A little bit of Manchester in Deptford …….. football …… VHS …… and a charity shop

Deptford in south east London was almost where I grew up.

Au Revoir Cantona, date unknown

As a kid it was just a short bus ride from Peckham, and when we moved to Eltham was still a place I went back to.

But long ago I moved to Manchester, and never thought I could make a link between the two, but my new Facebook friend Paula, managed to find the link. 

And of course, I am the first to admit it will not appeal to everyone …… as the comments to the post will no doubt reflect.

That said it is a neat piece of history, being not only a record of Eric Cantona’s time with Manchester United, but one of those bits of lost technology.

VHS tape with time scale

Au Revoir Cantona is a VHS tape, which is now another example of a technological back alley.

Video Home System was briefly in the 1970s and 80s, the go to way of recording stuff to watch on the telly.  It saw off the Betamax rival but in turn was sent off the scene by the DVD.

For perhaps a decade and a bit more they were an essential addition to the television, allowing you to both buy or rent commercial films to watch at home, and to record stuff to watch at a later time.

It’s downfall was that often the tapes became slack or just got jammed, and for those with a hectic social life, recording something to watch later, didn’t always work given that the hectic social life left little time to watch even the recorded shows.

I bet most of us will still have the odd VHS tape knocking around, which can never be played given that the accompanying VHS recorder has long since been skipped.  So they sit in a corner of the cellar or attic waiting the time  they will be transferred to a DVD, which is a time that never comes.

My kids are of an age which means that they remember them, but not so the next generation.  To them these clunky rather unsophisticated looking bits of technology are as remote as the cassette, the 78 record, and telegrams.

We will have had a few Man United VHS tapes given that three of our four lads are fans, and deep in the cellar at least one may have escaped the cull of all things obsolete.

And there they will stay, for without the recorder they are lost to us.  And I doubt any of the three will be beating their way to a shop to have them transferred to a DVD.

Deptford Town Hall

Leaving me just to ponder again on my time wandering the streets of Deptford, playing out one of many adventures, now over 60 years in the past.

Still it has rekindled an interest in the place, and I have asked Paula if she has pictures of Deptford, which in turn I suspect will lead to a series of stories.

We shall see.

Pictures; Au Revoir Cantona, 2021, from the collection of Paula Griffin,VHS tape with time scale, May 20, 2020, Tobias ToMar Maier, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license  and Deptford Town Hall, SE14, Philip Talmage / Deptford Town Hall, SE14 / CC BY-SA 2.0, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

When the ghost sign wasn’t .... travels through Nunhead

It will be pretty much 60 years since I last walked down Avingnon Road, and even then it will have been just one of the many random adventures you do as a kid.

I am guessing that after playing in Pepys Park we set off in the general direction of Nunhead, with no particular plan fired by curiosity and the fact we never really strayed far from Lausanne Road where I spent my early years.

And what set off these memories was Paula’s picture of the ghost sign on the corner building.

Now ghost signs are all that is left of a product or business which once advertised by having their names and products painted on the walls of buildings.

So, this one attracted me, if for no other reason than I liked Hovis.

But the sign is false, dating only from sometime between April 2015 and May 2016, and was originally for Daren Bread, the ad reading “A Taste for Daren Bread”.

Which of course set me researching Daren Bread which  was a household name in the 1890s through into the next century, and the answers came from a delightful site on London Walking Tours.*

It was produced from flour ground at the Daren Mill in Dartford Kent.  

The Mill went bankrupt in the 1930s and Daren Bread was merged into the Hovis brand and  phased out.

So, the new sign sort of makes sense, but ghost sign sadly it ain’t. 

However, for those of an inquiring mind, the original can be found on street google from 2008 till that change roughly four years later.

I will have clocked the old sign, but I doubt it would have registered.

Location; Nunhead

Picture; the Hovis sign, 2021, from the collection of Paula Griffin

*DAREN BREAD - THE GIFT OF GIFTS, London Walking Tours, https://www.london-walking-tours.co.uk/secret-london/daren-bread.htm 

The Covid Memorial Wall …………. London ….. today

I sometimes think those powerful words “Lest We Forget” are used too lightly.

So often they are the response to a picture or story about the sacrifices of those who fought or were just caught up in the wars this country has fought in the last two centuries.

And while I don’t criticize those who post the lines, sometimes the image or the account of one person’s experience demands more.

That said I found Paula Griffin’s  pictures of The Covid Memorial Wall very moving.  

The wall Paula writes "is on the Lambeth side of the Thames by St Thomas’s facing the Houses of Parliament... Really difficult to convey the size of this with hearts representing all of those who have died after contracting this disease just to say it stretches all the way from Westminster Bridge to Lambeth Palace.”

And for those of us who are Londoners or live in the city that is a significant distance.

In all Paula recorded 24 images which are on that excellent site All Things Photographic, where they can all be seen.*

I would just like to thank Paula for allowing me to use some of the pictures.

Location; London

Pictures; The Covid Memorial Wall, London, 2021, from the collection of Paula Griffin

*All things Photographic, https://www.facebook.com/groups/331565394411795