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City & Village Tours: 0845 812 5000 info@cityandvillagetours.com
Chinese parks suffer from chronic overcrowding at
weekends so park officials in Shangdong province
in the east have found a way to stop people from
hogging the benches for too long - by fitting steel
spikes on a coin-operated timer. If visitors linger too
long dozens of short, blunt and very uncomfortable
spikes shoot through the seat! Touchy subject park
benches, witness the ‘Gurkhas are hogging the
benches’ spat that broke out last year in Aldershot.
To have been forced to sleep on a park bench often
features in rags to riches stories. Charlie Chaplin,
Cary Grant (pictured above with Barbara Hutton
to the left and Rosalind Russell on his mind), Alfie
Boe, Daniel Craig and even Tony Blair claim a night
or two in the park. Tony Blair? If you believe that…
For a masterly description of a cold night spent on a
bench (in Trafalgar Square) do read George Orwell’s
entertaining novel A Clergyman’s Daughter.
Decorative ironwork benches beloved of Victorian
parks were often taken along with park railings for
the war effort but modern reproductions are common.
The Edwardians liked rustic designs with benches
made from knobbly tree branches and circular tree
seats. In the early twentieth century wood and metal
folding deckchairs, often used around bandstands,
were possible because they had enough parkies.
With re-cycling all the rage a new park alongside the
A40 at Northolt in West London called Northala
Fields has benches made from gabion baskets of
crushed concrete from the old Wembley Stadium.
Northolt is home to RAF Northolt where many men
served out their National Service - my father among
them, mending typewriters for King & Country
before marrying in his demob suit in 1950. Does
anyone remember Stanley Green, the Protein Man of
Oxford Street?
"
Less Lust, By Less Protein: Meat
Fish Bird; Egg Cheese; Peas Beans; Nuts. And
Sitting,"
He cycled to Oxford Street six days a week
from Northolt to sell his pamphlet ‘Eight Passion
Proteins’. In the 20 years until his death in 1993 he
sold 87,000 pamphlets which identified the eight
"passion proteins" as meat, fish, birds, cheese, eggs,
peas, beans, and nuts, arguing that "those who do not
have to work hard with their limbs, and those who are
inclined to sit about," will "store up their protein for
passion," making retirement, for example, a period
of increased passion and, therefore, marital discord.
On the cover of the pamphlet it said ‘This booklet
would benefit more, if it were read occasionally’.
If you ever stop for coffee at the Museum of London
pop into the new Modern London gallery to see the
Protein Man’s
Heath Robinson
printing press.
Cary Grant: from park bench to park mansion