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Is Slough the future with European Investment booming that city.?
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No BOOMING. We destroy ourselves very good ACTUALLY.
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>> Did you mean BOMBING?
Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough!
It isn't fit for humans now,
There isn't grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death!
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Thank you Sire. At least somebody is on the Ball.
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You have to stop attacking Slough. Its a great city.
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There is nothing wrong with Haywains MD's point of view.
Haywain MD is entitled to his opinion.
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Stand perfectly still please. Ah! that's it just there. No no, don't move please don't move. God I can't focus these ruddy sights in this low light. Move if you have to, but try to get back to the same spot tomorrow if you'd be so kind....O:-)
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It's not a city. There are no cities in Berkshire.
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It's a hit shole to be precise.
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Or more accuretaly an Outer Suburb of London.
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>> Or more accuretaly an Outer Suburb of London.
Its not. Its in Berkshire
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And praise the Lord, let it stay there.
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Royal Berkshire to be precise where some Twerp built a ruddy castle under the Heathrow flight path!!
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Berkshire is an Outer suburb of London.
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>> Berkshire is an Outer suburb of London.
Its not. Its Berkshire
Last edited by: Zero on Tue 23 Feb 16 at 20:32
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Z just has a point of view.
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Oh for an apostrophe even...
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>> Oh for an apostrophe even...
As in "we had no turkey for Christmas so we ate our friends"?
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As in " 'its' is possessive", I should think.
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This morning I opened the door in my pyjamas.
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Does Slough still smell of Mars Bars?
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>> Does Slough still smell of Mars Bars?
Yup.Tho that is a bit of a myth, its actually the smell from the Horlicks factory.
Last edited by: Zero on Tue 23 Feb 16 at 21:33
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I worked in Slough and jobs at Mars were highly prized for the good salaries then paid.
One could definitely smell chocolate, in the mid 1970s.
Further up the M4, of course, the stink of the sewage farm overcame all.
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I used to visit the Mars factory to repair kit there, the staff shop was fantastic. Yes you could smell chocolate inside the plant, but outside, it was definitely the smell of the Horlicks factory, it had some kind of brewing process.
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I worked at Mars. You could smell chocolate over quite a large area although there were other over powering smells as well.
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>> I worked at Mars. You could smell chocolate over quite a large area although there
>> were other over powering smells as well.
>>
My Dad worked there for 11 years (72-83), mostly on the bounty line. Used to come home reeking of coconut. I think it's the reason the smell/texture of desiccated coconut makes me retch to this day.
Oh, and Slough is in Bucks, not Berks. It's north of the river. I don't care what they did in 1974 or so to gerrymander the borders, it's in Bucks. The offices of South Bucks District council were in Slough last time I looked, maybe they've moved. I don't visit often, just ping through on the train. There is at least one curry house worth visiting though, and for a while I was a regular visitor a few years back as my nearest Renault dealer was there...........
I used to have a Saturday job in Guillouds sports shop as a teenager. Anyone local remember that place? They accidentally ordered a Fulham shirt for the shop once, it didn't sell. I still have it, well my son does now. Vintage it is.
The PM, of course, went to school in Slough.
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The offices of South Bucks District council were in Slough last time I looked, maybe they've moved.
They have: to Denham, because that's in Buckinghamshire. The County Council no longer sits in Abingdon, for the same reason - or indeed at all, for a different reason.
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>> I used to visit the Mars factory to repair kit there,
Best pop back again then
www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-35642075
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...stink of the sewage farm...
...and it still does, even on cold winter evenings. Fortunately the traffic tends to flow better towards J7 than around J6. I've never noticed the smell of Horlicks - and my mum is a fan so I'd recognize it soon enough.
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>>This morning I opened the door in my pyjamas.>>
Must have been quite a draught.
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It's a super-suburb apparently:
www.homesandproperty.co.uk/property-news/buying/new-homes/londons
"Where to buy in the super-suburbs
Outer west London will be a big Crossrail winner and is a good area to buy into before the line opens in 2018. The Hammersmith to Heathrow M4 corridor has traditionally been a key commercial zone, popular with global corporations such as GlaxoSmithKline at Brentford. Over the years, airport expansion has boosted the growth of satellite towns including Hounslow, Hayes, Slough and Staines but they have lacked sparkle as places to live. Now, change is afoot."
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Slough has always been a brilliant place for BTL property. Lack of cachet means low purchase prices - proximity of London, fast trains and Heathrow means high demand for rentals and high rental prices compared to purchase prices. Returns are consistently higher than most other places in percentage terms.
Prices in Reading, the Crossrail (let's not go in to its new, ridiculous name) western terminal, have increased 15% in the last year. I ain't flogging my place for a good while yet. I have truly lucked out and benefitted from property price inflation beyond my wildest imaginings. From stretching myself and buying a wee flat in 1997, my current gaff's value has beaten any expectations I had for it. All pure luck and being in the right place at the right time. And people told me I was a mug for moving to Reading. I expect some will probably still find a reason to do so.
And Slough is still in Bucks.
