THE GREATEST STREET IN THE WORLD

I lived in the greatest street in the world and for the longest time I didn't even realise, in fact, I believe we (being my friends and family) all took that mini golden age for granted.

It's only now in the year 2023 at the prolonged 'end of history' (will it never end?) carried over from the last century that I'm starting to truly appreciate what a joyful and abundant location it was, as close to an earthly capitalist paradise as one could hope to inhabit. A rural free market Camelot, in fact.

And the cherry on top was that my family and I lived in a house called Trafalgar, named after that legendary battle when Lord Nelson fought off the Spanish and French which lent a certain grandiosity to the somewhat Dickensian 'Old Curiosity' place where we resided.

Often I would sit on the stone garden wall and watch the comings and goings of what to my young mind was the 'Times Square' of a backwater town in the Cotswolds.

So, just to re-cap what we had on that legendary street where I lived back then:

Two Fish and Chip shops ("Joe's Chippy" & "Fish Bar")
A specialist Coffee House ("Tradewinds")
A Toy Shop
A Sports Shop ("Elderkins") including fishing tackles and accessories etc
A Nightclub ("Marshall Rooms") where supposedly U2 once played to a chorus of boos but more importantly where my eldest brother's band 'Custom Software' frequently played which I've written about previously in 'Don't Let The Bastards Grind You Down' (09/04/2022).
A Chinese takeaway ("Hong Kong House") Inspiration for my HK/Brit screenplay "Rickshaw".
A games arcade ("Silver Rooms")
An antique store ("Shabby Tiger")
A secondhand clothes shop ("Nearly New")
A Record Shop ("Trading Post")
Two Pubs ("The Golden Fleece" and "The Duke Of York")
A Motorbike maintenance hangout ("Bar Ash")
A Launderette ('Soap And Suds") which still remains to this day.
A Saddlery
A Solicitors
A Dentist ("Barnes & O'Hara")
A Youth Centre - "Roxborough House"
An Off-Licence (legend had it that it only sold white wine. No reds allowed.)
Backhouse Newsagent - although it was just on the corner between Nelson and Middle Street so technically could be fought over who it belonged to.
A knocking shop but we'll skip over that for now. ^^

The businesses I've highlighted on the list in bold black I would just like to quickly expound on so that their legacy is preserved in some small way.

1. 'Backhouse' Newsagent

As it's the more geographically contentious one on my list I thought I'd start with what I believe to be the last corral of Nelson Street's very short 'golden mile' which is actually less than one furlong in length, or 162 yards to be precise.

The subject of 'Backhouse' came up recently when I got into a discussion with a very strange young chap on a train who looked like he was running the Gloucester wing of The Baader Meinhof Group. He was talking a mile a minute (probably speed) and spinning my head out. Somewhere in the midst of his tirade about modern food I stopped him and asked him what his Proustian memory of childhood relating to food would be.

This led us down a rabbit hole of reminiscence where we both remembered getting a bag of 'penny mixes' from Backhouse. Depending on how much pocket change you had you could get a 5p, 10p, 20p mix or if you were really pushing the boat out a 50p bag which would be curated by the owner, George, or one of the Coronation Street-looking women who worked for him as if they were elite sommeliers except with flying saucers, fizzy cola bottles and banana candy instead of fine wine.

"It was like you were a millionaire with one of those 50p bags," the chap insisted, explaining to me how he'd worked in some of the top fine dining establishments in London but had never found anything quite as sensationally exciting as the 'penny mixes' from Backhouse, though judging from the look of him I might have easily assumed he'd swap his fizzy sweets fix for something a bit stronger on Barton Street. Mind you, those 'penny mixes' were addictive enough back in the day.

My first memory of buying anything from Backhouse on my own was a bag of Walkers' 'Cheese and Onion' crisps. I had been assured by an elder that I had exactly the right money at my point of departure (we were literally next door to the place), only to find when I reached the shop counter that I was a couple of pence short. It was at this point I burst into tears and thus began my conflicted relationship with commerce and consumerism.

I try not to think back to that early trauma but rather prefer to remember instead the gallery of sweets that became far more important than any bag of crisps ever could, as well as my weekly subscription to 'The Beano' which always promptly arrived on time at Backhouse.

2. 'Joe's Chippy' and 'Fish Bar'

Two chip shops and my preference was always for 'Fish Bar' where I felt the potatoes were just a little more cooked and Dave behind the counter was considerably more liberal with his salt and vinegar.

Both offered small cones of chips which I remember vividly as they collected the residual vinegar at the bottom like a sour equivalent of those chocolatey bits of a cornetto you always save until last.

If 'Joe's Chippy' with its 'Jaws' three-dimensional shark signage bursting out of the wall above the shop was the more obvious landmark attraction of the two, I like to think 'Fish Bar' was more for the fish and chip connoisseurs where the batter was a little crisper, the chips a little more flavoursome and the light of the grill heated shelf display a little more cinematic.

