Last Saturday I was sitting in the sun on a bench under a tree in the Duke of York square, an old man came and sat nearby with his coffee… I noticed his energy reach towards me even though he was turned away…
Anadi came back with our coffee and juice and sat beside me…
The old man got up, came over and stood in front of us… ’Are you on holiday?’ – he asked… ‘Every day is a holiday’ Anadi replied, smiling.
‘We live here’ I explained, ‘but every day does feel like a holiday…’
‘Do you know who lives over there?’ he pointed up to a flat that looked over the square…
‘Who lives there?’ – we asked…
‘Are you old enough to know the Beatles?’
‘Everyone knows the Beatles’ Anadi laughed…
‘Well who’s left?’ – he continued… ‘Paul McCartney’ I offered, ‘Ringo’ Anadi replied
‘Yes, that’s the one’, he nodded… ‘Ringo lives there…’
He then started to tell us about the many other well known people who live round and about before starting on his own life story…
‘We came down from Kings Lynn with my Mother because of the flooding, we moved to Battersea, which wasn’t like it is now…I started to swim in an indoor pool – they were all outdoor where we’d come from, and freezing cold – and then there was the boxing club next door, so I joined that…
My brother and I started with the boy scouts and when it was ‘bob a job’ week we couldn’t get any work around Battersea, and so we tried Chelsea instead – that’s when I fell in love with the Kings road… I was 14 and we had jobs for the whole week…
I went into the theatres and asked if I could do some work there and they told me to come back in the summer… ‘
He told us how he did go back in the summer, and was soon earning £15 a week ‘More than my Dad’, he offered…
He told us more of his life , the famous people he had met and how eventually he ran a well known deli on the Kings road, which sold Caviar for £48 a portion…
We sat sipping our coffee and munching on croissant listening to his tales, the sun warming us
He finished by telling us how he and his wife sold their home… ‘The estate agents suggested £1.8 million – Our faces fell when they told us that, so they suggested 1.9’
‘We said “no” and put it on the market for 2.5… Within a week nine people had offered to buy our home and so I suggested the agent offer someone to gazump…!
‘We got £3 million, it’s still in the bank’ he finished, laughing…
A man with a camera around his neck was hovering … ‘Hello Joe’, he said ‘How are you doing…?’ He chatted awhile and then the man with the camera showed me some of his photographs, ‘They’re fabulous’ I said…’I’ve photographed Stella McCartney’ he responded…
Joe told us he is 80 now, and he still loves the Kings road.
I told him I too fell in love with the Kings road when I was 14 and came on my first solo shopping trip to London here…
They both went on their way…
Anadi and I than walked over to Battersea Park, we sat on the grass in the hot hot sun;
‘Life is such fun’, I said, ‘all these people we meet, their lives and their stories…’
So many lives… So many stories
So much love, so much living