London

Gosh, Terry - something in common with you at last! If fleetingly - I was produced in Edgware and stabled in Colindale until exported to the colonies at 7. I remember the Silk Stream at the back of our flat as a huge, raging torrent, until I went back out of curiosity in my 30s and found it was about four inches deep! I enjoyed being a small kid there as I had loads of pals, but the most exciting thing was going to the Saturday film matinee, seeing some sort of bizarre show before the film started (I remember us being treated to a girl contortionist once), and buying sherbet flying saucers in the sweetie shop.

Straight to Africa and in amongst the beetles, millipedes, scorpions and snakes was a bit more fascinating. (And that was also at the Saturday morning cinema!)
 
Jon - just for you ;) :

We are the boys and girls all known as
The minors of the ABC
And every Saturday we line up
To see the films we love
And shout aloud with glee
We love to laugh and have a sing-song
Just a happy crowd are we
We're all friends together
We're minors of the ABC.

Does it take you back?

Will they take you back?
 
Awww, sweeeet. Thanks, Mo! Some people feel I should be taken back - as far back as is possible!

Actually, can you imagine packing your 5 or 6 y.o. daughter off to the flicks with a couple of chums only a few years younger these days? We had a short walk up Colindeep Lane, across a main road and up onto the High Street in Colindale. I can now remember one of my friends half-inching a liquorice sherbet and trying to get me, Little Miss Prissy-shoes, to take it. I wouldn't because it was stolen.

We had a wonderful time watching the pre-film show or a man playing an organ, or someone's pet dog on a see-saw. Then a couple of cartoons (YAYYYYY!! Squeals of delight and howls of pant-peeing laughter), then the 'big film', which usually involved cowboys racing around a lot and shooting people. We didn't like 'soppy' films where boys sang drippy songs to girls. These would result in a lot of unseemly barracking of the romantic scenes, and loud kissing noises during the clinches. All great fun!
 
But say it wasn't an ABC cinema?

Granada had (to the tune of "The British Grenadiers"):

"We're one for all and all for one
The Tooting* Granadiers
We play the game at work or fun
The Tooting Granadiers
And when the skies are overcast
We'll find a silver lining
You'll know us when we shout
I SERVE
The Tooting Granadiers"

*Substitute your local Granada - Gorbals, Wigan or Toxteth for instance

Odeon and Gaumont cinemas had one that started:

“We come alooong on Saturday morning,
Greeting everybody with a smile.
We come aloooong on Saturday morning,
Knowing that its all worth while...”

I can't remember the rest but in the Saturday morning picture days I never needed to follow the bouncing ball as I knew all the words.
 
Blimey Jon. I wouldn't have had you down as a Norf Lundener!

Yes I remember the Silkstream. As you say it was pretty tame although it did have its moments when it bucketed down. I remember a kid drowning in it after he fell in by Watling Market in Burnt Oak, when it had become a raging torrent. He got washed downstream. You couldn't believe that could happen.

'Edgware Week' was the scene of my first competitive table tennis match and i lost it to the flipping Rabbi! I even got a lecture from him for playing like an idiot - "my boy, i did not win the game, you lost it." I suppose that I remembered it.
Losing to a Rabbi though - how cool is that?

I remember seeing trolley buses in Colindale when I was very very young. My mum took me on the bus to West Hendon to see grandma so we went through Colindale down the Edgware Road. The RAF camp was near Colindale I think, and I played on a football pitch there for the cubs just before it closed, and they then built that wonderful housing estate. Good old Colindale.
 
I can't remember the rest but in the Saturday morning picture days I never needed to follow the bouncing ball as I knew all the words.
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Why doesn't that surprise us :P

I remeber getting in to The Rialto for three empty jam jars!
Click to expand...

I remember filling them.
 
"I can't remember the rest but in the Saturday morning picture days I never needed to follow the bouncing ball as I knew all the words."
"Why doesn't that surprise us?"
Click to expand...
Precisely. That's why I wrote it...
 
Brian I think that Middlesex was effectively abolished and became part of the GLC. Edgware, Burnt Oak and Colindale would mainly fall within the London Borough of Barnet, or failing that Harrow or Brent.
 
Middlesex continues to exist as a postal area. On this side of the river the London boroughs of Sutton and Croydon, for example, are in Surrey. For an address to be considered in Londont it should have a London postal district (EC1, E17, NW7, SW17 etc) as the first part of its postcode.
 
It reminds me of when I used to hear blokes on holiday talking to others from, say, Manchester or Newcastle.

"Where you from, mate?"

"Manchester - you?"

"London"

"What part?"

"Slough."
 
Like me, terry, you must remember when they moved it from Bucks to Berks. Rumour has it that it was at the insistance of the Buckinghamshire residents... :D
 
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