Probably complete coincidence, but whilst I was writing the previous blog entry about my first year as a Londoner, including a link to stomach pains, I suffered severe stomach cramps for the first time in twenty plus years . Simply eating a little food would cause terrific pain. Since Wednesday afternoon, I've barely eaten a thing, maybe a few slices of toast each day. It's now Saturday lunch time and I'm mentally debating whether to eat something light. I have also lost my appetite, which is just as well, and weighing myself this morning, I discovered that I have shed a kilo! Maybe I should continue not eating for a few more days.
Anyway, back to the topic of the day. When I lived in London, I lived at "The Bayit" ("the house", in Hebrew, as opposed to "The mo'adon", the club house), which is pictured on the left, although there wasn't the pile of building rubbish in the front garden then. The address is 360 Finchley Road, NW3, if anyone wants to make a pilgrimage there. I understand that now it's three separate flats, a fact that doesn't surprise me. I don't know who owned the house (when I lived there) or when, but I knew prior to moving there that this was a house for Habonim 'movement workers' and fellow travellers. Being a student whose parents lived outside of London, I had a strong claim to living there. Londoners would often move in for a few months or a year then move out again.
My room was on the first floor, on the right of the building - that's the room with the small balcony with the metal rails and the angled windows. There were several rooms - mainly the ones on the left - that were for two people, along with several smaller rooms for singles. There could be up to 15 people living there at any one time; in the first months of my residence, there was even someone living in what might be termed 'the garden shed' - it must have been very cold in there. My room was probably the largest of the single rooms, not that it was palatial. There was a bed, a clothes cupboard (where I could hang my shirts and trousers), a chest of drawers, a desk for working on (I placed this in that alcove) and a small couch; heat came from a gas fire. There used to be a chair on the balcony, and occasionally I would sit there: the area was very dusty and over-looked a major junction (the Hendon Way), so normally all my windows (double glazing) were firmly closed.
One can't see from the picture (taken from Google Earth), but the house was 'deep'; there was also a conservatory that was joined to the living room on one side and to a big garden, which in those days was a wilderness, on the other side. Later on, I and a few others borrowed some garden tools from the neighbours and got rid of all the weeds. We had a washing machine and probably a dryer in the conservatory, but these were always breaking down, so after a while we started taking laundry to a nearby laundromat.
In those far off days, students used to receive a grant from the Government for living expenses, as well as free tuition. I don't remember how much the grant was (maybe £20 per week, but remember that this was only for the 30 weeks in the academic calendar; no provision for holidays), but for me it was a large amount (and let's not forget that the season ticket for the Underground was covered by an extra grant). We used to pay £1.50 rent and maybe £2.50 for food in the house, so there was plenty of discretionary income (although the few textbooks available were expensive, £10-20). We would buy the food communally and eat supper together; over the weekend, all sorts of people would turn up and eat as well, although there was no communal dinner on Saturdays and Sundays. I used to cook once or twice a week for everybody, buying vegetables and meat in local shops. 'Dry goods' would be purchased once every month or so from a cash and carry store (I remember this being far away from us).
The bay windows under my room were part of the hall; there was a pay phone there where we used to receive calls (obviously with the turnover in personnel, it was not practical to have a 'normal' phone). I remember that a 10p call would allow 20-30 minutes conversation to someone else in London, very handy for talking with my girlfriend who lived south of the river. There was a notice board where messages could be written for people, and a set of wooden post boxes, where one of us would sort the mail. There was also a toilet, very useful with the number of people in the house. There was another toilet on the half-landing just above my room, and a few more in the double bathrooms down the corridor from my room. Once a week, we would clean the public areas - some people to the kitchen, some to the stairs, some to the toilets and some to the living room ("klali" in pidgin Hebrew).
There's an amusing story about the toilet on the half-landing: in September 1977 two Israeli girls came to stay for a year. My introduction to one of these girls was when we were playing cricket in the garden, no longer a wilderness. Maybe the same night I was woken from my sleep by the door opening and the other girl entering; I doubt that she had come to make my acquaintance, but rather use the toilet. I directed her to the correct door before anything else could happen.
Across the road from us was a side road in which lived Tim Brooke-Taylor, although I'm not sure that we ever saw him. Two doors down from us lived Dr David Owen, who was Britain's foreign minister in 1977, but I never saw him either. I didn't know this at the time, but Hugh Banton (VdGG organist) lived not far away in Cricklewood, which was down the road and to the right. I don't think that I ever set foot in that area.
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