Street Parties (Now and Then)

Apparently plans to hold a street party to celebrate the royal wedding on Red Lion Lane had run on stony ground for a while, with various bits of red tape barring the way, that is until call-me-dave made his right to party speech…and hey ho, anyone that still had a job to go to, could not go to it for a day, and dance in the streets, or rather have tea and cake in front of the tellybox…in the Lane. The Red Lion Lane street party was extremely cheerful, Ruchita and the Red Lion Pub were very generous in their donations of food, and trestle tables were laid out with cakes and goodies making it a wonderful way to reclaim the streets. This may be a sign of the beneficial effects of less traffic too, as Red Lion Lane recently celebrated the extension of its one way (downhill) route, (from the Eagle pub down to Shooters Hill Campus), so it seems that reducing traffic (or at least moving it onto other nearby roads) enhances social cohesion.

It’s taken a while to get these photos out, and this story is extremely cold-off-the-press; the pictures were so poor that the whole thing was going to stay off-line, but whilst rummaging around in the archives, it was quite interesting to find some old street party photos taken during the VE day celebrations way back in 1945, so it seemed like fun to cobble them all together and see what happened. The most striking differences (apart from the colours) are the presence of injection moulded plastic chairs in the latter-day party, and significantly, the existence of the gazebo, which is now commonplace at outdoor parties. The common strand appears, unsurprisingly, to be the all important bunting, which is in evidence in both eras, although more modestly so in the wartime period.