please empty your brain below

Bodge job shop to residential conversions scar the residential streets of a certain era all over London.

It is very sad that there were not stricter plannjng controls over this. No, you can’t erect a bike shed in your garden but feel free to brick in this old shop window with breeze blocks.
The happy highways where I went/And cannot come again…
The shop I still recollect fondly from my youth is 'Pages of Barkingside', a model railway emporium long since replaced by a firm of accountants.
I remember sweet cigarettes that were not chocolate, some solid white sugary stuff throughout, and a red tip.
Also sweet tobacco, weird stuff.
Croxley Green, pub central! So many parts of London are a pub desert these days- see yesterdays post.
The lamp-posts look like a style used by manufacturers REVO of Tipton. Many examples can still be seen across the country, including a number at the permanent Street-Lighting Exhibition in Stratford-upon-Avon, re-homed from various towns and cities.
New Road could be up for a name change soon, as I believe that local business man Robert New, whom the road is named after, has been found to have been involved with a trade that is out of favour at the moment and it seems to be upsetting one or two of the residents.
I wonder what the average age of New Roads across the country is. I imagine it must be well into three figures.

Looks like you enjoyed your trip down memory lane DG!
John the hairdresser, formerly of 163 New Road, (now Grosvenor Estates) relocated to We Are Hair - - - For You on Baldwins Lane many years ago. Now in his late 80s he still works there part-time.
I enjoyed your trip down Memory Lane. I'm feeling rather nostalgic myself at the moment as I try to piece together a eulogy for my father.
In this part of the world the CoOps are the "national" sort with blue logos, rather than regionals with a more arms-length assocation to the national wholesaler.

I don’t much care for "xxx place's CoOp", the physical locality doesn't own it, as a customer mutual ultimately the customers own it (through a democratic trustee sort of structure), and that sort of message rings hollow to me generally.
From this it appears there are (or were) at least three jubilee oaks on the Green: Victoria, George V and Elizabeth II. I wonder how many other places have such a collection.
Four coronations and five jubilees, plus numerous other anniversaries. Edward VIII abdicated the day after his tree was planted! Full details here.
So I wonder if there are plans for a Charles coronation oak (or other tree)
I drive through Croxley most days, always at a speed of 30 mph or under. My current commute is up Scots hill from Ricky and through Croxley to the town hall roundabout, and on to my destination at the far end of Hempstead Road. This has to be the longest and most prolonged section of 30MPH road that I know of, it,'s pretty much cameras all the way and doesn't have any 'speed up for a short distance' sections.
I’m becoming concerned that our guru is stalking me.

A couple of months ago, he was pleasantly positive about my area. He overlooked a couple of negatives that perhaps should have been mentioned. There have been two murders nearby in the last 30 years. Both within a very short walking distance of the sylvan scenes he was photographing. And all the restaurants he walked past are crap.

Today, he addresses the pubs of Croxley where I used to drink after work when an inmate of a nearby office. And he goes on to mention some French bloke who has his surname on a firm that I used to work for. And please do not use the word dummy. Such things are portraits.
Excellent piece. You are spot on with the Croxley History Project, absolute mine of information
I'm getting a worm in my ears and in my eyes of the Beatles' Penny Lane.

dg writes: done that.
Thank you, as a nearby resident (just over the border with Watford) it's nice to get an in-depth local guide as well as being able to admire exotic tours of far-flung places such as Penge and Hayes (Kent version).

To the commenter who said Croxley was well-pubbed, you're not wrong. There's also a Harvester by the border with Watford at the Grand Union Canal, three pubs on the Green - the other two are the Coach and Horses and Sportsman - and the micro-pub, Anchor Tap and Bottle, opposite the Red House where DG's tour started. The Coach and Artichoke are gastro-pubs, the Sportsman has the best proper beer, my personal preference is the Anchor despite it being 'craft' only.
Delighted to read above that John the barber is still going - he gave me many a boyhood haircut back in the 1980s.
The library on New Road was where I did my work experience week while in the sixth form at Rickmansworth Grammar School in the 1960s. That experience lead on to a lifetimes work in libraries before retirement.
So evocative of my years in Rickmansworth, and school days at Durrants School, Manor Way. Thanks as always for your entertaining posts - from an 80-year-old Ricky ex-pat, living near Brum.










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