Nearly 40 years ago, around about the time I went off to university, Graham Greenglass and I would occasionally swap mix tapes, as young folk in those days oft did.
On one of those tapes was the quirky song, Rossmore Road, by Barry Andrews. I loved that song and listened to it (along with its companions) a great deal in my early months at Keele.
If you’ve never heard it before, click the YouTube below and you might well be transfixed. If you have heard it before, I suspect that you have already clicked the link without waiting for my edict.
So, imagine my delight when Janie and I were instructed, for our next Marylebone FoodCycle gig, to forsake the Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady on the junction of Lodge Road & Lisson Grove, which had previously always been our starting point. Instead, we were to start and end our gig at St Paul’s Church, Marylebone, on Rossmore Road.
Of course I have walked and driven past Rossmore Road hundreds of times on my way to Lord’s. But this was the first time I had ever actually had an appointment on Rossmore Road. I mentioned this fact to Curate Ali, who, surprisingly, previously had no idea that there was a cult-status song about the road in which her parish church is located.
But it’s not all about Rossmore Road.
Janie and I have had one or two interesting occurrences and adventures over the past few weeks.
A couple of weeks ago we needed to go into the congestion zone, south of the ring-road. There was a contraflow just outside the block we needed to get to for our drop, so (contrary to Janie’s entreaties) , I insisted on driving around the block and walking the food around the block, rather than causer a possible obstruction, even for just a few minutes. Sometimes our drops can take some time.
In the course of that simple walk around the block, three different, unconnected people stopped us at various junctures to quiz us about our face guards. It was as if such things had not been seen in that part of London before! It felt really weird.
On progressing to our next drop, the road we wanted to use was closed for some unknown reason (there are SO MANY road closures in the parts of London we are serving for FoodCycle just now), so we were trying to navigate our way around those narrow Marylebone Streets while working out what to do without the help of the sat. nav. which was blissfully unaware of the road closure.
A car came down the road the other way, quite quickly, making it impossible for either car to get through without a convoluted “dance” of reversing and manoeuvering. The other driver hollered at me aggressively. Janie leant across with our FoodCycle permission letter to let him know that we were doing charity deliveries and could do without his aggression. I finished off the interaction by saying…
…behave yourself…
…which Janie told me afterwards might well have come across as a little bit passive-aggressive. Tough.
As we drove around the block looking for an escape route, a car came the other way.
It’s him again…
…said Janie.
Looks nothing like him…
…I said…
…100% sure it is him, he’s just hanging his head in shame, so he looks a bit different…
…said Janie.
We’re delivering to all sorts of interesting people on these rounds. One thing they almost all have in common is how grateful they see for the help FoodCycle are giving them.
And it’s not just the Marylebone round that we’ve been doing; we also do the East Acton gig quite often.
But next week we’ll be at Rossmore Road again – I can hear that dreamy saxophone refrain from the start of the song; it’s become an earworm for me again some 40 years after its first appearance there in my ear:
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