Well it's over... I worked my last day at Flashbacks: The Shop today. What a strange experience.

We opened in 1986 - when Challenger and Chernobyl went bang, Phil Lynott and the Duchess of Windsor died, Boy George appeared on "The A-Team" and The Smiths released "The Queen Is Dead", Madonna released "True Blue" and the Pet Shop Boys released "West End Girls", Prince Andrew married Sarah Ferguson and Suzy Lamplugh went to meet a client.

Even taking into account the 5-odd years I worked with the actor's agent that's a lot of "Hello Can I Help You"s, making change, wondered if the customer would nick the pen after writing their cheques or drummed my fingers waiting for their credit card to be verified.

I have made some fine friends, had some great customers and gone cross-eyed with boredom with the ones who mistook the shop for a drop-in centre. My part-timers included Martin Taylor and occasionally Steve O'Connor, the two friends I blogged about recently who have died in the intervening years.

I don't deny it was a strange feeling to look back at it just one more time before I hit the lightswitch and could feel my eyes getting hot and prickly. I say again I believe that the past is always swirling around one and it has felt like that a lot today.

I had my last lunch at the Carlton with Yolanda and here is the nice waiter bringing me my omlette and chips...
Dear God I wonder how much I have spent in there over the years??? Ah the waitresses I have seen come and go... dumpy Maria, fiery Olga, moody Yvonne, big Maria, blonde Asha - never an English woman knowingly employed.

Luckily the shop looks an absolute disaster area now so that saw off any sentimentality swamping me... it's hard to get nostalgic about things when you are forever banging your knees on packing crates and screaming O FUCK IT as yet another bit of brown sellotape sticks to everything but what it's supposed to. Yes the shop was always a hymn of praise to Boss Richard's 1970s commune retail style but now it looks like Ground Zero.

Bizarrely the more we have packed the stock up, the less room we have had to move - how can that be?? Here I am in the basement - I had just heard something behind me start to shift....and just before leaving it all got to me... luckily Owen was on hand to chronicle my last seconds as a West End Boy.
So goodbye Silver Place. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

But what a time I had.