Old haunts

This past week has been half-term so we decided to go away for a few days. Incidentally, the boys are getting on well at school. Gregor comes home every day with another set of cereal boxes stuck together - mostly beehives, but occasionally an army tank. Alastair will stick to 3 afternoons for the time being. He's very tired by the end of the day and, although it's very fulfilling and beneficial for him, we don't need to push him too hard.

But back to the break. We decided to visit Leicester, where I went to college and where I still have a handful of friends, a couple of whom we were to meet up with and who will feature later in this Leicester series. But first, I retraced a few well-worn paths for the benefit of Belousovi and filling in the gaps.

Along a hidden alley off the busy London Road lies College Avenue in the afternoon sunlight.

I lived here in the second year with Jo from Wigan, Duffy from Manchester and John from Warrington. Next door but one were Helen from Eltham and Sally from Swindon. Opposite was Glaswegian Billy who taught me circus skills.

Skipping abodes in East Park Road and St. Stephen's Road, I jump to Avenue Road. St. Maxime's House. For the benefit of ex-flatmate Sanjhevi most particularly.
And Blockbusters on Queens Park Road. Just to make Sanjh larf.

And any whirlwind tour of Leicester naturally misses out many haunts you can't find the way back to. And so many of the businesses have changed too. Hill House Hammond is no more. Christopher Scotney is still going strong, but the jazz club is gone. So too are the pizza shops that I was a delivery driver for, dashing around in my little unsafe Suzuki. And the building that's going up in the centre is remarkable. Not from an architectural point of view, just mass. St Nicholas is all cranes and scaffolding. Brand new shopping malls. Builders sit in new cafes waiting to get on with something and it's probably going to be transformed for 21st century debt-ridden leisure by consumerism lifestyle when it's done. But I hope they don't touch the old market, however.....selling almost everything by real trading and shouting and knocking down prices and a whole new world for me back then and, if you got there at about 4 o-clock on a Saturday afternoon you could fill two bags with fresh stuff for a couple of quid and a cheeky bit of chat. It's where I bought my first 2 kilos of fresh mussels from Grimsby (though didn't ask for them in kilos then), and started to cook with things I'd never heard of before - okra, coriander, cumin seeds, plantains.