This is Cricklewood, in North London. My book (Hitting the Jackpot) is about Jack, Lottery jackpot winner. Seeing as his wife (Cindy) is divorcing him, he comes up with an idea - maybe he should keep it a secret from her...
I could have set it anywhere in the UK, or, for that matter, anywhere in the world that has a big-money lottery. But I chose Cricklewood. The reason is history.
I was born very near to Cricklewood, in West Hampstead, which is sort of half-way between Cricklewood and Hampstead itself. I always felt spiritually closer to Cricklewood: my primary school was in Cricklewood, as was Woolworths where I used to work as a Saturday boy in the stock room. It also had a Wimpy (burger bar) which was seriously cool way back then, the 1970s, before McDonald's swept everything before it. The Cricklewood Wimpy bar was the nearest thing to living in the United States that you could get in Cricklewood, so it was a regular lunchtime treat from my Saturday job in Woolies (as everybody called it). In fact, it was the only lunchtime treat. The Crown (an enormous pub next to Woolies) was a spit 'n' sawdust boozer whose lunchtime 'fare' consisted of Guinness and bags of crisps. It couldn't compete with the Cricklewood Wimpy - especially if you were a Starsky and Hutch fan...
One day, the manager at Woolworths asked me if I owned a suit. I did, brown with white pin-stripes, flared trousers with turn-ups, all the rage in the 70s. She asked me to wear it the following week. My new job was as a 'floorwalker', a sort of do-anything 'fixer' who would deftly deal with customer enquiries, stray dogs wandering into the store, and shop-lifters. Despite my new responsibilities, being the 'face' of Cricklewood Woolies to the public, my pay didn't change from its £4 a day. The shop-lifters were usually 12-year-old kids nicking the green triangles off the Quality Street Pick'n'Mix counter. Having a sweet tooth myself, and a tendency to regularly floorwalk past the Pick'n'Mix counter to snaffle the odd 'purple one', I never felt able to collar the Pick'n'Mix lifters, maybe for fear that a purple wrapper might fall from my pocket in any ensuing melee. I wonder what happened to Woolworths...?
My lasting memory of floorwalking at Cricklewood Woolies was the Saturday lunchtime when this old biddy marched up to me holding a battered old kettle. I was fairly sure, from the smell of alcohol that accompanied her, that she'd spent most of the morning in The Crown public house next door...
'I want a refund,' she demanded.
'Do you have a receipt?' I countered, buying myself time as I took in the battered, limescale-encrusted kettle which had clearly been in regular use since long before I'd bought my suit. She had no receipt, no original packaging, and (clearly) no sense of shame. I politely told her that I was unable to offer her a refund. Woolworths was running a hugely popular advertising campaign on the telly in those days, the song went: 'That's the wonder of Woolworths, that's the wonder of good old Woolies...'
My friend with the kettle looked me straight in the eye and said, 'That's the fuckin' wonder of Woolworths, isn't it?!'
Cricklewood - it brings back memories, a down-to-earth place full of 'ordinary' people. A very 'Londony' part of the London I grew up in. I haven't really been back since I went to university in 1978, but the memories are strong, so I set my story there. And Cricklewood brought its own character -
“Across the street, the lights from the corner shop flood the pavement, like a version of Van Gogh’s Café Terrace at Night from his Cricklewood period, complete with a battered newspaper stand and a couple of dollops of dog shit.”
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