OH LORDY, HERE COMES LEEROY…

Leeroy Simpson – a winsome mixture of bolshieness, humour and missing teeth – is the unexpected chair of Harlesden Town Team. The first time I met him at the Salvation Army service for Mother’s Day, I mistook him for a vagrant. But looks are so often deceptive! The second time I met him, he was chairing a Harlesden Town Team monthly meeting and he was a revelation. Mr Dynamo Simpson did not allow for circumlocution. Oh no, Leroy is all for action.

Today, he is sitting in the cafe opposite the Jubilee Clock – used to be Dora’s Delights but within months, as is the way in Harlesden, it had become Akbar’s Jewel In The Crown – bemoaning the mythology surrounding his chairman status. Harlesden Town Team consist of sixteen volunteers and Louis Theroux ( who is in fact the marvellously termed town champion) is one of them. Leeroy would like Harlesden residents to know that he does not drive a Merc. In fact, he is working his socks off for no remuneration at present.

The Town Team have created a vision for a future Harlesden that could decrease the traffic levels, and wait for it, has the possibility of pedestrianisation or shared space as they like to call it. Where it also is cared for, thriving and welcoming. Community space, trees, market stalls, more street furniture – they’re all in there. But there are a few problems at present. “We’re finding ourselves in a them and us situation,” explains Leeroy with a look of pure frustration, “the shopkeepers don’t really have the energy to look into what is possible. We’re trying to have a conversation with them about Option A which is refurbishing the streets and Option B which is pedestrianisation but they don’t want to find out about the different options. That’s our struggle, we want to involve them in consultation but they don’t want to.”

There’s a lot of Option A and Option Bing going down. And although HTT are impartial, I’m getting the significant impression that Option A is the minor cowardly choice, and Option B is the brave way forward – pedestrianisation of the High St from the Jubilee Clock to Tavistock Road, with traffic becoming two way again along the bottom part of the High St. However there’s a long way to go in terms of shopkeeper education.

“Tomorrow we doing a drive in the Harlesden,” he says, “Louis is going to be down here with posters and we’ll be explaining what we’re talking about to the shopkeepers and passers-by. We do have to be neutral and we really want them to understand the options. There’s a lot of resistance, they just want us to decide and we don’t want that. We want to consult with them.”

I’ve had my own problems consulting with Leeroy today.  I turned up at the Jubilee Clock and he wasn’t there. I then decided to see if the Royal Oak barmaid knew his mobile no. It sounds like a red herring but the Royal Oak is involved. She didn’t but sent me to visit a ‘Julia’ down the road. I thought this must be Harlesden Town Team vice secretary and incredibly internet message-prolific Julia Straker but it turned out to be another Julia – Julia Marcus – that I’d never met before but who knew my name because she was a press officer at Chrysalis in the 80s. It was wild goose hunt that turned up Eugene Manzie (former London Records press officer who lives in Kensal Rise) as a mutual friend. But no Leeroy.

I have to go home again to locate him. I’m ready to cause a fire storm – I’m not known for withholding anger – but it turns out that there’s been a misunderstanding. I can’t blame him after all. We re-meet an hour later.

There’s a misconception, claims Leeroy in Town Team mode, about shoppers coming from out of town. “Shopkeepers think their customers arrive by car from outside Harlesden by car,” he says, “but 45% are local and walk in, and then another 25% come by bus.”

Can anything be done about having to pay at the Plaza car park when at Asda and Sainsburys, it’s free? Whoops, there’s a weary sigh from Leeroy. The sort of sigh that is not going to turn into a battle cry, more a surrender. “The trouble is those supermarkets own their car parks,” he says, “whereas Tescos leases  this one. So there’s not much that can be done. But there is a plan for an hour’s free parking in the streets nearby.”

For a war-weary commander, Leeroy still ebbs and flows with ideas for Harlesden and bringing the community together. “We’re going to have a Love Harlesden Day on June 17^th, and a Clean Up Harlesden Day on April 14^th, and I want to organise a concert that includes pupils from all the  Harlesden schools so that the school children get involved too with raising Harlesden’s profile and self-love,” he says.

Oh and Harlesden Town Team need an office space. “We’d like to procure a pop-up situation,” says Leeroy, “but strangely, there isn’t much of that kind of shop space around.”

According to Leeroy, Sir Frank Lowe – advertising exec of mucho casho, and chief provider for the Capital City Academy – is planning a Harlesden Hub which is to be a focus for activities from classes by celebrity chefs to sporting challenges. And apparently, it’s going to be organised by one Serena Balfour, a ‘society’ benefactor who has been involved with this kind of thing before. Although she sounds distinctly un-Harlesden, it’s an interesting idea. And they have been considering the huge space above Iceland for their Hub. Who would have thought it? Certainly, I would never have guessed.

We’re finally on our feet.  And there’s the Royal Oak which is an integral part of the Town Team’s regeneration ideas for Harlesden. Oh yes, the Renaissance of Harlesden is much bandied around. “They’ve got a brilliant space upstairs,” he says, “we’re going to put comedy nights on there, we need more activities like that. There’s too many betting shops and chicken and chip takeaways. I want somewhere with waiters apart from the Amber Grill. I want more places that look like Way 2 Save these days.”

That makes me laugh. Leroy dreams of a bistrot in Harlesden. Somewhere where waiters deliver food! Ah, lovely idea.

What will happen if the area from the Clock to Tavistock Rd is pedestrianised? “There’ll be room for more seats, it’ll become more of a place to hang out, also perhaps there’ll be little market stalls running down the middle,” he says, “it’ll be an attractive place to be.”

There are posters about the consultation process that is going on right now, about Option A and Option B. You can get involved (brent.gov.uk/harlesdentown). Leeroy is not happy. One day shopkeepers put up the posters, the next day, they take them down. With notable exceptions like Lords shoe shop and a few more.

Come on we’re going to have to cheer up Leeroy and do something…

LEXI FOUNDER REVEALS HER INNER WILDNESS

I love the way Sally Wilton – founder of Kensal Rise’s extraordinary state of the art indie cinema, the Lexi which sends all of its profits to an eco village in South Africa – signs herself at the end of her emails, not as chief executive, but as dreamer. Yes, yes, yes. She has certainly ‘dreamed’ her cinema into a thriving community enterprise and has recently set up Nomad, a travelling pop up version of the Lexi soon to arrive at Harlesden’s Misty Moon (Movies at the Misty Moon start on March 1^st with a new documentary called Lover’s Rock) which is, of course, a former cinema. Oh, the cultural satisfaction of turning a pub back into a picture house. Although it will stay a pub as well.

It’s a grim, cold, rainy morning when Sally appears on my doorstep weather-ready in hat and gloves. “We’d call it a ‘mizzly’ morning in Ireland,” she says revealing her Antrim roots. She grew up in Nigeria until she was 8. I thought she might cancel but Sally is made of sterner stuff. As we march down Anson Rd, she’s telling me how she used to put fliers about the Lexi into people’s letter boxes herself back in 2008 when it had recently opened. “I could do a PHD in the potential dangers of letter boxes,” she jests unexpectedly, “there are the ones with teeth that almost bite you, the ones that are hell to push open and the ones that say ‘No Junk Mail’. One day I was about to put a flier through one of the latter when the woman of the house greeted me with an absolute ‘No’, so I explained about the Lexi and she changed her mind instantly. I’ve never thought of Lexi fliers as junk mail.”

