Author: Kev

Back in the early 90’s, when we lived in London, we lived at 3 different addresses. Our first being 24 Avenue Road, Brentford. This is where I was living when I first met Lou Lou, where Brian & Fiona met, and the place where many friends & family visited us from Australia, Canada, USA, New Zealand, South Africa, it was the united nations, party central. Our 2^nd address was 74 Adelaide Road, London W13. The lady who lives there now kindly invited Louise & I inside to look around. It’s changed a lot. Finally, our 3^rd and arguably most important address, we ‘lived’, was the ‘Lord Nelson’ pub. Brian worked (mainly drank) here, and it was the epicentre of our social life. The ‘Nels or Else’ has been totally renovated inside, and the updated beer garden is stunning, but the old piano remains, and is still out of tune.

After our day in Lewisham, we needed to decompress, so we stopped off in Laleham on our way back home to Emsworth. Laleham is a picturesque village on the River Thames, in the Borough of Spelthorne, about 17 miles west of central London. Laleham is downriver from Staines-upon-Thames, where our Lou Lou is from. Louise spent a lot of time in Laleham, when she was growing up. The poet Matthew Arnold (Louise’s school was named after him) lived here. The Church of England parish church of All Saints dates from the 12th century. The ‘Turks Head’ pub is where Louise celebrated her 18^th Birthday…3 years in a row! The ‘Turks Head’ recommended that we have dinner at the ‘Three Horseshoes’ pub around the corner. An excellent, much needed and appreciated recommendation.  

Things were running too smoothly. It simply would not be a Keeler family holiday without something going wrong. We had a car hire booked for pick up in the ‘scenic’ London borough of Lewisham. I’ve never had any desire to visit Lewisham. Not because of the reputation it has associated with its gang-youth violence problem, nor the fact that its infamous Millwall FC supporters were one of the most notorious hooligan gangs in England. Or even the fact that Mummy Margaret had repeatedly warned us to stay away from East London. No, it’s simply the fact that Lewisham, is a shit hole. We departed Mayfair and after a £60 taxi ride we arrived at around 1pm at ENTERPRISE RENT-A-CAR, Lewisham to be advised by the assistant manager that he had no vehicle for us. His name was Rokas Balcius and he’d clearly attended the Basil Fawlty school of customer care. He shrugged his shoulders, made no effort whatsoever to offer any alternate solution, and informed me that we should have booked earlier. The fact that I had a confirmed booking number was irrelevant as he claims he’d made attempts to contact us. The fact that I had no missed calls on my phone, and that he finally admitted that he didn’t actually have either my phone number or email would imply that his initial statement may have been bullshit? Keeping calm in a crisis is important. We considered all possible scenarios, including spending a night in Lewisham on the off chance of a suitable vehicle being available. As old mate Rokas said: “perhaps tomorrow”. After a Keeler family conference, the decision was made to get to Heathrow. To Rokas credit and given the very real threat from me that the Keeler’s would be spending the night on the floor of ENTERPRISE RENT-A-CAR, Lewisham or at his apartment, he arranged an Uber to Woolwich tube station. Of course the Uber XL was too small for all 6 of us and our luggage, so we were forced to order a 2^nd Uber & split in to 2 groups. Uber #1 got dropped at the car park of the ‘Royal Arsenal Hotel’. Uber #2 at least got dropped at an underground station. The wrong one. Anyhow, we sorted it out and had a wonderful family reunion at the Woolwich underground and without any problems whatsoever (other than Blake & his oyster card) we took the 40 minute ride via the new & I must say very clean – Queen Elizabeth Line to Heathrow. It was good to get the smell of Lewisham out of our nostrils. We arrived at Heathrow. Rode the lifts up and down until we found the right floor. Finally, at SIXT-Rent a car, we had no choice but to take what we could get, so grabbed 2 vehicles (no people carriers anywhere). Louise got the Audi. I got the SKODA. Just a final note regarding Lewisham. On our way out, we drove around an abandoned crashed vehicle in the middle of the road and further along, a taped off police crime scene. Our research late last night revealed that a murder investigation has been launched after a 20-year-old man was found with knife injuries, on the street in Lewisham, and sadly passed away. Keep it real Lewisham. Still a shit hole

It’s ok to be an annoying tourist for 30 minutes. Blake (Yoko) broke up the band by refusing to participate in the photo, Bailey was shopping in Covent Garden and was unable to play her role as Jimmie Nicol. Meanwhile, Lou Lou played her Linda McCartney (official photographer) role to perfection. Abbey Road is in northwest London. It is the location of one of the world’s most famous recording studios, and the world’s most famous zebra crossing. Tourists from around the world flock here to recreate the famous Beatles album cover shot. It is in the beautiful, leafy St John’s Wood, the area includes plenty of cafes, restaurants, and Lords Cricket Ground. We jumped on the 139 bus from Trafalgar Square, took our mandatory crossing photos, then had a great dinner at ‘Fora Restaurant’, before heading back to central London via Lords, where the very friendly security guards kindly let us in to the historic ground and were even kind enough to offer to take some photos for us.

Heddon Street is a small, side-street and alleyway off Regent Street located in the heart of London, close to Piccadilly Circus. If there is any London location which can be justifiably described as THE Ziggy Stardust “shrine” it would have to be Heddon Street where Bowie posed outside #23 for the front cover of the ‘Ziggy’ album.  Full title: The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. This street has for Bowie fans the same significance that the Abbey Road zebra-crossing has for Beatles fans. You can grab a pint at the ‘Starman’ pub located at the end of the lane. It has a magnificent painting of the Ziggy album cover hanging next to the main bar. The first photo is what the street looked like back in the 70’s when Bowie did the album cover with the 2nd picture (featuring Blake, Josh & Trav) showing Heddon Street in 2023.

London’s Tin Pan Alley – Denmark Street is Europe’s greatest music street. Filled with specialist music shops buzzing with people passionate about music. Everyone from The Beatles to The Stones, to Jimi Hendrix have visited here at some stage. Many of those guys recorded or jammed here in the basements. Situated on the cusp of London’s West End running off Charing Cross Road. It was once the home to music publishers, all of the major UK music magazine offices, recording & rehearsal studios and guitar shops on both sides of the street. Bernie Taupin and Elton John wrote “Your Song”, Elton’s first hit single, at No. 20 Denmark Street. Taupin wrote the lyrics while sitting on the roof (“I sat on the roof and kicked off the moss”) while waiting for Elton one morning. Every British band you can think of have bought and sold guitars here. The National steel acoustic resonator Travers is pictured playing was priced at £2,999 (A$5,800). A bargain compared to the price tags on the pre-owned by Iron Maiden, Joe Satriani & Stevie Ray Vaughan guitars downstairs in the cabinets. But their price tags were not even close to the Jimmy Page pre-owned Gibson Les Paul with the £60,000 (A$116,000) price tag. The answer is no. We didn’t buy any guitars.

Admission to the Natural History Museum Cromwell Rd, South Kensington, London is FREE. The recommended visiting time is around 3 to 4 hours, but according to the tourist brochures, you could easily spend the entire day wandering around all 4 of the museum’s coloured zones. However, as I have the attention span of a small child, and just wanted to see the dinosaurs, I went to the Blue Zone as fast as my little legs would carry me, saw the dinosaurs and then me and the boys went to the pub. Louise & Bailey went shopping at some little shop called Harrods.