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| Well everyone I mention to that I live in
Cambridge usually replies with, "oh that place is full of bikes and
students" well in fact Cambridge is full of bikes but not as many
students as you might think. The City (heavens why it is called a city,
something to do with king Henry VII I think)
is really just like any other City only a lot smaller. The students
usually are around but nowadays they look just like the next person in
the street, but in the seventies and eighties they were regularly wound
up by the local lads as they had been for hundreds of years
before. But they did get even once in the last century, I do
not know the date but they arranged a friendly football match with a
group of townies they often had bother from at St Andrews recreation
ground in Chesterton, and when they turned up to play they attacked them
with bits of wood etc and gave them a thorough hiding.
I shouldn't really run Cambridge down but it does have it's good points and it's bad like any other. One of which is that the traffic problem is absolutely terrible, specially along the A14 near Bar Hill and the A10 which has seen a lot of deaths on it recently. There is currently a big issue about upgrading the A14 which everybody wants, but as long as it is not near their house. I think they both need upgrading, the A14 needs another separate dual-carriageway running from Spittals link through to Quy to divert the heavy lorries passing through to the ports as the new proposals suggest, with a train line running along side of the road branching off to Cambridge at Milton. Another bad point with Cambridge is that up until recently it has not really had a very good night life for youngsters, but now there is a few good night clubs at last. In the seventies as a teenager we had loads of places to go but they all shut down one after the other. A lot of the night life was actually in the pubs then and were usually Disco's in places like the "Golden Hind" or The "Alma" in Russell Street. The good places to go were shutting down fast, The "Dorothy" in 1971, then the "Rex" in McGrath Avenue which had some good nights, The "Carioca Club" in Newmarket road was demolished in the late seventies leaving places such as "Silks" and "Ronnelles" in the new Lion yard which all the local lads dubbed as "Posers" because a handful of blokes and girls used to dance in front of the mirrors admiring themselves. The Junction is another recent place and is very popular but seems to be a bit too far out of town but nevertheless is always packed, there are two new recent opening now, one is the refurbished "Chicago rock cafe" now called "Life" and a conversion of the old Job Centre in the Town called "Toxic8". Cambridge also now boasts the biggest pub in the Country " Wetherspoons" which is housed in an old Cinema, there is also a lot of other small thriving bars and clubs such as "Po Na Na" in Jesus lane which is described as a "Souk bar" whatever that is. Cambridge has always seemed to miss out on the usual things that other Towns and Cities have, for example; we have no Bowling Alley, WHY? in the late sixties there was a bowling alley situated down Mill road in what is now a warehouse for a large City store, it was closed down soon after because the neighbours complained of noise from it "So why the Heck did they build it there then?" We seem to have a thing about building things all in the City then we continually moan about the traffic into the City, I suspect the Colleges have something to do with it. Other things we don't have that a City should have are; A decent Concert venue: we have the Corn Exchange but it is old, it's not really big enough and again it is in the city Centre which makes it a nightmare to access, my Wife went to a concert there a few months ago and it took her 3/4 of an hour to get out of the Car park at night. And there is just one more moan about Cambridge and that is that the Train Station is over a mile from the City Centre, why? again I think it was something to do with the Colleges over 100 years ago. The face of Cambridge has changed dramatically over the last 40 years and brings me to another of my interests which is looking at old pictures of areas in around Cambridge from the "Cambridgeshire Collection". These old photographs are housed in the Lion yard library and is well worth a visit, you can also purchase various books by them on sale at places like W H Smith, I have three of them, one is "Cambridge in pictures" which is really interesting, and the other two are "Cambridgeshire Crimes". The crimes books are really interesting, when you start reading them you can't put them down, you would not believe what went on in little old Cambridge in the past, they are well worth a read. Any way I could write a book about Cambridge but I don't have the time, I think when people hear of it they think it is a quiet little place where there is no trouble and it is safe to walk the streets, but believe it or not in the late seventies Cambridge had the second highest crime rate in the country per head of population next to "Glasgow" would you believe, I think a lot of it was due to the Cambridge United Abbey Boot Boys though and a certain contingent of football hooligans. unfortunately I was one of them when I was 16 when the "U's" were kings and won promotion to league division 4 which is now division 3. I can't believe that I went up the U's with plastic bowler hat and one eye with make up like Alex (Malcolm McDowell) wore in "A clockwork Orange" which was a very violent film I had just seen and was soon banned until recently, but everybody else did the same as well, this is probably the reason the film was banned after a few weeks of showing. I remember when I went to a game on April 30th 1973 (I was 17) to See Cambridge United play an important game against "Mansfield", If they won they would get that promotion mentioned above to division 4 which they had missed out on several times before. My Dad banned me from going to the game because I had got a hiding two weeks before up there by some supporters. But of course I went behind his back and we won the game, then went on a celebration rampage through the Town smashing up the place as we went. Well I am not proud of that now and I hasten to add that I never did any smashing up anyway, only Celebrating, but I came home from work on the Monday to an angry Father who was holding something under his arm, He said "did you go to that game on Saturday and have anything to do with the trouble in town?" to which I confidently replied "NO" then he produced a Cambridge Evening newspaper with a picture of "me" on it, running down Maids Causeway with two Cambridge United scarves tied to each arm among a crowd of rampaging yobbo's and said "Who the Bloody Hell is this then?" Well I got that picture after much research and help from friends with better memories than me and here it is. But we had a great time in those days and never really did any harm, a lot of it was pier pressure for fear of using an old "Cliché" but I was not a violent person and never really will be so I don't know what made me behave like I did and I am certainly not really proud of it. The City is moving on now and we have a nice Shopping Mall "The Grafton Centre" albeit rather small and in the middle of the town again instead of being built conveniently on the edge of Town. This Shopping precinct came amid a lot of Controversy when it was built and came at the expense of a lot of lovely old buildings and small businesses who could not afford the rates of the new shops so therefore were doomed. Can anyone remember the old DIY shop on the corner of Fitzroy street and I think it was James Street (Didn't Petro work there once)? and the Talk of the town Arcade which got mysteriously burned down along with the Marcade in East road which also got burned down, we use to go to old Lee's record stall and Dave pink's clothes stall on a Saturday morning and listen to Northern Soul music, oh those were the days Eh!. When I was a youngster I used to drop in the pet shop at the bottom of Fitzroy street where they had parrots and I believe even sold pet snakes at one time. One other shop I always remembered was the denture repair man because he had a big pair of false teeth hanging over it right opposite the church on one corner and the old blue tiled Forrester's pub on the other ( well that one probably really had to go), you could see it from the end of Burleigh street. Anyway I've had enough reminiscing for one day, if you are interested there is another page soon to be added about Cambridge dealing mainly with it's history. When I get time to write it.
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