Closed indefinitly: a one street blip

Goucester street is changing. The businesses at the bottom o left are gradually closing and freeholds are going up for sale. Badbrook Hall, on the corner, has been redeveloped as eco-flats with solar panels and a fence has been built around it. The building no longer bears the legend Badbrook Hall. Fat Toni's artisan pizza bakery still thrives, but the small independent traders such as Cappelli's hairdressers and Helen G fashions are going, going, gone. The Wy Wong Chinese takeaway appears to be the latest casualty, now "closed indefinitly" (sic). What next, I wonder? I can't see the street going yuppie yet. Not on this side, anyway. Not while there's still a Subway sandwich shop, a Ladbroke's bookmaker's, two Indian restaurants, a kebab shop, and a pet shop. I've blipped most of these businesses over the years, and tagged them either Gloucester Street or one street.

It's been an emotional day. Long leavers' assembly which I didn't go to, because I was working in nursery, but I kept walking past and catching snatches of it. Many of our older 'leavers' actually now transfer to the post-19 unit, which is only downstairs, but it's a gear shift and is celebrated as such. In the afternoon I took some of the nursery leavers to the Leavers' Mass in the hall, and they got quite sad about leaving.

Then the mass finished, the children went back to their classes. and suddenly the fire alarm went off! Long story, but it was a false alarm. We didn't know that at the time. Fortunately my eight-years-at- boarding-school training has made me respond like a trained dog to the sound of the fire alarm (This may be the only useful thing I got out of boarding school). We all got out safely and calmly.

Then there was more saying goodbye to nursery leavers, and more catching-up on paperwork and some really disgusting cleaning tasks. I walked home, and watched an entire episode of Top of the Pops from 1980. I knew every single song, word perfect. I listened to the radio a great deal that year, because I had chicken pox during my O levels and was quarantined at boarding school. It might only have been for all of two weeks, but Lord, how lonely I was!