{Fundamental Points of View [continued (8)]}[14th March 1988]

[Redbook5:58][19880314:1115h]{Fundamental Points of View [continued (8)]}[14th March 1988]

19880314.1115

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There was an electricians shop* in the King's Road, Chelsea: the only non-clothes shop, so far as I recall, in the stretch from the Town Hall to Sloane Square,** which was there when I arrived [as a child] in the early 1950s, and was still there when I left in 1986. In all that time I don't think it changed in any material respect: for as long as I can remember, the same people ran it. They steadfastly and deliberately (for I once discussed it with them, with mutual unease) resisted all attempts to cash in on the King's Road's fashionable aspect. (Their prices became devilishly high, but so I guess were their [local business tax] rates.) They just never changed: they were as if in a time-warp.

They got on perfectly with my parents, who paid them large amounts of money, but after my misunderstandings with the shop became the rule rather than the exception, I had to stop going there. It was like talking to people on another planet, or at least on another wave-length. Within a few years of*** my departure from Chelsea, I learnt from my mother that they were either Exclusive or Plymouth Brethren – I forget which. In a way, I hope that they are there still: a fixed point in a madly whirling World.****

*G.(?) Ashby <900916>

**[ by 1986-- after the sad departure of Beetons the bakers with its delicious sausage rolls and warm mini-loaves straight from the oven; Mr. Jones the Grocer whose bicycles delivered all over Chelsea and who used to give the writer a custard cream biscuit whenever as a small boy he visited Mr. Jones’ shop; and the original Thomas Crapper, plumber; among many others. <20171219>]

***{(before, that is)}

****Apparently not. <891006>

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