Sally Wilton initially appears to be shy and self-deprecating but she is also humorous. Quietly but bitingly.

Sally is a full-time philanthropist, as well as a dreamer. Having sold her business – Etc Venues, which created affordable temporary training and conference facilities – in 2006 for 21 million pounds, she and her directors became not so secret millionaires and Sally found her way to her own causes and passions without the aid of a TV programme. The Lynedoch eco village in South Africa – a community created out of the principles of the Sustainability Institute – was her first commitment destination. The Lexi – her daughter is called Alex – was the second.

Did it really result from the amazing community spirit that emerged at the time of the bizarre micro- 2006 tornado in Kensal Rise? “Well, I was already looking for a building,” she says, “although I had no idea how to run a cinema, it just stemmed from my love of film. I was out in South Africa when it happened. I thought my children were pulling my leg but I flew straight back when I realised it was true. Roofs had been ripped off, one side of a building had gone. Luckily only our house’s windows had smashed because a furniture van outside had taken much of the impact. However, the community spirit was amazing, everyone was helping each other. And the Lexi was very much born in that atmosphere. Today we have 50 volunteers from the community all helping us out, and some of them get involved with the eco village too.”

The Lexi is housed in an Edwardian building that used to be called Pinkham Hall. “Colonel Pinkham created it in 1928 as a theatrical space and as a part of the Conservative Men’s Club next door,” she says. It’s surprising we agree, that he was a Conservative but one who obviously liked the theatre so much he funded one next door. He was apparently big on snooker as well.  “I saw it was for sale,” she says, “and they said it had already been sold, but I instantly wrote a document for what I envisaged as a community cinema and I got it. I had to go and meet the Men’s Club committee which was an experience in itself. The Constitutional Club is like going back into the 1950s. The treasurer is 85 and remembers queuing round the block for the two old cinemas that used to be further down Chamberlayne Road.”

By this time, we are walking up Harlesden High St towards the Job Centre Plus, the brick abomination which was built  at the turn of the century as the very grand Willesden Hippodrome. It became a cinema in 1928 as audiences’ appetites for variety theatre diminished. During that era, there were seven cinemas in the area, now sadly there are none. “I love cinema as a place where you can be with others,” she says, “or to completely escape to, and be alone. The old-fashioned picture houses were magical and they were for the working classes not just the posh. We had two cinemas down Chamberlayne Road near  the Moberley gym, that’s where the Consitutional Club treasurer remembers the queues. Together, they had 3,000 seats, imagine that. Cinema was having its golden time. Of course, that was when we had a train going straight to Liverpool St, so lots of workers from the City lived in Kensal Rise. There were tailor shops then.”

I mention that I first came to Harlesden in the 80s when the Mean Fiddler put on brilliant bands and people travelled to come here for gigs. “I did too,” she exclaims, “I came to see Nico play there, it was amazing.” It turns out that Sally used to live in a squat in Brixton, whilst I lived in a squat in Shepherd’s Bush. That information re-modelled my preconceptions of millionaires! “It was pretty run down,” she says, “we didn’t have hot water. I love London though, it’s always interesting.”

We pass Paddy Power and I can’t help letting her know that over a year ago, I discovered that this had been a cinema called The Picardy. I looked it up on the internet and it showed a photo of the interior where you could see that the films were projected onto that wall that backed onto the street. It looked like the inside of a train and had posters for Barbara’s Stanwyk’s Golden Boy from the 1930s. Later it turned into a night club called Top 32 and I’m sure Mean Fiddler former boss, Vince Power, met his first wife there when he was a teenager! It’s all coming back to me.

There was also a cinema at 24 Harlesden High Street opposite Peacocks. Now it’s a hair shop. And then there was the Odeon – later to become the Roxy theatre where bands used to rehearse in the 70s at the same time as being a fleapit apparently – which was knocked down in the 90s and has now become a faceless ‘new’ build on the corner of Odeon Court. That’s what’s left of the history.

We stand in the entrance to the Misty Moon – formerly the cinema, the Coliseum – where there are old photos of film stars. “Tony Curtis was so sexy in those days,” says Sally in another unexpected  bit of banter. I laugh again.

She then admits what she would really like is “one of the vans that the government used to send out in the 1950s with little cinemas in them for disseminating public information. It would make a brilliant pop up cinema.” There is one out there apparently that has been restored.

I inform her that the Clash and the Slits played here in 1977. She is suitably impressed and surprised.

In the meantime, we notice the amazing statistic on the wall that in 1946, the audiences for cinema is the UK were 31 million. Wow!

What would she like to screen here? “Unusual stuff,” she says, “we don’t want to do the obvious.”

Ah there’s the rub. She explains that the most difficult aspect of screening films is obtaining the rights to old films. “We’re trying to get the rights for Pulp Fiction at the moment but it’s very difficult,” she explains. “That’s where it helps to be a newcomer, I’m endlessly optimistic. I think we can do anything. Others are more pragmatic. I’m a dreamer and I’m determined. I want Twin Peaks. I’d like to do bring your duvet nights at the Lexi like they do at Battersea Arts Centre.”

It also helps if you know a few of the right people. “I’d always wanted to meet David Puttnam,” she says. “His former chauffeur lives down the road from me. So when I was at the same awards ceremony as him, I introduced myself to him with this little fact. He has been to the Lexi and he has helped us out with rights. He’s a very nice man.”

I love that the Lexi always have someone there introduce the film. It feels old-fashioned and caring. “I was inspired by the genuinely wonderfully eccentric gentleman who runs the 600 seater Rex in Berkhampstead,” she says. “He always introduces his film. It makes it an individual experience. It’s cinema with heart. We also do newsletters where we say what we honestly feel about new films, we don’t gush without meaning it and we are critical.”

One of the recent projects of which she is most proud is working in South Africa at Lynesoch teaching schoolkids to be camera men and women. “Then we show what they make at the Lexi,” she says, “there is a 16 year who had been in trouble for violence, and is now going to film school in Cape Town.”

And what would she like at the Lexi? “A second screening room, that would really help with programming.”

The Lexi’s Pop up cinema Nomad is coming to the Misty Moon on March 1^st. It’s a free event with special cocktails to buy. You can find more info about the film here and there will be other screenings over the following few months.

DANCE WILLESDEN JUNCTION

“It does look like a wedding party, a strange one, but it does have that feeling,” says Tania, my son’s girlfriend, after she’d looked at some of the footage of myself and eight friends whirling/jigging/funking/floating around the grim industrial walkways of that sprawling railway monster that is Willesden Junction. Nov 2011

Where to start?

With the raw delight of seeing Sarah – we went to Ilkley (West Yorkshire) Grammar School together, she’s my oldest close friend – standing on my doorstep at 1 15pm one glorious autumnal Saturday afternoon, dressed entirely in scarlet. Statuesque, bold, Frida Kahloesque. Long skirt and a wonderful net wrap. Oh, the potential of that wrap!

Or Jayne’s – a newer friend – suggestion that she’d like to come for a Harlesden walk with me. With Tim, her partner, and also 5 Rhythms’ (dance created by New Yorker, Gabrielle Roth where you dance your own steps through five different rhythms – strong and flowing, staccato, chaos, lyrical and stillness) teacher. And me thinking ‘yes, but why don’t we dance’. After all that’s what we do together so often and I haven’t done it in Harlesden yet. 5 Rhythms is not about showing off although it can be, it’s about dancing with an open heart.

