Spare Change

Today I took a walk to the south, down Barnes Pikle to Mattock Lane, around Ealing Green and all along St Mary's Road.  People were out in short things and scanty things, grouped in the long pale grass on the Green.  Shops are on the fulcrum of reopening and there is a feeling of our being nearly through it.  Let us hope.

I've not been down St Mary's Road in a very long time.  Forty years ago this September, at the college that has since been digested by the University of West London, I started and did not finish an art course.  As an extremely poor student in all senses, I would go to the New Inn or the Castle and drink bitter lemon, unless someone else was buying.  The New Inn smelled of creosote, and had sawdust on the floor, so memory tells me.  Peering through its windows, there was no hint of sawdust; the trend for faux Dickensia probably passed a long time ago.

The chippy is now the Kebab Delight.

Several later-famous people passed through the rather plain doors of the college under its various names, but what struck me today was a plaque not to any arty rock stars but Lady Byron (mother of Ada Lovelace), who founded on the site a school for working-class boys, in 1833.  Generally progressive in her views, she insisted the school be run without use of corporal punishment.  Given that my school headmaster was still handy with the cane some 140 years later, that was quite forward-thinking.

Then I walked up to the Tesco Metro where the beggars hang around.  Nobody carries change these days so they are often disappointed.