Dear Dear Old Kingsbury

A Memory of Kingsbury.

Oh so many memories! Where does one start? Looking at this photo I remember the milk dispensing machine outside the Express Dairy shop. I think it was 6d you'd put in, and after a lot of rumbling, out would come a small 'bottle' of ice cold milk (glass too!). Of course we all remember Saturday morning pictures at the Gaumont, where us boys would try to sit next to our favourite female; after being let in through the back door!
I remember well the Welsh Harp rubbish dump, where most of us (having no money) would go to get bits to build a bike. If you were lucky you'd build one with 'cowhorn' handlebars and race it around the cinder track in West Hendon Park, near the old (now gone) swimming pool. The Welsh Harp, yes, how many of us nearly drowned on the rafts that we'd make to 'sail the seven seas?' The Welsh Harp seemed like the seven seas to us little folk then. What a wonderful place it was back in those days, playing in amongst the trees and grass with no worry of sexual predators. Don't think the same attitude can be adopted nowadays.
I lived in the prefabs in Townsend Lane. They were wonderful places....warm and cosy, with gardens big enough for my parents to grow the family veg and fruit. Up the road was (still is) the Holy Innocence Church. Always remember...on a dark winter's night..and the snow falling....I would go and sit opposite it (by the 183 and 83 bus stop) and just feel so comforted by the snow falling against the warm, welcoming glow of the light shining through the church windows. Truly a magnificent church perched at the top of Townsend Lane with such views. What simple, wonderful moments.....I fear never to be repeated. Does anybody remember playing around in the old derelict vicarage (St Barnardo's Home) behind the church? How we were not killed by an accident I'll never know.
Scrumping in the hospital grounds the other side of the Silver Jubilee Park fence???!!!
Tylers Croft School! I remember it with fondness despite having to leave early?! In the gymnastics team. Teachers: Mr Flint (headmaster), Mr Taylor, Mr Horne, Mr Coutts, Mr Roberts, Miss Frazer (what a lovely woman she was, so badly treated by so many, what strength she must have had....if only we'd had the wisedom we have now)......so many more names in my head.
Kingsbury swimming pool. My cousin married the caretaker's daughter! I wasn't too fond of swimming but we enjoyed attending the baths.....lots of girls! I remember my old mates that were 'lifeguards', Mick Richardson and Stan Hardy, characters the pair of them............great lads.
That's how I remember Kingsbury, with fondness for its buildings, its open spaces, its community spirit and........................most of all its people, because thats what made it so good! I'll always love it. What memories I'm unable to expose here!Geoff Shwalbe