This is a little newsagents on Deansbrook Road, Edgware (at the edge of Burnt Oak), near the side exit to the hospital where I was born. It’s not on a row of shops and nowhere near the parade of shops on the other end of Deansbrook, it’s surprising that it is still there. I used to pop into this shop on the way home from school, walking home with my friend Terry we would pop in here for a Mars bar or a Panda Cola, which was a generic tasting fizzy drink in a small bottle with a panda on it, that would only be about 15p (there were other ‘Panda Pops’ drinks such as orangeade or limeade, we would get hose from the school canteen at lunchtime). It’s near the corner of Fairfield Avenue. You walk up there from Deansbrook to get to the alley that leads into Edgware. Well, actually we would cut down an alley further up Deansbrook into Fairfield Crescent, before cutting into the alley to Edgware, so missing this shop entirely, but on the way home we would go this way to get a Panda Cola from this little shop. Panda Cola was all I could afford. If you came out with a Coca Cola or a Pepsi, people would look at you going, ooh look at flash bollocks there, off to his mansion.

Those alleys I mentioned a minute ago, they are still the shortest route walking from Burnt Oak to Edgware, and have been since my Mum was a girl. Despite having walked them a million times, I’m always wary. It had a dodgy reputation in the old days, you never knew who was hanging out there, and with so many dodgy people around these days (as everyone always tells me), you have to keep your eyes open. For me though I always think of one thing, a little dog called Rocky. When we were schoolkids, me and Terry would walk down the little alley, and if we were lucky, it would be empty, and we would pass through on our journey. It’s like playing an adventure game, roll a dice to test your luck. If we were unlucky, a little dog who lived in the adjoining house and whose name was Rocky (we learned from the dog’s neighbours, who went to our school) would be there at the end of the alley, he would see us and immediately give chase, forcing us up the badly-kept steps and out onto the busy Deansbrook traffic. Rocky was unrelenting. Rocky would not simply “let you pass by”. Rocky is long dead by now, but I bet his ghost haunts that alley. Terry and I still talk about him (if “do you remember Rocky” “the dog or the film” “the dog” “yeah” counts as talking about him).