St. Ann's Well Road - extract from Personal Copy by Ray Gosling
St. Ann’s Well Road was an absolute maze of back streets that seemed to go on for ever. I had never seen so many. Whichever way you looked, up and down the hillsides, as far as any road ahead stretched, were the tightly-packed roofs of poor people’s housing: and it was full of surprise. The smell of wood from a theatrical carpenter’s yard up a quiet cul-de-sac. The almost Americanized good-looking, middle-aged women singing to Music While You Work at the brightly coloured bobbins and spindles in this undergarment factory you could look right down on to from a street on a cliff-buff above. There were Greek cafes, an Italian pastry shop, shops with German sausages- strings of black sausages in the window – beautiful pastry. Polish bread with poppy and caraway seeds and a shop with nothing in the window but a globe atlas on a white slab of marble and a little old lady, like a dwarf, behind a wooden counter. The wood was curved where people’s hands and money had passed, from whatever they had traded in. There was no sign outside. When you opened the door an old bell rang. You said to the lady, she always wore a top coat with fur trims, “Are you selling anything?” and she’s reply “ I might, what did you want?” Whatever you replied she’d say, “I’m afraid we’re out of that.”
It was a maze: amazing little houses in little narrow streets, some quiet, some steaming with people, bawling, bag-eyed, hair-matted mothers crossly pushing prams on jostling pavements; hooting traffic; old men pushing carts of belongings in the middle of the road talking to themselves. There were the big outfitters – hatters and hosiers.
There was a big pawn-shop with three brass balls outside. I took my typewriter there. Old Ando, the pawnbroker said “You’re sure it is a typewriter? Open your typewriter case, or shall I trust you?” Gimme more I said. No, he shook his head behind his iron bars, all those racks of junk and jewels behing him. He never gave you any more.
There was a pork-pie works up one back street. White-coated workers, blood-bespattered, clattered metal trolleys over the cobbles, with trays of pork pies, oozing jelly, steaming hot from one makeshift outbuilding to another. They had a shop on the front street and there was a queue of smart suburban ladies outside that shop from morning to noon. They were the most delicious pork pies and by the afternoon they were sold out. They couldn’t make enough. And since in redevelopment they moved to a purpose – built garden factory on an industrial estate, the pies have never been so tasty as they were in those small back – street days. There were vegetable shops, spilling mangoes and aubergines on to the pavement. Crushed oranges in the gutter and great wooden crates of common cabbage. Crates of cabbage.
St. Ann’s Well Road was an absolute maze of back streets that seemed to go on for ever. I had never seen so many. Whichever way you looked, up and down the hillsides, as far as any road ahead stretched, were the tightly-packed roofs of poor people’s housing: and it was full of surprise. The smell of wood from a theatrical carpenter’s yard up a quiet cul-de-sac. The almost Americanized good-looking, middle-aged women singing to Music While You Work at the brightly coloured bobbins and spindles in this undergarment factory you could look right down on to from a street on a cliff-buff above. There were Greek cafes, an Italian pastry shop, shops with German sausages- strings of black sausages in the window – beautiful pastry. Polish bread with poppy and caraway seeds and a shop with nothing in the window but a globe atlas on a white slab of marble and a little old lady, like a dwarf, behind a wooden counter. The wood was curved where people’s hands and money had passed, from whatever they had traded in. There was no sign outside. When you opened the door an old bell rang. You said to the lady, she always wore a top coat with fur trims, “Are you selling anything?” and she’s reply “ I might, what did you want?” Whatever you replied she’d say, “I’m afraid we’re out of that.”
It was a maze: amazing little houses in little narrow streets, some quiet, some steaming with people, bawling, bag-eyed, hair-matted mothers crossly pushing prams on jostling pavements; hooting traffic; old men pushing carts of belongings in the middle of the road talking to themselves. There were the big outfitters – hatters and hosiers.
There was a big pawn-shop with three brass balls outside. I took my typewriter there. Old Ando, the pawnbroker said “You’re sure it is a typewriter? Open your typewriter case, or shall I trust you?” Gimme more I said. No, he shook his head behind his iron bars, all those racks of junk and jewels behing him. He never gave you any more.
There was a pork-pie works up one back street. White-coated workers, blood-bespattered, clattered metal trolleys over the cobbles, with trays of pork pies, oozing jelly, steaming hot from one makeshift outbuilding to another. They had a shop on the front street and there was a queue of smart suburban ladies outside that shop from morning to noon. They were the most delicious pork pies and by the afternoon they were sold out. They couldn’t make enough. And since in redevelopment they moved to a purpose – built garden factory on an industrial estate, the pies have never been so tasty as they were in those small back – street days. There were vegetable shops, spilling mangoes and aubergines on to the pavement. Crushed oranges in the gutter and great wooden crates of common cabbage. Crates of cabbage.