Published: 12 January, 2012
by DAN CARRIER

The post office branch in Chetwynd Road, Dartmouth Park, was held up on two occasions in the 1980s before it was closed in a round of cuts to the branch services.

The second armed robbery caused more than the theft of cash, giros and stamps.

In her new memoir Christine Levy, who lives around the corner from the former branch, recalls how a neighbour took advantage of the gun-toting robbers.

“Back from a stint in prison, ‘C’ saw the armed robbers enter the post office,” she says. “Quickly following them in, she watched them rob the desk at one side of the shelves and took the advantageous oppor­tunity of filling her bag and coat with goodies from the opposite side.

“She made sure she was out of the door before the police had time to arrive and was grateful for other people’s dishonesty.”

Christine’s book is littered with stories such as this that celebrate the  collective memory of a community.

While future historians may draw on the census to gauge what life was like in the early part of the 21st century, memoirs like Christine’s cast a light that no official document can.

For those who have lived in NW5, her anecdotes will prompt long-forgotten memories.

Her story starts in the 1960s when she moved to a flat in Croftdown Road, opposite Parliament Hill Fields, and brings us to the present day.

She talks of everyday things, like the experience of watching her son Josh turn from toddler to child at the One O’Clock Club in the 1970s, and playing on the much-loved, health and safety nightmare that was the Adventure Play­ground by the running track. And there are also darker passages.

One chapter deals with gangsters who used a wine bar in Chetwynd Road to launder money and sell drugs, while another passage focuses on a possible unsolved murder.

“Sitting on a wall in Tufnell Park near to the tube station, three teenagers noticed a door opposite was open and they consequently became curious,” she writes, without identifying the people involved.

“They ventured in, and upstairs, on a bed in a  filthy room, they saw bits of skin and blood and hair. Feeling completely alarmed and wanting to leave, one of the youngsters noticed a tall cupboard against the wall and opened it. Knives fell out, covered in blood, and from this sight they ran outside... a few minutes passed and they saw a car pull up and some large aggressive-looking blokes got out and entered the same building.”

She adds that the police were informed but they heard nothing more of it.

From thoughts on murder to the mundane: bloody knives to tiffs with shopkeepers, from robberies and drug overdoses to the fact there were never dogs being walked on the Heath in the 1960s whilst you can hardly move for the creatures on leads today: Levy’s memories will spark ones of your own, and proves the maxim that everyone has a book in them.

• Memoirs Of London: From 1960s to the Present Day. By Christine Levy. Published by the Strategic Book Group £10