Will It Be Open?

A Memory of London.

My family moved from Bermondsey, where we shared my grandad's house, to Enfield, where Mum and Dad had managed to buy their own house (for £2,000) in 1960. It was some years before Dad could afford driving lessons and then a car. We started with an A35 van, and Mum, Dad and 4 kids would pile in to drive over to Bermondsey or Forest Hill to visit my mum's sisters.
The drive was just as complicated as it is now and my father was never really relaxed driving, so, with the end nearly in sight, he would be driven mad by us kids shouting that we hoped the bridge was up! If the traffic light was indeed on red, then that meant at least 20 minutes wait.
Us kids used to love it, as the parts of the bridge which did not go up would be completely empty and this was such a novelty - but not for Dad, who was presumably by this time, gasping for a cup of tea and the loo!
Once over the bridge, our noses would be assailed by the unmistakable odour of the Sarson's vinegar distillery, just down the road.
At this time, all the famous buildings; the Tower of London, Tower Bridge, the Royal Mint, Whitehall - were all absolutely black with 100 years of accumulated soot. It just never occurred to us that the buildings had ever been any other colour! I remember being absolutely amazed when cleaning of the Tower started, commencing with the White Tower, I just couldn't believe how different it looked.
Of course, it was the right time to begin cleaning, as by now, London had been declared a "smokeless zone", with coal, and therefore soot, having disappeared from London homes, to be replaced with smokeless coke, although most people seemed to believe that it was nowhere near as good as the 'original'.