And gradually, as the summer wended through our midst, a few more friends were invited and accepted, or even invited themselves. Others understandably couldn’t bring themselves to expose themselves in this way. This dancing-in-public-way. In fact, only that morning, I received an email from a lovely friend called Howard saying: “I feel as though I’m letting you down. Please ask me to do anything except dancing in the streets on a Saturday afternoon.” I laughed out loud.

The door bell keeps going. Helen is in a sexy, maroon dress with a red flower in her hair, Tim is in a quiet red shirt and dazzling white trousers, Abigail changes into a elegant more muted red number, and Claire too. Jayne dons a lipstick pink-red, short dress with boots. Matt is rather lumberjack shirt young with jeans. And I have a flowery flamenco dress with a suitably rose mini-headdress.  Of course, I want so be some sort of Queen. And so I cut the last blood red rose from my garden and add it to the headdress.

Even as we set off, we feel like a tribe.

Initially we gather in Furness Road. For a hand-holding pow wow. I explain gently (I hope) that this is one of my Harlesden happenings* but they don’t have to feel as though it is a performance. I know some of them are feeling nervous and it’s more important that we do what comes naturally to us.That we allow ourselves to dance with each other and alone. I suggest that we relate to passers-by too if that’s what happens, and that I hope they will be able to appreciate the landscape that we are about to enter as well. And thank them, of course, for their willingness.  Such huge willingness. To turn up. To trust me. I feel honoured.

And then we find Duncan in a white shirt on a bench. The last dancer to appear. He looks bewildered and exhausted.  He joins us anyway. After a little encouragement from us.

These fellow dancers do not know what soundtrack I have created for them! We arrive at that Not On Safari hot spot, the top of the stairs at the Harrow Road exit of Willesden Junction. Oh, what a delight. I put on ‘We Are Family’ ( the Dusty Springfield version) and we break into flamboyant dancing. Some of us are less inhibited than others. I wave at passengers on the No 18 bus, people at the bus stop look shocked in a good way. Matt, Jayne and Claire are looking embarrassed about what they’ve let me persuade them to do. Later, Jayne says she loved the realness of their awkwardness in that situation. And into our midst comes a man in shorts with a bicycle, he’s grinning widely, and the next moment, he’s joining in. He’s got the spirit, his hips are waggling like a belly dancer.

It’s the beginning of something. I can feel the air around us lifting up as if it’s welcoming our exalted intrusion. Happenings can have the spontaneous effect of raising spirits and somehow increasing the possibility of people coming together and really being together.

By the time, we get to dance down the stairs – to Bjork’s ‘Big Time Sensuality’ – my fellow dancers are realising the potential of strange objects like the alien wire fences in the narrow ratboxed walkway. And the steps – ah, yes, travelling up and down them. Avoiding passers by, welcoming them, waving them past. Some lower their eyes and rush through, others smile and want to engage. I love Bjork’s haunting voice and the way this track is so funkily nutty and sensuous. The latter feels like a contradiction here in this railway wasteland, in this industrial bleakland.

Can we be sensual here? And loving? We can, we can. We are.

Have I mentioned that my 25 year old son Marlon, his girlfriend, Tania and  friend, Paul are filming us… Another kind of contradiction – the young observing the old for a change through the eye of a camera. It adds another dimension to the dance. A less immersive one. The challenge of moving in and out of totally being in it. For another take. Plus although we are being spontaneous, we are also at times being directed.

Outside the ticket office, I have a musical shock to the senses of the dancers. ‘Anarchy In The UK’. For some of us a significant part of our history. A part of who we are – still hanging on to our tendency to rebel against authority – and a recognition of how important that questioning attitude to the establishment always is. For society. For individuals.

For others of us, they just about recognise it and nothing else. We jump up on walls, throw our fists in the air, howl with derision and relish the aggression of the spiky destructiveness the Sex Pistols brought with them. The storm before the birth. There’s a central circular wall here – it becomes a go go dancer’s dream. I’m up there, and Abigail joins me for a bizarre tango. Matt jumps ridiculously high in the air, Helen  snarls into the camera, Jayne who had initially been bemused by this track,  is shaking her head violently, Duncan  dances more slowly next to the entrance to the station, Tim  runs along walls, and Clare is still her graceful self in our midst. Meanwhile two ticket office workers stand and stare. Fixed grins on their faces.

The next stage is less public. We don’t see passers by any more.  A transition in terms of how we are with each other. The pathway wends up behind the 1960s ticket office to the other side of the station. Whoops, we’re going too fast. Our director asks us to go back and walk the last bit again. No-one complains. We find Willesden Junction blackberries to feed us, grimacing at their bitterness. Abigail puts on Sarah’s scarlet net wrap as a veil and becomes a bride. She’s picked a little bouquet-bunch of buttercups and buddleia. We become a wedding procession inadvertently.

And find ourselves wandering down an unplanned tunnel. Dark, dank and stinking of urine. We don’t notice the ‘No Pedestrian Access’ signs. I turn on the exquisite juiciness of Al Green singing ‘I’m still In Love With You’. Can we be this tender in this tunnel? We’re dancing alongside each other softly. I notice Sarah – who has recently lost her darling mother, Stella – has tears just held on the rim of her eyes. She looks so fragile and so broken open in love. I go over to dance with her, a sister in support. Tim and Abigail are holding hands like a couple in love.

When suddenly everything changes.

Our attention is diverted to a single figure two hundred yards away. In high visibility wear – he’s funking out on his own by the buses. He’s going for it. Totally.  An echo of us. Inspired by the great reverend. Helen who has Boudicca tendencies, lays chase. He runs away. The dance takes on a farce-like quality. Caught by the idea of a chase, we all run over the the buses and find ourselves dancing in the aisles of one of them. The driver simply turns on the hazard warning lights. Sarah hangs upside down and Abigail cradles her as if she’s in a cocoon. Tim lies down and four of us lay across him. There are poles and seats to play with. The driver waves. We can’t believe no-one is telling us to leave. It feels like a surprise gift.

We stop again. Waiting for our camera crew. “It is undeniably ugly this landscape,” says Helen, “but walking and dancing it like this, is making me think and feel differently about it. Like I can find the beauty in it. Or at least textures that are fascinating.”

We go up more steps to a narrow nineteenth century iron bridge. It’s a strange little channel over a wide, wide vista of railway lines and  the almighty Powerday recycling plant. Marlon shows us the small stretch of it that we are allowed to dance in. ‘Precious’ by Annie Lennox is playing, and suddenly we’re crawling over each other. There’s no room, so we find a closeness with each other. The red wrap which became a veil is now something that moves from hand to hand, that both unties us and ties us up. That unites us and individualises us. In my hands, it becomes a man net. I have Matt’s head twisted in it, caught, distorted and oddly exciting. Then I cast it over both Tim’s head and mine. The space changes and we have a hidden place to have a quieter moment.

The view is spectacular in the opposite to an undulating hills kind of way. Trellick Tower is in the distance to our left, and Old Oak Common to our right. The signal box which was here when I came with railway expert, Ian Hunt, has disappeared. Dismantled, probably. I remember the Victorian wooden adornments that looked as though they belonged to a spinning wheel.

