I did one day and two nights a week at Kitson, '74 to '76 supposedly on an ONC electrical engineering course, turned out to be an ONC engineering course - we didn't part on good terms when I walked out of one of the end of year exams because I couldn't answer one single question.

Mainly because most of my college time was spent in The Coburg over the road.

Damn fine Indian.

There's going to be a sharp intake of breath here and a "Can he say that ?" but that was back in the day when The Royal Park pub had lots of small rooms inside it and one of those rooms was "The Indians Room", if you poked your head around the corner you'd understand why, a small room used exclusively by some of the older men from the asian population who'd settled in Hyde Park.

Seems most people who attended kitson college spent a fair bit of time in the coburg. I was disapointed after working overseas and returning to Leeds to discover that the coburg had a name change, some kind of fake Irish pub.
My Leeds drinking days are over, on the odd occasion I meet up with an old pal we will drink in the Whitelocks .
In the sixties quite a lot of the pubs in Leeds would be meeting places for various sections of the building industry, so if you were looking for job as a brickie your ports of call would be the whip,or the horse and trumpet. The electricians watering holes were the templer and a pub now vanished called the ostlers. As there was a building boom on in Leeds you could just walk from one job straight into another. A meeting place where all trades and characters used to drink was the wine lodge on bond street.

My first ever Indian meal was in the Taj Mahal in 1975.
Despite going to school in Bradford & being a student in the late 60s I never ate Indian food under the misapprehension that it would be too hot & spicy.
Now it is a regular meal in our house - how our tastes change.
The Coburg was my regular Friday lunchtime home together it seemed with half the council's finance dept.
The guy who wrote the John Wellington column in the YEP was always to be seen in close conversation with the then Director of Leisure Services, I guess that's where he got all the council news he commented upon.
The introduction of flexi-time & the realisation that alcochol had a detrimental affect on work & the drive home put a stop to all that.

I remember The Ostlers

The electricians pub in Newcastle, where I worked after being asked to leave Kitson was called The Printers Pie in the Haymarket - strange how trades flock together isn't it ?

Late 1970s

Left to right : Escort (???), Cortina, Cortina, Cavalier, Capri, ???, Escort, Mini Clubman, Merc of some description

and parked in the side street that couldn't be the beige Allegro that I learned to drive in could it ?

Oh, and I'll guess at the original Millgarth before the Dutch developers got involved.

Well that looks very much like the back of Eastgate that now is overlooked by the Leeds Wheel.

I'm certain that the car you identified as an Escort is a Mk1 Vauxhall Astra, and suspect that the "Merc"is probably the Chief Constable's Daimler.

Yep I think you're right on the Astra but a Daimler ?

Its looks very much like the old Merc that the ancient old crone over the street from me used to drive once a month at 4mph to Adsa, they wrote "Driving Miss Daisy" based on her, then she died and her bald son took over the house and the car and now he starts it up once a week and stands in his drive admiring it, I'm just building up the courage to go over and tell him that it looks like a piece of s[ihi[/it and we used to call his mother "the witch".


But anyway, I think its like that old Merc.

Or an old BMW ?

I think your right. I would go old merc over Bmw

So then old timers: did those cars look crappy and beaten up even when they were brand new?

I can't remember a Merc with that deep a boot, but your memory may be better or longer than mine so will concede.

And, yes, those cars did always look that bad, or at least that brown.