;-)
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Apart from working in Slough, my abiding memory of the place is the discovery of a small, new, burger bar in the high street, which was a couple of minutes or less from our office - which was up an alleyway opposite the then Ford Dealer, Norman Reeves.
It was there I discovered - wait for it - BIG MACS!
Two big Macs and an apple pie made a decent lunch.
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You were very, very close to the sports shop I worked in, Roger. It was at the end of the modern parade with the Golden Egg "restaurant" at the end of it. Crown Parade, or somesuch. Opposite the marital aids boutique. Ahem. I used to get my Saturday lunch in the High Street MaccyD's.
Norman Reeves. There's a name from the past. I remember drooling over Sierras in there at the time. I loved a Sierra, even the bog standard 1.3 model - sub L spec. Grey bumpers and all that. I tried to convince my Mum to get one in 1983 when we lost my Dad and needed a new car (couldn't handle keeping his Triumph 2000 for various reasons). She went for a Mitsubishi Colt. Sigh.
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A reminder that Citroens used to be assembled there. I recall the frenzy over the the DS (Déese, goddess). Details of this were closely guarded before the launch at the 1955 Paris show, with just enough being leaked to work the buying public into a frenzy. The public bought 749 in the first 45 minutes, 12,000 by 8 p.m. that evening and 80,000 by the end of the show. The waiting list was extremely long and the factory only produced 7 examples the following month, none in December and 229 in January, 1956. Buyers accepted the delay with equanimity, so prestigious was the engineering and the shape, inspired by an aircraft wing. 1,456,000 were sold before production ceased in 1975. There was later a budget version, the ID (Idée, idea). The veteran chief design engineer was André Lefèbvre, the brains behind the pioneering Traction Avant (front wheel drive) dating from 1934, also assembled in Slough. Both Slough and Paris versions of each were sold in Malaya and French colleagues used to comment that the "carosserie" (cabin fit-out) was better in the Slough versions.
The same man designed the engaging 2CV, of which I owned three at various times, but I don't think Slough produced any of those.
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>> You were very, very close to the sports shop I worked in, Roger. It was
>> at the end of the modern parade with the Golden Egg "restaurant" at the end
>> of it. Crown Parade, or somesuch. Opposite the marital aids boutique. Ahem. I used to
>> get my Saturday lunch in the High Street MaccyD's.
>>
>> Norman Reeves. There's a name from the past.
Sierras? I'm talking about the mid to late 1970s!
At the time we lived in Chalfont St. Peter (BUT we had a Gerrards Cross phone number !!!!)
I worked at Forward Trust, Slough branch, which was in a quite modern office block in a wide-ish alley behind, IIRC, a cinema on Windsor Rd.
Just before FT, I was self employed and my ride was "coke-bottle" Cortina 2000GT in purple velvet, with a black vinyl roof.
Sierras? Pah! Blancmanges!
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I could not agree with you more. Crossrail is costing the taxpayer over £15 billion.
Where I live the Government cannot find £275 million to widen my local road.
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>> I could not agree with you more. Crossrail is costing the taxpayer over £15 billion.
>>
>> Where I live the Government cannot find £275 million to widen my local road.
>>
Crossrail is a minnow compared with that gigantic vanity project - the white elephant known as HS2
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No it is an outer suburb of London.
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Don't pretend you are Zero, he is not quite as annoying as you.
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I am not pretending to be Zero. I am fluffy.
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>> I am fluffy.
Presumably because you haven't started shaving yet?
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Or driving.
As for shaving it could be a little girl with a fluffy doll.
Last edited by: Old Navy on Thu 25 Feb 16 at 08:13
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I cannot drive but I am old enough to shave.
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I have started shaving.
Even though I am fluffy.
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Just my opinion (I've been away for a week on holiday), but Slough is a dump. And Berkshire is not a suburb of London either.
I've been to Slough a fair few times and dislike it a lot. If I have to stay over I will stay in Windsor, Old Windsor,.... anywhere basically.
I think some pronounce it 'sluff'.
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>> And Berkshire is not a suburb of London either.
Obvs not the whole county, Reading is no more a suburb of London than Colchester is. OTOH though some places that are de facto suburbs of London may be in Berkshire. Similar to suburbs that are in Essex, or Hertfordshire for that matter.
I suspect Jerry and Margot Leadbetter lived in Surrey not London.....
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Slough is still a dump wherever it is.
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So many places are dumps often no work or low payd jobs or all of the above.
You can live in a nice street and maybe a few families who don't care bring the area down.
A area I used to play near the docks in Rotterdam was the Afrikaander Plein.It used to be a dump and still is a dump now.
Slough is a nice place for some.
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Could not agree with you more.
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Do you work for the Foreign Office fluff?
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Don't tell them Fluff keep it a secret.
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Has Cameron got the fight to keep us in the Europe Union. He at least took his jacket off.
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Slough resident and member of UK Youth Parliament proposes change of name for Slough:
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/mar/04/slough-debates-whether-to-change-its-name
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Everyone who lives near, or travels to or pass the place always call it Sluff
Last edited by: Zero on Sat 5 Mar 16 at 08:40
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For quite an infamous town I don't think I've ever been there. I imagine it's some dreary southern provincial town with lots of drab office blocks.