“Oh, the pleasure of restraint,” I declare as we sit down for a mini-picnic of water melon and fruit bars. I mean that sublime freedom that comes confinement, rules, restraints, structure. The bus aisles with the poles and the narrowness of the bridge pushed us to use our imagination more. We felt the momentum of restriction giving a boost to our creativity. An excitement.

Now there’s a little walk along a path I wouldn’t walk alone even in the daylight. I just wouldn’t want to feel trapped there. The piles of refrigerator rusty bits accompany it. “Oh, I would walk here,” says Jayne and she probably would, because she runs in dark, lonely places that I’m afraid of. “No, I agree with you,” says Claire to me. And I’m aware of my own fears around personal safety and where I would and wouldn’t walk as a woman.

I lead them into the nearby industrial estate – Bi-cafe with plastic orange gerba outside, Lebanese nuts in a warehouse, an ice-cream factory – and we spot a three-legged regal chair that is looking distinctly abandonned. Helen sits on it and I realise that we have to adopt it, take it with us. It has a faded red seat and the right attitude.

And at this very moment, we feel like a nomadic travelling dance company, that will carry on. I like that feeling.

Just ahead of us is the Grand Union canal and another bridge. The film crew run ahead to set up. There’s something about this scene that speaks of another world, one where nature is managing to survive, to struggle through the concrete barriers. Where wilderness confronts the man-made.  I put on the melancholic strains of ‘Autumn Leaves’ that is sung by urban ‘castrato’ Martyn Jacques from the Tiger Lillies. And there is a serenity and sadness and fragility that manifests spontaneously amongst us. We move slowly and tenderly. Abigail embraces Matt as softly as a mother. I stretch and float with Claire in an elegant physical conversation. Duncan has the wrap that has turned into his objet de danse.  At the end, there is a silence that joins us together as one. It’s a profound stillness and I personally at that moment want to stay there quietly looking at the water forever.

We dance some more at the other side. A passing family on bikes are fascinated by us. We even do a jubilant salsa outside my flat finally. But for me, the end was on the bridge. I know I want to do it again. To dance Harlesden again. Differently. That was one of the most bountiful days of my life.

*Someone said – ‘You mean like a flash mob’ – but I don’t. Happening is more my generation of word  and has a pre-social networking meaning. Allan Kapow first used the term ‘happening’ in the spring of 1957 at an art picnic at George Segal’s farm. The key components for me are the combination of structure (the music, the route, the red, the friends) and spontaneity or improvisation with regards to contents. Happening also has more of an art precedent whereas flash mob relies entirely on the spontaneity. And I like the idea that in my case the ‘audience’ were the passers-by or the ticket office workers, the bus maintenance man and the drivers, and that they were also participants. Also that breaking down the wall between participants and audience dissolves the wall of criticism.

NOT DONALD THE DUCK!

Before I met Don Letts – calls himself ‘the Don’, legendary punk film-maker,  member of Mick Jones’ post Clash, Big Audio Dynamite and DJ, he has a show called Culture Clash on the BBC’s Radio 6 and noted big mouth – we had a few bantering email exchanges. I dared to call him Donald. I was winding him up. He sent me an email back titled ‘Donald is a duck’. Apparently, he’s a Donovan but ‘the Don’ will do.

So we find ourselves in the road where I live and he is insisting – goodness gracious, this man is more insistent than me and that’s saying something – that Bramston Road is not Harlesden. ‘Nah, nah, this isn’t Harlesden,’ he says while admitting hilariously that he used his Sat Nav to get here. From Kensal Rise. Five minutes away. He is also emphatic that he’s never been to Harlesden. Which isn’t true. Of course. However, it’s less untrue than I think.

According to Lloyd Bradley, renowned music journalist, and old friend of ‘the Don’, in his book Bass Culture: When Reggae Was King – Don Letts ‘used to operate his dad’s system at The Roxy, a big Harlesden dancehall – where punk and reggae came together’.

However, according to ‘the Don’, and I believe him, this is a  mix up between The Roxy which was the Covent Garden punk venue in the mid-70s, and The Roxy in Harlesden which was the former Odeon cinema and rehearsal space for bands. And’ the Don’ played the one in Covent Garden but he hasn’t actually corrected Bradley because he’s an old friend!

And what about The Clash video ‘Tommy Gun’ which apparently Don filmed at the Harlesden Roxy in 1978? “It’s all lies,” he says,”I didn’t even make that video.”

Ah, but I do think I have some concrete proof of his previous in Harlesden. What about March 11^th 1977 at The Coliseum (now The Misty Moon) when fabulously feisty female band, The Slits played their first gig in support of The Clash – the Don was filming them on super 8 which eventually turned up as The Punk Rock Movie? He’s a bit vague about it, but concedes that this is true. At last!

He starts telling me that he and his family – his second family, wife, Grace, and girls, Honour and Liberty, who are six and ten – are growing out of their flat in Kensal Rise and are thinking about moving over here. And that Louis Theroux was chatting to him in Queens Park about how good it is in Harlesden. Then, I spot All Eyes On Egypt – Park Parade’s ‘blackist’ shop – and take him in there to have a look. One of the ‘bredren’ as ‘the Don’ likes to say, kind of recognises him. He knows he’s something to do with music and then ‘the Don’ explains, whereupon there is much photographing and  friending up. Amid the murals of ancient Egyptian gods.

‘The Don’ is a man on the run. He doesn’t like to hang around. Despite saying that the only exercise he does is at the behest of the remote control and that he can’t believe that I’ve got him out here on a two hour walk, he’s got very speedy energy. Like a natty bee in his big trademark woolly hat and sunglasses.

Suddenly, he recognises the High Street. “I’ve seen all of this in my rear mirror,” he asserts, “the traffic is horrible. I can’t move here with this traffic.”

I ask him about his Radio 6 show, Culture Clash? “Yeah, the BBC let me do what I like,” he proclaims, “I’m not just a two dimensional punk and reggae Don Letts. I can be all of myself and play what I like. I’m really happy with it.” Typically, a few seconds later, he declares: “Not that I was ever treated as two dimensional.”

This is pure self-confessed Donism. He proclaims with one mouthful, and withdraws it with the next. Because the aim is to be provocative. His philosophy being – I’m a cunt, but interesting people are cunts. “When did nice people have good ideas?” he asks later.

I’d heard he was arrogant, but actually I like him. He’s straightforward and full of himself. But aware of what he’s doing. He likes playing the prankster, the mix it up person, the catalyst.

“I look more like London than a beefeater,” he says, “but it wasn’t like that in the 70s, then we Black British didn’t know what to call ourselves.” But he is very much an ‘all tribes should be represented’ kind of man.

The recent riots did hit this bit of the High Street – the jewellery shop was looted – but it was contained. I heard local elders came down and persuaded the young men to stop. “Those riots were not good,” he declares, “all I saw was young men seeing sneakers at the end of the street. I was in the Brixton riots in the 80s, and the Notting Hill ones in the 70s, they had a point. I was disturbed by these ones.”

There was no political heart, you mean? “There was a lack of humanity,” he says.

Has he ever bought his records up here? Like at Hawkeye? “No, I used to get all my records at the Dub Vendor in Ladbroke Grove,” he says, and he used to live off the Grove for years.

