The new name for the Hawkesbury village shop since it passed into community ownership
This post about my new role as a volunteer in our community-owned village shop first appeared in the Hawkesbury Parish News (August 2016)
A few days ago, I entered the village shop with some trepidation for my first ever shift in our new community-owned shop.
I am not sure how I got to be this old without ever having worked in a shop before. The closest I’ve come was is during a very brief career as a waitress in a York tea-shop when I was a student. Continue reading “Counter Spy in the New-Style Village Shop”→
Why the bananas? I can hear my non-British friends wondering. I explain at the end of the post.
How the emptiness of one of London’s busiest roads, The Strand, near Charing Cross Station, caught me by surprise on Saturday morning
When I was a little girl, I lived in a leafy south-east suburb of London. Sidcup, to be precise, which is on a train commuter route half an hour from Charing Cross, technically the centre of London. Stepping out from the Charing Cross Station forecourt onto the Strand meant hurling yourself into a heaving metropolis, streaming with traffic of both pedestrian and vehicular.
Never Stationary
Later, I worked in central London in a couple, in one job round the corner from Victoria Station, in another a brisk stroll from London Bridge. (What is it about my career and train stations? Suddenly my life is starting to sound like a game of Monopoly.) Every day on my way to work, I’d automatically brace myself to wade purposefully through the crowds. It’s just what everyone does in rush hour, and no-one thinks anything of it.
Village Contrast
Since I moved to a small Gloucestershire village on the edge of the Cotswolds 25 years ago, a walk down the street has become rather a different experience. Here, you may not see many people – sometimes none at all – but each that you do see will say a friendly hello, and you’ll probably know most of them by name. Whenever I return to London now, I’m startled by the crowds, until my brain reboots into its former Londoner setting.
No bananas here – the very empty Strand, London, at 8.30am on a Saturday morning
So it came a huge surprise to me to discover last month that early on a Saturday morning, the Strand is deserted. Twice in January I had to be there at 8.30am on Saturdays, and I don’t think I’ve ever been there at that time of day at the weekend before. There was scarcely a vehicle to be seen, and the only people about were homeless people sheltering in shop doorways. What I first took to be a large gathering of them outside a theatre, I later realised to be a queue for cut-price tickets released early in the day. (I thought it was odd that one of them had a Cath Kidston handbag.)
Do I Know You?
Another surprise came when someone called out a cheery hello to me. It turned out not to be someone I knew, as it would have been back in Hawkesbury, but a young, very grubby chap of about 30, huddled under a blanket outside McDonalds. I stood him a cup of hot chocolate by way of a thank you.
Feeding the birds – to the bird – in Trafalgar Square, in front of Nelson’s Column, with Big Ben in the background.
The only other person I spoke to was a little beyond the Strand, on Trafalgar Square, where I strolled to kill time, waiting for the friend I was due to be meeting at 9am. My attention was drawn to the jingle of bells as a hawk flew down from the National Gallery to return to this chap’s wrist. They turned out to be there on official business, paid to patrol the Square for three hours a day as pest control. Gone are the days when tourists were encouraged to buy bags of birdseed from street vendors to feed the pigeons. Mary Poppins’ persuasive song calling us to “Feed the birds” suddenly took on a whole new meaning.
Why the Banana?
Speaking of meanings, I owe my non-British readers an explanation of the banana. In 1909, a Cockney Music Hall became a smash hit, called “Let’s All Go Down the Strand”, in which that line was followed by the refrain “Have a Banana”. I’ve always wondered what the significance of the banana was, other than the obvious connection of what was then a fruit market in nearby Covent Garden. Coming from Charing Cross, in search of a banana, going down the Strand would be a reasonable route.
