Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)

Let’s do this together

COMMUNITY CORNER

- Yours, Siobhan

While I was visiting my mum last weekend, I drove back through the North London streets where I used to live to see how much had changed since the 1980s.

It’s like a time capsule of all that has happened in the last 40 years.

The old Victorian pubs, which had smokestain­ed public bars and lounges, are now “hip eateries” named Hoxton and Shoreditch, even though those areas – the spiritual homes of Millennial­s – are five miles away in East London.

I drove round a few times, seeing what had happened to my old haunts. The Greek-cypriot family-owned greengroce­rs where I had a Saturday job is now a luxury candle retailer.

The newsagent on the corner, which was run by a Ugandan Asian family who’d been deported by Idi Amin, is now an art gallery which sells the sort of pop art that killed off Athena – just with three more zeros added to the price.

I remember the furore when the family started opening all day on a Sunday, but my dad was delighted, and would send me over to get his bundle of newspapers and a bottle of Corona

Cream Soda and Fry’s 5 Centre chocolate for me and my brother.

One of the biggest headlines I remember reading on the shop’s newsstand was the world’s first testtube baby being born on July 25, 1978, which also handily carbon dates me as nine years old.

Even the old chippy, where I once found a dead spider wrapped up with the cod and chips and the proprietor wondered why I was complainin­g, is now a posh organic delicatess­en which sells humous for £6 a tub.

At this rate chickpeas will become the new gold standard, and people in future will give chickpea necklaces as expensive gifts.

If I lived in that area now, I could get my laptop fixed and a new set of lashes, but there’s no laundrette where we used to hang out among the boxes of Ariel powder and imagine jeans model Nick Kamen nipping in and taking his kecks off to put on a 40-degree wash.

Just up the road is the Abbey Road Studios, which believe it or not, is still a Mecca for Beatles fans. There are groups of young tourists from all over the world, hanging around just like in The Beatles heyday, by the famous zebra crossing.

The crossing was given Grade II listed status in 2010, however it’s not the original one from the cover of 1969’s Abbey Road album. For some reason, known only to Westminste­r City Council, it was moved and repainted several feet further down the road.

Except nobody told the fans, and I narrowly missed running several of them over as they were posing – and the Fab Four very nearly became the Flat Four.

The trip down memory lane made me nostalgic for the old times. I know we can never go back, and frankly, I’d hate to have teenage spots and an obsession with the size of my thighs again, but I enjoyed the memories.

What’s changed in your neighbourh­ood? Tell me at siobhan.mcnally@mirror.co.uk or Community Corner, PO Box 791, Winchester SO23 3RP.

Please note, if you send us photos of your grandchild­ren, we’ll also need permission of one of their parents to print them... Thanks!

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