He grew up around Brixton – “My dad was a DJ, he was old school, they had bibles under their arms not ganja”- so it was Afro-Caribbeans like ‘the Don’s’ family who were from Jamaica (his everlasting anecdote is that he didn’t actually visit until he went with John Lydon just after the Sex Pistols split up), Irish and Greeks. “Why did the Greeks always have chip shops?” he laughs.

I take him to meet Harlesden’s gorgeous George who has been running Avant Garde – a really traditional and very funky men’s clothes shop – for the past 30 years. There’s a photograph I want to show the Don of Jesse Jackson and George in 1995 at the shop. George’s friend recognises ‘the Don’ as the video director of the Musical Youth track Pass The Dutchie that topped the charts in 1982.

“I’ve got my own Jesse Jackson story in Namibia,” says the Don. While George is bemoaning the blandness of the High Street these days and how it’s impacting on his business. “It’s all food and hair shops,” he says, “and no-one can park outside my shop.” He says he will be retiring soon and going back to Clarendon in Jamaica where he has a farm and he’ll get involved with the community here and it’ll be a much better life than the one he has here now.

‘The Don’s’ Jesse Jackson tale is a funny one. Basically ‘the Don’ was there for Independence Day, March 21 1990, and thought he’d get a sound bite from Jesse. Unfortunately, that was not to be the case. “He went into a political rant and he wouldn’t stop. I really learnt how to keep the camera still. After fifteen minutes, I was  like ‘ please shut the fuck up’ in my mind.”

Photo taken by Will Berridge

Scandal Takeaway is a famous Harlesden Jamaican food shop so ‘the Don’ pops in for some cornmeal porridge.  Here we meet Will, an MA photographic student who has contacted me and asked if he can take photos as part of the Not On Safari project. “You didn’t tell me I was going to have my photograph taken,” complains ‘the Don’, meaning he’s not wearing his superdread togs, before taking charge of direction himself. Of course, he knows what he’s doing. Will has failed to get the ‘Scandal’ sign into the frame, and the Don insists on a re-shoot.

Was he a full-blown Rasta in the past? “Yes, I used to go to St Agnes in Kennington for a long time and I defined myself as a Rastafarian but as I got older, I realised  I didn’t want to be told how to think. Now I’m open to everything.”

And you met Bob Marley? “I went to his concert at the Lyceum in 1975 and it was a live-changing experience for me. I met up with afterwards and we became friends. In fact, we had an argument one evening about punk rock, he really didn’t get it, and I was in that scene. I was wearing bondage trousers and he took the piss and said I looked like a ‘bloodclaat mountaineer’. I walked out in a huff. I was nineteen back then. But he got there in the end and wrote his song ‘Punky Reggae’”.

As you can see ‘the Don’ is not short of ripostes so I’m surprised when I ask him where he gets his feistiness from, and he seems at a loss for an answer. A very rare event. It seems to be something he hasn’t considered. In fact self-reflection is not one of his big features. He’s too busy getting to the next activity. He flounders for a few minutes as though this is a new question, and finally settles on: “Well, being the only black boy in an otherwise white grammar school helped me get my shit together.”

Although he then adds in a characteristic Don manoeuvre that n fact there wasn’t an issue for race with him until Enoch Powell made his anti-immigrant ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech.

By this time, we’ve walked by Odeon Court – the flats where the cinema used to be and the Harlesden Roxy where ‘the Don’ did not perform – and up to Stonebridge. ‘The Don’ hasn’t realised that the 60s tower blocks have actually gone from up here. And they have.

Only this morning, I was looking at a great photo of the young Don and Jeanette Lee who went on to run Rough Trade,  in their zeitgeisty clothes shop Acme Attractions – 1975 The Kings Road – and there is a scooter adorned with the Union Jack. It reminded me, I say, that the Union Jack has been used again and again to re-define Britain. “Exactly,” he says. “They used to say there was no black in the Union Jack but there is now.”

On the way back, we start talking about Malcolm McLaren, the maverick, the ideas man, the Sex Pistols’ manager. “I met him at his (and Vivienne Westwood’s) shop Sex, in those days. He influenced me. I might not be the man I am if it wasn’t for him,” he says, “he showed me how to join up the cultural dots. I’m sure he was ruthless and all the things people say, but he was also brilliant. It’s like I said, nice people don’t have great ideas.”

And so of course, ‘the Don’ has to declare. “People either love or hate me,”he says, “that’s how it is.”

Otherwise, it would appear he was the holder of bad ideas.

He’s just been on a six month world tour with Big Audio Dynamite – four men including Mick Jones in their 50s on the road – how was it? “It was like revisiting our youth,” he says, “I’m 56 and I’m loving it. I’m as old as rock n’roll. I’ve been through punk, rave, rock, reggae. I’ve done it all and I’m still doing it all. It hasn’t stopped. I’m a product of youth culture before it all went pear-shaped with X Factor. Music here is in crisis but in other parts of the world, it’s flourishing and is still about social change.”

Now we’re sitting down in the Tamariz Portuguese cafe. He’s talking about being on tour recently in New York and Tokyo. “People say to me – ‘Wasn’t it exhausting?’ – I say how exhausting can it, we’re being flown around the world, staying in great hotels, I’m with people I still hang out with, it’s not like we’re strangers re-forming a band. Women throwing themselves at us. Get real, it’s fantastic. And I still can’t play. I still have stickers on the keyboard but I’ve co-written half the songs so I think justifies my space.”

He also goes out Djing – the history and legacy of Jamaican music, from dancehall to dub step – on his own. Here and abroad. No fanfare. “I really enjoy it,” he says. “I like hanging around with funky, ordinary people and hearing their views.”

‘The Don’ hates a lot of different things, but equally he loves a lot too. On our way back, he’s opening up and telling me he was a tubby teenager. Which I can’t imagine and guffaw. “Stop, laughing,” he says, “I’m trying to tell you something serious. I couldn’t use my body to attract girls, so I had to start getting my mind together. I can’t stand pubs, football  or playing games. I’ve never been a man’s man, I’ve always hung out with women.”

That is the truth…

I forgot to mention, the dreadlocked gentleman who approached the Don down the road. He recognises him and wants to talk music. Don is impatient but gives him his email address. “That’s another reason I don’t want to walk the streets,” he says in grandiose mode.

I say with understatement: “Hey, it hasn’t been that bad.” In other words, hardly anyone has recognised him.

“Yeah, there should be a fuck of a lot more people that know me in Harlesden,” he says with Donist brio.

Don Letts’ show Culture Clash in on Radio 6 every weekend. He’s also Djing nationallyand internationally as well as still making films.

PS He points out later that it was people like John Lydon and Joe Strummer that started called him ‘the don’.

 

 

HILARIOUS, SAD, STRANGE TALES OF VIRGINITY LOST

Kate Monro – author of The First Time; True Tales of Virginity Lost & Found – was on Woman’s Hour not long ago. She was talking about www.virginityproject.typepad.com where she has been gathering all sorts of peoples’ (ages, nationalities, religions) first experiences of sex. And she emanated a grand passion for the extraordinary stories that she has been told over the last five years. I was so intrigued – I almost (key word) started a magazine called Bitch in the 80s where the back page was a first person account of someone having sex for the first time, I interviewed broadcaster, Andy Kershaw and I think his ‘dawning of a new age’ happened in the back of a car – I invited her to walk with me.

