I was right about that saddle though...

Many thanks to Bunneh for posting this up.  It's an old Yellow Pages advert that I'd never seen before, in which a northern lad is dreaming about getting a racing bike. His dad is talking down his expectations - about that kind of bike without proper mudguards and chainguard and with a razor-sharp saddle.  ''Mebbe next year, eh...''  And then, come his birthday...yes you've guessed it....

(For some reason - it worked when I tested it but it hasn't embedded  - here's the address anyway.)

 But the main reason why I liked the clip was because when the lad sets off up the hill, I suddenly realised that I knew this ''northern'' street.

Because it's Maidenstone Hill, all the way north in London, SE10 - a street which I ought to recognise because my very first ever girlfriend lived at the top of that hill.

I couldn't take a photo from the first floor, but this is how it looks from the street - note the corner shop in the ad was once a corner shop but hasn't been one for over 30 years - they've just dressed up the outside

So down the hill I cycled, got back to a computer to see how they compared.  So I started the youtube video again and went ''hang on a minute..." because if was only after coasting back to Deptford that I realised the opening shot was also up that hill.  But there was no way Google Streetview could have that image on streetview because it's not a road.  Right, off up Point Hill for the second time. Here's the opening shot:

And here's the view from the path.

(I was going to take a closer picture but there was a woman with a child at one of the windows and I thought I might get taken for a snooper.)

Greenwich, bikes, nostalgia...right up my street.

-0-

Talking of Greenwich, bikes and nostalgia, here's a curiosity about Witcomb's cycles in Deptford (now gone)...the presenter fails to cycle up Hyde Vale and remounts up by the drinking trough.

The video's here

From Chemist to Pharmacy

An old sign that I saw yesterday in Nunhead...reminded me that Chemists, or Dispensing Chemists, no longer call themselves Chemists. I'm not quite sure if it happened all at once or slowly over a period of time any self-respecting chemist is now a pharmacist. This sign - on Evelina Road at the top of St Mary's Road, SE15 - Green(-e or -es?) Chemist had been established over 50 years when it was painted. Today it calls itself a Pharmacy. No change in use over the years, but a subtle change in terminology. Perhaps it avoids moments of temporary confusion at dinner parties when a dispensing chemist gets introduced as a chemist and the intellectual guest starts asking questions about the periodic table. Perhaps it simply sounds more formal - the medical profession are a little prone to choosing the most imposing title they can. I had an unresolved kidney problem, but I didn't get referred to a kidney doctor, nor even a renalogist (which I would have understood). No, it had to be a nephrologist - a title very few punters will readily grasp.

The Bakery photo in yesterday's post, became a Duncan's Chemist, now it too is a Pharmacy.
Meanwhile, back to Nunhead. Green's chemist-cum-pharmacy has another sign painted up over its entrance.
The end of ''Nunhead'' is still visible, as is the postcode, SE15, down on the bottom right. It seems to read ''Nunhead nr St....'' and I thought perhaps it could have been the nearby St Mary's. But, because there is an overlay of different writing - for example, the word ''OFFICE'' is legible on the lower level and the ST seems just a little too big, I'm inclined to think it was simply ''ST'' for Street. What appears to be a B at the start of the second line, could quite conceivably be a P - was it once, a Post Office? All in all, the still-discernible letters seem to give an obviously false message:

NUNHEAD NR STABUT
BXOFFICEA SE15