We walked everywhere. In 1963, my neighbour and I took our babies to the clinic, 2 in one pram (large sprung variety) and pushed it down the middle of the road, which had been gritted and cleared. That year, council workers came with trucks, shovelled up the snow and dumped it in the local park so we could get out. I don’t remember having problems with food, except that there were still shortages after the war had ended, but we didn’t starve. Maybe we need to go back to some of the old self-sufficiency and resourcefulness we had then rather than craving the exotic food we have become used to? And walk to school!

    When Jo walked to school!


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  • Here are the few videos which have been made about the past of Palmers green. Please help me to add more!


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  • Money at 9DR

    Happy new year to all readers! Here's a post on Money!  In fact I have a few items on this topic and some memories to share, so here goes! At 9DR and perhaps even more at 7DR, money was not very plentiful. I recall mummy saying that scrimp and save was very much the practice, and that this affected their lives quite a lot. Not a lot of heating in winter, nothing really fancy to wear, hand-made presents were the rule until rather late. Of course during the war-years, and even after, rationing I suppose was still ordinary. But I think the habit stuck, because there would always be this attitude of growing vegetables in the garden and collecting odds and ends "in case they might come in useful". An emphasis was laid on not wasting, and Auntie Olive's skills at sewing and darning were extremely valued. Even if all this was the consequences of bad times, it must also have struck a religious chord, since, according to the gospel: "No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money." (Matthew 6,24)...

    We were lucky to see the old and the new currency (the decimalisation took place in 1971) so I have memories of the old coins which were in use first: farthings, pennies and half-pennies, threepence, sixpence, shillings, half-crowns. And that's it because I never saw sovereigns or guineas the higher denominations. When I was back from a trip to England in 1968, our teacher at the school in Bonnebosq asked us to illustrate it  and I chose to paint a "ha'penny":

    Money at 9DR

    And a friend (a guy called Laurent Delafosse) got to do the comment of my painting:

    Money at 9DR

    (it says: "Yves went on holiday to England. He brought back some English coins which are of a different hue than ours. They bear names unknown to us: a penny, a sixpence coin, a farthing.") Below you can judge how well I had copied it! The bowsprit is missing some of its length...

    Money at 9DR

    And here are the other mentioned coins:

    Money at 9DR

    Money at 9DR

    Some of the other coins: the half-crown:

    Money at 9DR

     And a pile of threepence coins, which (unless I'm wrong) Grandma would call "thropny bits".

    Money at 9DR

    Of course there were notes:

    Money at 9DR

    Money at 9DR

    Now some of you probably know that Auntie Grandma used to send us birthday cards and since we were too old and perhaps too far away for her to know what we might like, she would add a one pound note inside the card. This came to be termed "le poond", saying it in a silly French way. She did this until we were 18 I believe, and so since the value of money slowly went down, the poor pound didn't buy much in the end and we came to disregard the gesture: ungrateful brats!

    In 1971 then, decimal money was introduced, with 100 pennies to make a pound, and we saw these new customers arriving:Money at 9DR

    Money at 9DR

    and of course there were some new banknotes, which I will spare you. The old coins were still valid for a time, I think, and I remember you could continue to use these for a while (how much were they worth?):

    Money at 9DR

    But at the beginning the new money was worth a good deal, I remember being given 50p for some work I'd done in the house (and liking the geometrical shape of the coin), and going over to Murray & Brand's in Southgate to buy one of these toy plastic elephants which was sold for 40p (check here). I think the other 10p were spent on sweets (plural!)...

    Money at 9DR


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  • Hi, I have already posted some old postcards, I'm sure (haven't checked where but I'm pretty sure).

    But here are some new ones I've collected recently:

    some old postcards

    some old postcards

    some old postcards

    some old postcards

    my information says: "before the bandstand"...

    some old postcards

    some old postcards

    some old postcards

    This one shows Derwent Road corner, with the pillarbox...but the lampost is long gone!

    some old postcards

    I'd never seen this view of Derwent road... had you? Not sure what date though. 1915?? My indication is the tiny street trees. What's striking of course is the sheer emptiness of these old views.

    some old postcards

    There are some more of Southgate, which I'll post one of these days. But to finish, here are some New pics of the station, the date being about 1970:

    some old postcards

    some old postcards

    some old postcards

    This one is dated 1963.


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