One Sunday afternoon, I opened my door to a sea of  leopardskin, prettiness, blonde hair, fetching straw hat and jeans. “Look, we’re matching,” she exclaims in a cheery way. And yes, I am wearing almost entirely leopardskin print myself. Both cardigan and skirt. Perhaps inadvertently we are paying tribute to  Jackie Collins. Anyway we enjoy our sartorial elision and take it as a good portent.

I comment that ‘losing your virginity’ seems like an anomaly as an expression. Anachronistic. Ridiculous. “Yes, all that patriarchal shit,” she agrees.“Really this project has been all about people’s personal stories. It’s been so much more that first time sex. I interviewed one woman who is 91 and it was so thrilling to find out how sexuality was treated in her time. In many ways, what I’ve been interested in is how attitudes to sexuality have changed over the years.”

What worries me, I say, is that being constantly invaded by superficial, airbrushed over-sexual imagery in videos/ads/TV – has undermined the value and vocabulary of sexuality. “You mean the ‘If I give you a blow job, will you like me more?’ attitude of some girls,” says Kate. “Interestingly, I’ve had quite a lot of young women tell me that they want to lose their virginity at their own pace.”

Great to hear, but I’m not convinced how widespread that is. I remember the documentary, Let’s Talk Sex, that Davina McCall – yes, Davina – made a few years ago on sex education in schools here and in Holland. No contest. In Holland, they actually start talking about love, relationships and sexuality at primary school whereas most of our kids get something short and unsatisfactory that is focussed on the biology. At secondary school. Not nearly enough. Not wide-ranging enough in discussion. Don’t make sexuality a tiny part of science and the PCHEE curriculum. Treat it as something vital and serious and part of relationship education. And make it compulsory.

I’m paying such a lot of attention to our conversation, I almost forget we’re in Harlesden. But I do notice that shops are changing. Ali Baba’s has turned into Lahori Bites. And Dora’s Delights has turned into Akbar’s Jewel In The Crown. Wrights, of course, the late oft lamented Wrights, has been replaced by the hideously graphic Cash Converters.

How did she start doing this project? “I was on holiday with an old boyfriend and we started discussing what happened to us the first time we had sex,” she explains, “and then, it just seemed like a great idea. One that would totally preoccupy me. My friends had always said I would find one thing and then, I’d be off and I was.”

I’m wondering now what happened when she first had sex? I can feel myself avoiding ‘losing her virginity’ in the same way as I avoid ‘committing suicide’. The religious, sinful undertones. “Well, when I was being interviewed on the radio recently, a presenter commented that it seemed very business-like,” she says. “and I suppose I was eager to get to the next stage. The virgin status was something I wanted to move on from. I was 15, on holiday in Spain with a friend’s parents. He was a charismatic, French guy. But I don’t think I did it in a great way. I’d rather have concentrated on really caring about the other person, than achieving something as I saw it then.”

I have to say here – I’m not smug, more surprised – that I did manage to have sex for the first time with a boyfriend that was more experienced than me in the techniques of physical love, and also     I went on to have a 9 year relationship with him. Blimey, a small success in an ocean of difficulty. And it was a good experience.

By this time, we’ve meandered up Manor Park Road and are about to embark on the non-scenic Church Road. We’re both aware that we’ve been oblivious to our surroundings. We’ve even managed to find a male friend that we both know. “This is proper urban jungle,” declares Kate who had thought Harlesden was the bit of the Harrow Road before Scrubs Lane. The Kensal Green side. So this is all a revelation for her.

“Telling my parents about the virginity project was like telling them I was pregnant,” she laughs, “but in fact, they responded very well. They’re very interested in history so they saw that it would make great social history.”

Has she asked her parents about the first time they had sex? “We’ve never spoken about,” she says, “I’m sure my mother probably would tell me. But I’ve never gone there.”

At this point, we pass a Somali wedding that is taking place at the Unity Centre. Three older gentleman have ornate, embroidered head wear that looks marvellously ornate and dramatic. “They would make a great photo,” exclaims Kate. Whereupon I exclaim that I can’t take photos of people without feeling I have some sort of relationship with them, it would feel too exploitative. Especially if they are from an ethnic minority.

It turns out that Kate has another project – www.bigguysmalldogblog.typepad.com – where she takes photographs. “It’s a social phenomenon that would never have happened ten years ago, “ she grins, “these huge men with tiny, fluffy dogs. At first, I was scared to actually use my camera but now I have been known to chase them down the street.”

Somehow we leapfrog into a discussion about the oldest person that Kate interviewed for her virginity project. “She’s a 101,” says Kate, “and she knew she’d had sex before she got married but she couldn’t quite remember the details. I love talking to older generations because it tells you so much about about their era. Because sex was more hidden in those days, and more taboo. I sometimes think they had so much better foreplay. They were creative about the way they pleasured each other.”

Bring back courting, I declare. And mean it. The delights of getting to know one another. Slowly.

“Older men were in general difficult to talk to about sex,” she says, “they didn’t have the vocabulary but women were dying to tell me all about it. Some were sad about the opportunities they’d missed. They would have loved to have been sexually active in this era. But I did find one 80 year old man who loved talking about his sex life. He was stationed in Austria as a soldier during the second world war, and he had a lot of sex.”

We reach Roundwood Park and Kate is telling me she has 250 stories. “I wanted to make the stories a patchwork quilt of the UK today with lots of different nationalities and religions included.”

So what stories did she want that she didn’t get? “I really wanted to find a black homosexual who would tell his virginity loss story,” she says enthusiastically, “and a traditional Muslim story. This sounds bad, but I did get this Thalidomide guy to tell me his amazing story. It’s one of the best stories in the book.”

As we part, Kate is off to meet the no doubt irrepressible American, Cindy Gallop, who has a website http://www.makelovenotporn.com which is about the effect of hard core porn on young people. Yes! Finally, Kate expresses her continuing fascination with men and how they are changing around their sexuality and their emotions. “Yeah, I’d really like to do some more research into that area,” she says. Me too.

The First Time – True Tales of Virginity Lost & Found (including her own) is by Kate Monro and out on Icon Books at £11 99.

THE WELSH HARP WITH A GREEN SPACE LIFE COACH

The Welsh Harp had been intriguing me for a while. I’d never been been before. Not long ago, I was coming down the stairs at Willesden Library when I saw inscribed on the wall ‘Bear escapes from The Welsh Harp in 1871′.

Bear!!!

So, unusually for me, I looked up the history beforehand. More mundanely the Brent reservoir, it was built in 1835 to supply the Grand Union Canal. The Old Welsh Harp Tavern was the name of the inn on the A5 side of the area – a pub is still there – and apparently, it was so opulent with ornate pleasure gardens that the Prince of Wales used to pop down and do a little pigeon shooting. My dear. It was the height of fashion.

Ah, the bear? The bear escaped from the Welsh Harp menagerie in 1871. Menagerie, a little zoo type affair. So underused as a word these days. I remember my father in the 1960s referring to our household – a 3 storey terrace house in Yorkshire – as a menagerie meaning we were chaotic. We had tortoises, a goldfish and guinea pigs, but I think he was talking about us, the children, rather than the actual animals.

