WEDNESDAY WANDERINGS - My North Finchley by the late Richard Tearle

visiting around and about,
wandering here and there...

 

Richard Tearle was a dear, treasured friend. He passed away, after various illnesses took their toll, on April 13th 2021, which happened to be my birthday. I miss him. A lot.

I am so proud to have managed to get his first  'short novel' into print before he died - he saw the book, held it, and was pleased with it.

He wrote the story - The North Finchley Writers' Group - after I'd read a short story of his about a group of writers, and I suggested that it would make a good novella about 'ordinary people doing ordinary things'. The 'ordinary people' that Richard then created were writers, some already successful, some struggling to get published. All had secrets, which we eavesdrop upon as the fly-on-the-wall reader. There's some romance in there as well - and mention of the football team, Tottenham Hotspur, Richard's love. (I got ticked off by him when I wrote Tottenham Hotspurs  'No s,' he said, 'its Spurs or Tottenham Hotspur you don't mix the two!' I won't make that mistake again!

North Finchley is a suburb of London in the London Borough of Barnet, situated seven miles (eleven km) north-west of Charing Cross.

Just before he became really poorly, I asked him to do me some articles which we could use for marketing for the book. This is one of them.

My North Finchley by Richard Tearle

The year was 1962 and I was fourteen years of age when the family moved from our council flat in Highgate to our new home at the very bottom of Mayfield Avenue, N12.

In truth, I had reservations – I left behind a lot of friends and a love of the area I had waved goodbye to. But I had a few friends from my school in Crouch End who lived nearby and we would soon become a small party boarding the two buses that would deliver us to school. 

Technically, Mayfield Avenue was in Friern Barnet, but so close to the border with North Finchley as to make no difference. I didn't know the area very well so exploring was fun. 

A well known landmark was – and still is – the Tally Ho! Public House, situated on a small triangle of land that split the High Road and Ballards Lane. Behind the pub was the bus station where a number of routes began or terminated their journeys. The conveyances for these routes were a mixture of petrol buses and Trolley Buses, but the latter's wires would soon be pulled down and the brand new Routemaster bus – such an icon – would soon take over and, indeed, dominate the London Transport domain.

Tally Ho Corner in an old postcard

Someone – I think it might even have been me – once said that shops change, roads don't. This is certainly true of North Finchley today. The Tally Ho! Is still there, as is the Swan and Pyramids, albeit that the building that I knew has been demolished and replaced by a less attractive one. But the Torrington arms has gone, as have the 'big stores' of Owen Owen and Timothy Whites. Gone too, is the magnificent cinema, The Gaumont, demolished in 1980. Ah! What tales could be told! At that time, North Finchley boasted two cinemas, the other being The Odeon at the Northern end of the High Road, bordering on the N20 district of Whetstone.

What is special for me about the area is that it is where I grew up. I don't mean in the normal  child to adolescent sense but the next stage: from irresponsible teenager to responsible adult.

It was the beginning of a new age for me. I was allowed to go to White Hart Lane (Spurs' football stadium) with friends rather than with someone else's dad. Spurs promised much but delivered little – some things never change. 

It was the pre-Beatles era too.  The Shadows were still top group for me (we called them 'groups' then, rather than 'bands'). Tin Pan alley ruled the roost and the best records came from America. The advent of the Fab Four changed that; they not only wrote their own songs but also wrote for others, including the Rolling Stones, who were my personal favourites of the thousands of groups that appeared from nowhere.

Cliff Richard and
 the Shadows 1962

Football and Music dominated my life. I wanted to be a footballer by day and a pop star in the evenings! Trouble was, I was rubbish at both! We – my friends and I – did form a group and showed off our skills at a youth club near Friern Barnet Town Hall. Eight tunes, six of them by the Shadows! The Survivors did not survive, not even in our second incarnation as the the Soul Survivors. 

We attended 'dances' at Friern Barnet Church Hall, seeing groups like The Troubadors and The Falcons – in other words, nobody famous. My first gig proper meant travelling to Hammersmith to see The Everly Brothers and Bo Diddley with an up and coming group called The Rolling Stones at the bottom of the bill. I did get to see the Beatles, too: they were booked for a short Christmas season at Finsbury Park Astoria and a school friend had a mother who worked there as a cleaner. She could obtain tickets for those who could afford them. The price was 12/6 which just happened to be exactly the same amount as our dinner money. Need I say more?

I did get a roasting over that from my mother, though … 

I got my first job in 1964 with the Every Ready Company. At the time their offices were in Holloway but it was well known that they were moving to a custom built office block in Whetstone which was a ten minute walk from my house. 

I had also discovered girls at this time. There was Wendy, Jill (or was it Gill?), Trish, Terri, Rowena and Christine – all short lived until I met my wife – another Wendy – when working at the 'Big House' in Whetstone.

We married in 1970 and made our first home in New Barnet. 

The last I saw of North Finchley was a few years ago. The place looked rather run down to me; but then so do many places one revisits. It is of no consequence: the memories remained and were recalled with every step I took. And remembered with no regrets. At the time, teenage angst is painful, but I have no cause to be bitter. I enjoyed my years in the area and will always remember them fondly.

© Richard Tearle  (7th May 1948 - 13th April 2021)

article written: November 2020

Buy from Amazon

When a group of north London writers meet each month for a chat, coffee, and cake – what else is on their agenda? Constructive criticism? New Ideas? An exciting project? And maybe, more than one prospective romance...?

Eavesdrop on the monthly meetings of the North Finchley Writers' Group, follow some ordinary people with a love of story writing, and an eagerness for success. Discover, along with them, the mysteries of creating characters and plot, of what inspires ideas, and how real life can, occasionally, divert the dream...

READERS’ PRAISE for RICHARD’S WRITING

“A thoroughly lovely, fun, read. Believable characters who I got to know quite well. Really enjoyed it. True to life I’d say!”

“So entertaining! I laughed a lot – and recognised many a writer’s dilemma!”

Read some of Richard's short stories and articles on his web/blog here:

https://scrapsandscribblings.blogspot.com/p/my-writing.html

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