An Australian in New Cross

What She Said is a blog by Melbourne-based Hariklia: 'Every day I post an entry from one of my diaries, that was written on the same day (date and month) that I post it, from any year between 1970 to the present'.

From 1986 to 1988, she was living in New Cross, seemingly in a housing co-op in Hatcham Park Road area. Her diary entries for that time feature various local landmarks amidst the usual diary boy/girl trouble - shopping in Lewisham, going for a date in the Goldsmiths Tavern (now the New Cross House), indie club A Million Rubber Bands at the Harp Club (now the Venue), night bus journeys home, playing pool in the (now closed) Royal Archer, stepping out in Nunhead Cemetery with local heart-throb Johny Brown of the Band of the Holy Joy:

'24 January 1988... I’m sitting, right this very second, in the park atop Telegraph Hill. It’s a lovely day for this time of the year. But I’m so reminded of JB here. How many Sundays ago was it that we walked through this very park going to Nunhead Cemetery? I keep thinking I’ll see him walking past with another girl, hand in hand. Another Sunday, another girl. That day was so wonderful and I remember thinking how I was sharing something I really enjoyed, for a change. We saw a few solitary people there, and I thought that for once it wasn’t me, walking alone and seeing a happy couple, thinking how romantic it would be. I was part of a couple, having a romantic walk amongst the graves and statues and fallen trees. JB tried to catch a falling leaf for good luck'


(hope Hariklia won't mind me using this great picture of a gravetop Johny in Nunhead 1987)

I moved down to London around this time too, living in Brixton. So sure our paths have crossed a number of times at many of the places she mentions, as I too frequented the Harp Club, the Town and Country Club, The Falcon (Camden) and Band of Holy Joy gigs. And indeed I once kissed a girl who (claimed to have) kissed Robert Smith of The Cure who... well, maybe we are also connected in a 'I've danced with a man, who's danced with a girl, who's danced with the Prince of Wales' kind of way. Shame I missed out on two things she managed to do - seeing Prince at his peak in London and going to the last ever gig by The Smiths at Brixton Academy (though I did see them three times).