Karen Liebenguth is a Green Space life coach who has offered me a session. Usually, she would choose a green space – park, woods, heath  – in London and you would both meet up there. This time, I have chosen this site of special scientific interest – it’s 17o hectares of open water, marshes, trees and grassland apparently – because I want to know what it’s like. The Welsh Harp, that is.

The idea of life coaching in a green space? “I love the outside,” says Karen, “and people relax and open up more easily when surrounded by trees, grass, water. It also de-intensifies the session. We can stop and breath at times, and appreciate the landscape. It’s good to come to coaching when you are at a point where you want to move on. Often people will have traced the background of the problem, but now they are ready to move on. Life coaching can give you a blueprint for your future. Whereas counselling and therapy focus more on delving into the roots of the difficulty.”

Sorry, but we arrive by car. We park at the Youth Sailing Club on Cool Oak lane. It has the air of having seen better days. Bits of litter, information boards covered in grafitti, but a wonderful view of the reservoir. And no-one around. Karen is looking for somewhere to have a pee. Will she go wild or not?

“I was walking with a group of clients once,” she says, “and they wanted to go to the toilet and there were no facilities. I suggested the bushes and they were shocked and a bit scared. I showed them where to go, and they were fine. It made me realise that there are people who are frightened of green spaces in that way.”

She emerges from a wooded corner, and we set off towards the reservoir. Somewhere here there is a breeding colony of Great Crested Grebes but I have feeling we are not going to find it today. There are weeping willows instead – so deliciously green – and she asks me what my area of focus is today.

I decide to take a risk, and tell Karen, I am having difficulty opening my heart to men. And that’s what I want to change. I’m single. I’m happy and single. But I’d like to be happy and in a relationship with a man, so I want to address whatever it takes in order to allow that to happen.

As we’re passing a noble swan paddles across the reservoir, and a Polish family wander over to feed  him with bread. At that point, Karen asks me what it would feel like if my heart was open. In a quiet, caring voice. She has a very graceful, compassionate presence.

I’m usually good at answering questions, but this is quite difficult. And the start of many similar ones. “Expanded,” I say feeling that is a very limited reply, so I continue, “when I’m camping in summer with a group of friends doing emotional work, I always feel expanded, and because I’ve just done lots of crying and laughing with others, my heart is more open than it normally is.”

I’m circumnavigating her question. She persists. “What would that feel like?” she asks as we notice a sign saying ‘Beware Blue Algae’. Oh dear, not so green after all. The Blue Algae is reflecting my fear of answering that question. I could have said ‘like ice melting’ or ‘like wood disintegrating’, but I can’t quite feel it.

And then we come across the most inspiring sight. A meadow of blue and white vetch. It’s almost unreal, it looks so untouched by fertiliser or gardener. We stand and take it all in – in silence.

This is the point. Difficult questions followed by enough space to reflect a little. We walk on, and talk about what has happened to me in relationships with men. “I’ve been hurt,” I explain, “so I closed my heart to protect myself. I needed to have time to recover and also for my heart to beat gently on its own, without needing another to relate to.”

“What is stopping your heart opening around men now?” she asks. I reply:”Fear and a fierce critic that can find fault with men.”

Are you afraid you are a little too independent now? “Well,”I say, “I know what I want and it doesn’t have to be conventional in terms of a relationship. I don’t need a man to move in. I would be content with someone who has their own projects and passions, but wants to spend some special times with me. I’m at a time in my life where I don’t need to have a relationship but I would like to.”

“So you sound like you know what you want,” she says. And I do.

We stare across the water as moor hens and mallard ducks pootle around. I like that word. It’s an idyllic afternoon.

I wonder where around here the naturists used to gather in their glorious nudity between 1921 and 1930 when some puritanical locals objected vociferously? 200 angry anti-naked voices. This was known as the Sun-Bathing Riot of 1930.

We turn back on ourselves now but via a different route away from the water. We see a group of ancient oak trees and allow ourselves to be truly fascinated by them. In that innocent, wondrous way.

I start to tell Karen about my last true love affair which lasted 5 years, which was torturous and extremely painful. He really couldn’t give in the way that I longed for. “It sounds as though you opened your heart too much to this man,” she says, “and it was wounded for a while, but now you are ready to try again.”

Exactly, I agree. At this moment, we’re walking very slowly and we stop.

Well, I do have a date with an artist this weekend.

This was like manna to a life coach who is eager to give to her clients.

“I’d like you to imagine how your heart would feel if it were really open to this artist?” she says.

I have to close my eyes and really let myself into a situation where my heart is soft. “What does your heart look like?” she continues, refusing to let me off the hook.

“My heart feels like a rose where the red petals are falling off to reveal its centre, and it smells very fragrant,” I say as I sort of sway in an involuntary swoon. Oh gosh, I’m really getting the Mills and Boon of this now.

Will this satisfy her, I wonder. No, no, not quite.

“And how will you know if your heart is open when you meet this artist?” she says.

I have to stop again and really allow myself to feel. “I’ll feel a golden, warm feeling flowing from my heart to his, “ I reply like a true heroine.

Now she seems content. She remarks that I was doing a little dance at the end, and she likes that.

But back to my critic. “What will I do if I feel critical about something to do with him?” she asks.

“I do feel a little critical already,” I say laughing. “because he smokes. And I do smoke but only occasionally when I’m at a party.”

This throws her a little. “Ah, well, there’s criticism and there are value judgements,” she says, “for me, personally, I couldn’t go out with a smoker.”

Ah ha, well, we’ll have to see.

By this time, I can see the Sailing Club car park appearing amongst the trees. “How will you deal with your critic if she raises her head whilst your on the date?” she asks. I suggest I have an internal dialogue to ascertain  how worthy the criticism is, whether it’s coming from a value I hold dear, or is arising from my fear that I will get hurt if I get close to this person.”

Oh good, she’s OK with that. “Yes, remember, an internal dialogue is a great resource,” she says finally.

I want to come back to the Welsh Harp, there are butterfly and moth walks that I’d like to go on. I feel as though that was just the beginning.

And as for Karen’s coaching, I loved being asked lots of questions. Usually, I ask the questions. I revelled in having to reflect, and go through a mini-process with her.

PSThe date was cancelled because the artist injured his back whilst pruning errant roses! So you’ll just have to watch this heart space.

PPS Heard Robert Elms’ on Radio London today declare that he had one of his first jobs cutting grass at the Welsh Harp!

Green Space Life Coaching was set up by Karen Liebenguth. Karen offers life coaching while walking in London’s parks and green spaces, indoor coaching and group workshops to reconnect with nature. The next nature connection country walk will take place on Sunday 16th October in Kent, meeting point at Charing Cross Station. See website for details http://www.greenspacecoaching.com or contact Karen 07815 591 279 karen@greenspacecoaching.com

THE PUBS OF HARLESDEN (WELL, A FEW OLD ONES)

There are a couple of asides to this tale. Firstly, a minor miracle that happened to me last week. I was in a rush. I went to the Santander cash machine, performed the usual card thing, and crossed Manor Park Road to go home. Three minutes later, it dawned on me that I’d left the cash behind. YES! LEFT THE CASH LYING THERE READY TO BE PICKED UP BY ALL AND SUNDRY. I didn’t even have time to panic. I turned back and there was a woman with a huge smile approaching me with £40 in her hands. Gasps all round. Of thanks and incredulity. A singular act of doing the right thing. In Harlesden. I glowed for the rest of the day.

