Penge was my Paris

Early Poster for 'La Boheme'

A live cinema broadcast of 'La Boheme' last week reminded why I wanted to live in London and why I left Preston when I was seventeen. It took a few years to get here, but I knew where I was going.

'Heaven must be full of  Prestonians', a friend had exclaimed, at her first sight  of the skyline in my home-town. It certainly  had more than its fair share of spires and towers - not to mention factory chimneys. But by the  age of seventeen I was bored with the skyline, the streets full  of workers' houses, and the soot-blackened Victorian town centre.

It was a restless time, what with the  new freedoms of the late fifties, Harold  MacMillan telling us we'd never had it so good and  social change reflected in films and plays, full employment and the invention of 'teenagers'; not to mention a constant soundtrack  of Beatles and Beach Boys.

The northern  protagonists of  the films and plays usually remained stuck where they started and in any case  their ambitions didn't  extend beyond fancy clothes and flashy cars. In the  age of 'Room at the Top', my head of department lent me the Bond books one by one. Although I read them avidly, I didn't share her enthusiasm for the hero. His liking for cocktails and casinos didn't interest me. Instead, I saw foreign films in Manchester on payday weekends

The Harris Library and Museum in Preston

 

  But it was Zola that was mainly to blame. I'd  spotted  a bookcase labelled 'Classics' in the Harris Library, where Jane Austen, Trollope and Dickens rubbed spines with  foreign novels in translation. For weeks I was fascinated by  Dostoyevsky and Hamsun. But  it was the French fiction  especially Hugo and Zola, that  had me in thrall. I couldn't get enough of all those men and women with their restless souls and lofty ideal.  In short, I glimpsed  there  was more to life than an NHS office and evenings at Young Socialists meetings or amateur dramatics at the Co-op Hall.

If only I could live in a big city, like Paris, I'd meet like-minded people and my life would be transformed. 

If I couldn't make Paris, London would do. Hence the conversation I had a few  years later with my husband.  By then we had two young children -it seemed sensible to get motherhood out of the way before I started  - and he'd secured a post as Lecturer in London,  where I hoped to study for a degree. I had very little idea of the city's geography other than what I'd glimpsed on CND marches and one or two weekends spent commuting between a Youth Hostel in Holland Park and West End cinemas.

'Penge! You spend three days in London looking for a flat and you come up with somewhere I've never heard of!'

I felt a bit better when I'd pored over the map and I saw that while Penge  might be nowhere near Bloomsbury it was at least adjacent to Crystal Palace, which I had heard of.

But going to London did transform my life and opened up all kinds of opportunities. To  all intents and purposes,  Penge became  my Paris.