I hesitated to research the meaning of the banana, knowing that most music hall songs are filled with bawdy double entendres. It turns out that “have a banana” wasn’t part of the original lyrics, but may just have been added by enthusiastic, tipsy crowds as it fitted the musical phrase that followed the first line of the verse. The rest of the lyrics are largely forgotten by most people these days. I’m not sure I ever knew them, but you can find the original lyrics here, if you’re interested. But there’s not a a banana in sight, nor are bananas relevant to the theme of the song. (Sorry if that news makes me sound about as much of a killjoy as a High Court judge.)
The Banana in the Room
Turning the banana of Edwardian Music Hall into sublime 21st century comedy
But the banana in the Strand is like an elephant in the room. (No, I’m not talking about the Elephant and Castle, another district of London – I’ll save that for another day). It simply won’t go away. if you play “word association” with most British people of a certain age, and say “Let’s All Go Down the Strand”, “Have a banana” will be the first thing that comes into their heads. There have even been cover versions of the song recorded this century by – wait for it – Blur. (Listen to their version here, if you must.)
For a much more authentic and hearty demonstration of how the banana line should be sung, check out this extract of BBC Radio 4’s smart sitcom Cabin Pressure, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Stephanie Cole, Roger Allam and John Finnemore, its genius writer. As the suave scoundrel Douglas (Roger Allam) might put it, the banana is in play.
IF YOU ENJOYED THIS POST, YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE THESE OTHER POSTS ABOUT LONDON:
In my latest column for the Hawkesbury Parish News, I’m taken aback by the sudden appearance of the trappings of urban traffic in our quiet Cotswold village.
Stopping the traffic outside my house for the last couple of weeks
“Sorry I’m late, I was held up by the traffic lights outside The Fox.”
How long ago does something have to take place before you consider it to be history?
Getting our fix on a Sunday night
Last night, my eleven-year-old daughter and I were watching Oliver and Company, an old Disney film on our newly-acquired Netflix. Based loosely (very loosely) on Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, it was one that neither of us had seen before, most likely because it was made at a time when I was way too old to be following the studio’s output, and before Laura was even born. Continue reading “History is Relative”→
This post was written for this month’s edition of the Hawkesbury Parish News, in anticipation of the Village Show at the end of this month. Looking back at the photos of our float last year, I am wishing hard that we’ll have such blue skies for this year’s show!
Our float for last year’s Show (I was the Chinese Ambassador, Gordon was the Scottish zookeeper)
I hadn’t lived in Hawkesbury Upton very long before I realised the importance of the annual Horticultural Show in the village calendar. Since I moved here in 1991, I haven’t missed a single Show, and I always arrange my summer holidays to make sure I’m back in time to prepare for it.
I’ve put plenty of entries into the Show over the years and won a handful of prizes in categories as diverse as crochet, hen’s eggs, jam, wine and – my favourite prize of all – the oddly-shaped vegetable (sadly no longer in the schedule).
I’ve been on many floats, from Youth Club’s Global Warming in the 1990s (Arctic scene at one end, tropical island at the other) and St Trinian’s, to more recently The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe with After-School Club, and Edinburgh Zoo’s Giant Pandas with my daughter and her friends last year.
It’s always exciting to win a prize, even third in a category in which there are only two other entries, but you don’t need to win prizes to enjoy the Village Show. The most satisfaction comes simply from feeling like you’re part of a huge, traditional act of community.
It’s also rewarding to serve on the Committee, which I did for 13 years. I’ll never forget seeing at one meeting an elderly judge demonstrate his set of brass shallot-measuring rings, as used by his father before him. The Hawkesbury Show is living history.
But the most unexpected buzz relating to the show struck me only recently, when, at my daughter’s 11th birthday party, I was chatting to her friends’ mums in our garden. One of them, relatively new to the village, was taking photos of the children’s antics.
“You ought to enter that into the Village Show,” I remarked, admiring a particularly good one.
“Spoken like a true Hawkesbury villager!” said another mum, whose family has been in Hawkesbury for generations.
23 years after moving here, I’ve finally arrived.
Happy Show Day, everyone!
The 2014 Show will take place on Saturday 30th August. For more information, visit its website: www.hawkesburyshow.org.
