Living in 1988
I've been digging up some old photographs and they bring back fond memories.
These three are from the flat where we first lived in the East End of London. It belonged to a Housing Association that could not afford to do it up, and so rented a whole staircase to our short-life housing co-op and we sub-letted rooms for £9 per week, which was unbelievable. I met my wife-to-be there and we moved in to this flat together.
The flats had a gas fire and no phones (there were no mobile phones in those days). The bathroom was shared between the whole staircase and lived at the bottom of the stairwell. Somebody tried to get an old piano into their flat and failed to budge it up the stairs, so it was left in the bathroom. The shared basement space became a studio for the artists.
It wasn't all rosy, but it was pretty good. A cool bunch of people, and cheap rent on the outskirts of the centre of London. It doesn't get much better really.
Here's a tune from a band I was enjoying a lot around this time:
4 comments:
Happy days- the black and white makes it seem like the thirties!
We were living in a cheap condemned building in Lambeth Walk at the time. I think we only paid about 10 quid a week as it was such a slum. Tell the kids today and they won't believe you! You probably walked passed it many a time. Didnt we meet around this time at the Vauxhall City Farm? My memory is a little hazy of the 80's.
Do you never wish you still lived there? Or that you had that place to hide away in when you were in London? Do you look back on it as an idyll in any way?
Oh for sure. They were great times, and even if we can't recreate them, it's nice to dip back into our youth from time to time.
We were poor but we were happy.
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