Memories can be deceptive, but sometime in the summer of 1959 on a very hot day with little to do me and a mate sat on the pavement in front of the Swiss tavern playing with the meting tar.
Now I fully accept that this will not rank with the great moments in history, but on an equally hot day I think I am allowed to share it.
I can’t be sure of the year but I know 1959 was a hot one, so much so that some Londoners took to sleeping in the parks.
But it could have been another summer, what is important is that I remember just what I was doing.
I suppose it was too hot to want to stray far from the house but by the same token I didn’t fancy being indoors.
So there we were idly playing with the melting tar using old discarded lolly sticks to draw the stuff back and forth.
And of course on that heavy hot day there was little in the way of traffic to worry us, thinking back there was not much else.
The day if it was just the one I remember as very hot, and very quiet with nothing to disturb the stillness.
What puzzles me is why today, the same doesn’t happen on very hot days.
Do the authorities use different tar? Or is it that we just don’t get as many hot days? Which given the current heat wave seems odd.
Or at 67 am I just too old to sit at the pavements edge with a lolly stick and some melting tar?
Location; Lausanne Road circa 1959
Pictures; our house on Lausanne Road and the Swiss Tavern, 2017, from the collection of Elizabth and Colin Fitzpatrick
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| The Swiss Tavern, Lausanne Road, 2007 |
I can’t be sure of the year but I know 1959 was a hot one, so much so that some Londoners took to sleeping in the parks.
But it could have been another summer, what is important is that I remember just what I was doing.
I suppose it was too hot to want to stray far from the house but by the same token I didn’t fancy being indoors.
 |
| Our house on Lausanne Road, 2017 |
And of course on that heavy hot day there was little in the way of traffic to worry us, thinking back there was not much else.
The day if it was just the one I remember as very hot, and very quiet with nothing to disturb the stillness.
What puzzles me is why today, the same doesn’t happen on very hot days.
Do the authorities use different tar? Or is it that we just don’t get as many hot days? Which given the current heat wave seems odd.
Or at 67 am I just too old to sit at the pavements edge with a lolly stick and some melting tar?
Location; Lausanne Road circa 1959
Pictures; our house on Lausanne Road and the Swiss Tavern, 2017, from the collection of Elizabth and Colin Fitzpatrick
Hello I often check out your blog when reminded via I'm from SE london. Just wanted to say hello.. wonder if you knew any of my family. McNamara or Goss. You're a lot younger than my parents and a decade older than me.. so likely not.. anyway. All the best
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