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John Betjamin had the right idea as far back as 1937.
Slough
Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
It isn't fit for humans now,
There isn't grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death!
There is more, but you get the gist.
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The slough of despond.
c.v. Pilgrim's Progress!
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A charmless place. It's near my last school and I used to have to change trains there.
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>> A charmless place. It's near my last school
>>
Eton?
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No, another place. It doesn't exist any more.
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Snakes slough their skins. How wise.
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>> No, another place. It doesn't exist any more.
Beaumont, Old Windsor?
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No, Beaumont. Just there for two years in the 6th form.
My parents saw it I think as a sort of finishing school in my case. I'm only in real touch with one person who was there at the same time as me, but we have remained good friends. The old darlings couldn't really afford the fees, but some sort of concessionary rate was arranged through my mother's Jesuit uncle. He had been honcho at Stonyhurst in Lancashire - classier than Beaumont - for some years and wasn't to be taken lightly.
There were various rich and/or aristocratic continentals there whose parents wanted them to learn English. I've seen one or two of them since as well.
There was a steep long hill that went from the Beaumont gates up to Englefield Green. I once saw the English actress and gangster's moll Diana Dors in a powder-blue open Cadillac zooming off up that hill, 'Priest Hill' we called it. She was in the rear seat and one of the gangsters (no doubt) was driving... she was very recognizable thanks to her luridly blonde hair.
Beaumont rugger fields were on Runnymede, a boggy place in wet weather. I did rowing in summer and liked it a lot... our boathouse was between the school and Runnymede where Magna Carta is alleged to have been signed.
(I have a feeling I've said all this before, perhaps on HJ. If so, sorry O).
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Mon 7 Mar 16 at 13:11
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>> >> There was a steep long hill that went from the Beaumont gates up to Englefield
>> Green..............., 'Priest Hill' we called it.
And you were right because that's what it is called. I used to take tennis lessons in Englefield Green on a Saturday morning as a yoof, and relished throwing my Raleigh racer down Priest Hill afterwards to get to my Saturday afternoon job at Waitrose in Windsor. The job which financed my first car, the mk1 Escort.
I remember doing cross country races around the Beaumont grounds. I hated cross country, blasted torture.
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Charles Laughton went to Beaumont, as did: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Leach
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>> My parents saw it I think as a sort of finishing school in my case
They hoped it would teach me to speak properly since I had been to a lot of schools some of which were rough from that point of view. Children are parrots and I spoke with an accent made up of Welsh and West Country, bit of Bristol too, quite faint but the parents disapproved.
It worked, but made me immensely snobbish and poncy for a while... recovered in the end though. Snobbery and ponciness make uneasy bedfellows with brains, which I did have up to a point (don't want to exaggerate of course).
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The main building of Beaumont was rather fine, with unusual split pillars. Being clever I had a room at the front in my second year.
The coal ration was very stingy and we used to burn the furniture to keep warm.
Dotheboys Hall, what? Heh heh...
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The place belongs to a computer company now. Bit of a waste, seems to me.
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I'm assuming ISC is a computer company. I hope they like the chapel with its faded but lurid art deco painting. Perhaps Alanović can tell us.
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No AC, I was referring to the now defunct school, Imperial Service College. Kipling's old school. I attended after it had changed its name for the modern era. And school name itself was subsequently taken over and merged elsewhere, the old buildings in Windsor being valuable as residential property.
ICL (computer firm) used to own Beaumont, ICL was taken over by Fujitsu and I have no idea if they still own it.
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ICL/Fujitsu used to have their training arm based there and built a modern block of accommodation for attendees. This was all later sold off and is now a Principal Hayley hotel. So AC could stay there once again if he choose to.
www.principal-hayley.com/locations/southern-england/beaumont-estate/
If I am in Windsor I stay there. I'm not sure if there are any rooms in the original/old building. I've only stayed in the old building once and the newer block was warmer and more comfortable.
At one times, if you worked for ICL/Fujitsu, if you needed accommodation anywhere near Windsor you had to use Beaumont if a room was available.
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When I was at school there, I once tried as a jape to get the Rector's cattle (he was known as the Farmer) into a square quadrangle in the middle of the buildings. A similarly wicked contemporary or two helped.
We got the cows out of the field in front, but to get them into the quadrangle place involved taking them into the building and down a long corridor. They refused to go into the building which must have seemed dark and frightening to them. Even getting a rope round their necks didn't help... the harder one pulled, the more the poor beasts choked. Had to abandon the attempt in the end, tchah!
The Jays lay low throughout. I'm surprised now as I was then... perhaps they were tired of flogging me, or just tired, or praying. I was thankful for that small mercy.
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>> A similarly wicked contemporary or two helped.
One was called Bernard McNamee, another a thuggish cat called John Rossage.
Bernard came from Slough I think, or somewhere very near it.
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Why was the PM in Slough? - MD