The second aside is more apposite to the story. I invited Malcolm Barres-Baker, a rather grand, booming gentleman from Brent Archives to look at pubs with me. He’s rather charmingly of another era. When manners and politesse were uppermost in the ‘English’ way of being. Anyway, Malcolm – this is typical, I’m sure – sent me a tract from the nineteenth century author, Arthur Machen’s supernatural short story, The Inmost Light, written in 1894, to read beforehand. Because it mentions Harlesden. Oh, what an arcane delight this is.

Of course, at the time, Harlesden was in fact a prosperous middle-class suburb, so it’s slightly shocking to read Machen as he points out its less salubrious side. “A place of no character,” he writes caustically, “it’s too new to have any character as yet. There are rows of red houses and rows of white houses and the bright green Venetians, and the blistering doorways, and the little backyards they call gardens, and a few feeble shops, and then, just as you think you’re going to grasp the physiognomy of the settlement, it all melts away.”

Dear me! He goes on to describe Harlesden as “like a city of the dead”. Even at midday. The polar opposite is true now, of course. It’s hard to think of anywhere more animated. And I forgot, Machen goes on to set the scene for a certain Dr Black who was suspected of murdering his wife. “I dare say that you have never heard of the Harlesden case?” No, I hadn’t either.

Malcolm Barres-Baker and I had arranged to meet inside the Royal Oak. I’ve only been inside once before. Searching for an alcoholic boyfriend who had escaped from my alcohol-free home to pursue his own vision of how life should be. It was 5pm and this charismatic drunk was on a bender. His focus on beer was unwavering. I couldn’t persuade him to leave.

Today, Malcolm is already ensconced  with his half pint, and his archive photos.There’s a great, quite well-known (it adorns the cover of Traditional Pubs of Brent by Cliff Wadsworth) photo of The Royal Oak Tavern and  Railway Hotel (as it was known then) circa 1880 (but there was a building here before as long ago as 1757) when it was a two storey building with Venetian blinds and a huge, classy gaslight outside, there’s a horse and cart delivery in mid-action. The pub looks distinctly posh. Today’s building is a 1892 re-build. “The irony is,” says Malcolm, “the older pub looks more modern.” Now with its baroque-style – in other words, its got lots of fiddly architectural bits – 4 storeys, and red brick, there are always Irish bands playing there, but at 2pm today, it’s a little bit sad in here. Drinkers who’ve seen better days. Health-wise.

Just how upscale Harlesden was in 1900, Malcolm illustrates with a photo of a garden party in Roundwood Park showing the women in flouncy long dresses and the men in top hats and tails.

He also mentions the ‘original’ (ie 1892) tiles in the hallway, so we venture out there to admire the scene – a Parliamentarian trooper hunting for King Charles II after the Battle of Worcester in 1651, Charles hid in an oak tree, hence the name Royal Oark (see first picture)  enshrined in these colourfully painted ceramics. “They’re excellent quality,” intones Malcolm in his own unmistakable way. Posh too.

On the subject of ‘poshness’, Malcolm remarks that there are oodles of old photos and photo postcards of Harlesden in existence. Many more than Willesden. I’m surprised. I’d always assumed that Willesden was richer than Harlesden because there is so much printed coverage of Willesden.  “Harlesden was actually posher than Willesden,” says Malcolm getting into the vernacular.

Ah ha, I really didn’t know that.

And these picture postcards, why are there so many of them? Because the ladies and gents of the area would send them as a way of thanking their recent hosts for tea. “Remember in those days,” says Malcolm, “you could send a card in the morning and it would arrive in the afternoon, there were two post deliveries a day.” Postcards, letters – they were the texts ‘de leurs jours’. Instantly, I want to re-create the sending of postcards and letters in this way. The romance of the postal delivery. And, of course, there were no phones.

Before stepping out on to the High Street – which is rather a daylight shock for Malcolm who is used to being hidden away in  bookish archives – we discuss the contemporary( this being entirely the wrong word for the Royal Oak style) open plan bar. “In many ways, it’s not helping pub trade,” says Malcolm, “because before with a public bar and a lounge one, at least pubs could attract different sorts of drinkers. These days, it’s all-in-one and much more limited.”

We stare up at the sign outside. “What’s wrong with that?” says Malcolm who has a degree in history, and a post-degree in Greek classical archeology. I haven’t a clue. “Well, they’ve put an image of Charles I in the middle of the oak tree, when the king who is remembered for hiding in an oak tree is Charles II.”

We appreciate the mosaic of an oak tree on the side of the building. All gold and green – it is artfully constructed and also from 1892. Looking up is a vital constituent of urban anthropology. “Gladstone said always travel upstairs on a bus if you really want to see London,” says Malcolm helpfully.

This block of buildings including this version of the Green Man – the first one was built before 1778  and was a useful stopping place for stage coaches on their way from Harrow to the City of London – was constructed in 1907. And is pseudo-Dutch. Which I’ve never noticed before. The Green Man has curved gables and even a turret at the side. Malcolm is keen on the architecture and distinctly excited at the turret which he didn’t notice on the plans.

But why Dutch? “It’s in a style called Anglo-Dutch, or sometimes ‘Pont Street Dutch’,” he explains. “Starting in the 1870s, some young British architects wanted to break free from the competing Classical and Gothic styles. They began imitating late seventeenth and early eighteenth century domestic architecture, which in some cases was strongly influenced by the Low Countries, partly because King William III was Dutch. This Anglo-Dutch and pseudo-Queen Anne style was very popular around the time the pub was built. It also turns up in Australia, where it’s called Federation Anglo-Dutch because it was popular around 1901, when Australia became a single Commonwealth.”

Now, the Green Man has become the Portuguese Bi-cafe. Another take over. Or rather a flow from English pubdom to Portuguese eating and drinking location. In the incessant wave of building-use changes.

He stares across the road and declares that the various Somali shops over there had once been a pub too. The Elm Tree. I’m astonished. Again, I hadn’t realised there had ever been a pub there. Afterwards, I find a photo of it, and the building looks Edwardian.

We walk back along the High Street and Malcolm points out a blue sign on the buildings opposite Iceland, it says You May Telephone Here. Not any longer, of course.

We arrive at the newly refurbished Way 2 Save (so much better and cheaper than Tesco’s)  and focus our attention on the other side of the road. “A pub called the Anchor & Cable used to be there,” says Malcolm forever flummoxing me with new information, “which existed in 1670 and it was rebuilt in 1888 and called The Crown.” This building has flounces and flourishes, it almost thinks it’s in a gothic horror story. The more I look at it, the more I see. Additions. Balustrades, terracotta rosettes, grotesque heads, mock tudor black stripes. There’s quite a lot going on. Earlier during archive picture time, Malcolm has shown me a photo of the trade token used at the original pub. “There wasn’t enough small change in 17^th century England so tokens helped,” he explained. “On the back you can see the initials of the husband and wife who ran it.”

The last word has to go to the incisive words of Cliff Wadsworth – local history supremo – he writes –’ in the 1990s, the Crown suffered on of the worst examples of re-naming: someone felt it would do better under the title The Rat And Carrot’. Not surprisingly, it didn’t.