Plus there was Dave's good-hearted banter which went a long way to fill in those interminable moments waiting for your fish and chips to be wrapped up all ready to be taken home, which, luckily for us, was just a minute away up the road.

3. The Toyshop

I can still remember walking into the dimly lit toy shop and heading straight toward where the retail display spinners were packed head to foot with unopened packets of Star Wars figures, the 'Holy Grails' of our childhood back then in the 80s. Along with a 50p bag of penny sweets, having a brand new Star Wars figure was enough to send you into a mild form of pre-adolescent megalomania. Or was that just me?

Plastic swords in plastic sheaths were also a favourite of mine, especially the gold one I liked to batter my duelling opponents with.

4. 'Tradewinds'

If Sydney Greenstreet had smashed together one of his Moroccan-style qahwas with a Vienna early 1900s coffee house then you might have had 'Tradewinds' which was the intellectual hub of the street, or at least liked to think so. Roy Blacklaws, who ran the place, was like a cross between Tony Hancock and Zero Mostel, a brilliant raconteur and impressionist who also did a fine line in exotic coffees which he would grind and package up in that authentic, old-fashioned shopkeeper's way that made you feel you'd well got your money's worth. I think the first time I ever saw a cafetière was in Roy's place and I can even remember sitting there pretending to like black coffee and thinking I'm not sure I can pull off this facade of coolness for much longer. Still, the Marling boys and Jitter lads from Archway all assembled there to joust with their java and did a fine line in pretentious posturing.

Perhaps it was a reflection of my arrested immaturity that I was still hooked on those 'penny mixes' from Backhouse while my more sophisticated peers were drinking 'Black Joe' and talking caffeine-infused philosophy with Roy as comic referee.

5. 'The Golden Fleece'

The 'Fleece' was an old man's pub when I first encountered it via a sliding serving hatch where Cliff, the landlord, would look sullen-faced at me whilst I could hear the sound of drunken men in the background demanding more beer and laughing uproariously at jokes I could not for the life of me understand. My brother and I would often get our late-night snacks of crisps, chocolate or cans of fizzy pop from Cliff who seemed to genuinely hate children (in a Roald Dahl villain type of way) although he was smart enough to run a side racket selling us late night confectionary. One time he actually complained about us cooking onions next door as it was making his beer taste funny down in the cellar.

Later on, 'The Fleece' became more gentrified and the old men were quickly replaced by younger people who seemed to have the last laugh on Cliff and his cantankerous rule though Rodda (the next-gen landlord of the pub) may have had more in common with Cliff now I come to reflect on the comparison.

I suppose a bit like different incarnations of Doctor Whos, landlords may change but the pub essentially remains the same.

6. 'Hong Kong House'

It seems ironic now that it was curry sauce and chips that were my gateway drug at Hong Kong House to the more 'Chinese' aspects of their menu but perhaps it was a testament to the incredibly flavoursome sauces the owners were able to conjure that they were able to do 'Indian' almost as well as they did 'Chinese' although the pedantic in me might call them out for their cultural food appropriation just for the bants.

Perhaps one of the greatest smells even to this day is that of Hong Kong House barbecue sauce where they must have used up a good amount of the global supply of star anise in the making of it as it would nearly overwhelm the atmospheric equilibrium of the entire street (but in a good way).

The takeaway, like their house on the same street where the owner also lived, was another Hong Kong Spaceship where the tacky paintings of HK harbour together with the yelling in Cantonese in the kitchen could have almost been an extended outtake from Wong Kar Wai's 'Chungking Express'.

A creature of habit, I found it hard to move past their special fried rice with barbeque sauce and accompanying spring roll though chicken balls in that gloopy orangey-red sweet and sour sauce was also irresistible.

It may not have been the most refined Chinese food like that I would later encounter but it was the first.

7. 'Trading Post'

It would be remiss of me not to mention that music emporium from where (along with 'Boots' in Russell Street) I mostly acquired my first cassettes, records and CDs. In the pre-internet days, this was both a listening post as well as a trading post as we would sample the latest records and decide whether or not to take them home with us.

More often than not, partly due to my fussy taste, I would have to order what I was looking for and a slip of paper would be handed to me as if it was a doctor's prescription and I would then wait patiently for my musical medicine to arrive.

The first music I bought on the premises that I can distinctly remember was Fairground Attraction's 'The First Of A Million Kisses' which even to this day seems to capture the atmosphere of Nelson Street at that time, a magical place where everything was available (within reason) and nothing was impossible.

Perhaps in my provincial arrogance, it set me up with the great delusion of believing I could conquer Hollywood from Stroud because back then it appeared the entire world was on my doorstep.