The lack of qualifications doesn't seem to have hindered your professional career (as I recall from previous posts). Whereas nowadays many people struggle to get hired if they don't have a degree.

I don't think we've heard enough about Ian Strachan, and Lally, and Kenny Lovegrove and Jeffrey Garet. And there is a whole cast of supporting characters who never get mentioned - Johnny Jarman, Angelo, Jon Kier (assistant manager at JS when I started in '87). I've  forgotten so many of the names. Great characters all of them, with their own style.

I first started visiting London regularly in 84/85 and moved here in 86. My first visit to J.Simons changed my life. Sounds risible doesn't it, but it's true. The whole of that area was full of wonderful things in the early days of redevelopment after the market closed in 79. Small independents were everywhere - Fisher in the market for knitwear and corduroy, Blazer on Long Acre for prep-Ivy basics (wasn't Jeff Kwintner involved in Blazer?), the Americana shops on Endell Street, Paul Smith on Floral St (lovely shop, but the clothes left me cold), Anglo-American eyewear from that place near the tubestation, The Africa Centre on King Street, Neal Street Restaurant, Flip on Long Acre, The Natural Shoe Store. Truly I believe the world was a nicer place before the internet. You had to go into places, look around. The greed hadn't completely eaten the soul out of everything. Now only flecks of meat remain on the carcass. You'd see the mysterious Graham Marsh strolling around Covent Garden - he had bespoke 60s style navy blue Ivy suits made up in worsted and cotton, worn sockless with Weejuns, and always a Brooks button-down, or a navy Lacoste. I thought these people were so cool, and I still do.  Soho was the other place of course. Bar Italia, then mainly full of Italians with just a sprinkling of pseuds, was HQ, but I caught the wonderful Soho Brasserie just as it was becoming passe, and recall half an hour of happiness sipping a citron presse and staring at my Weejuns as I made notes in my oxblood leather Filofax. I was in my 20s, you feel possibilities everywhere. I can still touch that feeling occasionally now.

I started going up West in the early eighties.
My parents would let me disappear from family gatherings in North London or there was a cheap Luxury coach from Birmingham.
As a 13 year old my early obsession was records and Soho had a huge amount of Soul and Jazz record shops. It was pretty dire at the time. Lots of thugs at the door ways of seedy establishments shouting that "the show was about to start"

My cousin first showed my the redeveloped Covent Garden as a European style area where you could eat and drink outside. Quite an alien concept for the UK at the time. As I got older I quickly realised that the London I explored was actually a series of villages - each with it's own inhabitants and peculiarities.

It was only much later on in the Nineties that I would pay the occasional visit to Covent Garden. John Simons very rarely as it was in my eyes the 'Loafer Shop'
Blazer was really good though.

Funny enough I still  use a Filofax style planner. Unlike a digital organiser it never demands a software update, requires backing up, needs re-charging or gets a virus.

RobbieB - yes Blueprint. Superb mag