Strange goings on in Piccadilly …….

 It will be over 40 years ago that I caught the goings on at the edge of Piccadilly Gardens.

At the time I will have known what the event was but now with the passage of four decades I can only guess.

The most likely explanation is a group of Morris Dancers and given the leaves on the trees it will have been late spring or summer, and as I worked during the week it will have been a Saturday.

But after that the rest is just speculation.  

It will be sometime during 1978 and into the early 1980s, but in those days, I didn’t record dates or locations on the negatives which was a silly oversight.

Still despite the quality of the image there is enough to remind us of what Piccadilly Gardens used to look like …. when it was still all sunken gardens, flower beds and lines of park benches, accompanied with those clumps of telephone boxes on each corner.

At which point I won’t bemoan the passing of the gardens just wait for the torrent of abuse heaped on the “new gardens”.

Among which might be the odd person who in 1978 was a Morris Dancer and performed in Piccadilly Gardens or looked down from the restaurant in the hotel opposite and watched the event.

Location; Piccadilly Gardens

Picture; Strange goings on in Piccadilly, 1978-84, from the collection of Andrew Simpson