On the opposite corner of the cul-de-sac which is Grange Road, the Pal Audio Visual Centre (Tel 0208 521 8914) has a frontage that screeches its ugliness to the street.
No space is too small to be left uncluttered with the consumerist branding and language of trade: Panasonic, Pioneer, Hitachi, Akai, Sharp, Ferguson, Sony, Philips all have their brand names emblazoned across the top of the shop, calling out raucously to the passersby. Other signs yell out in huge letters 'Discount TV and VCR', 'Sales and repairs', 'Free Estimates'. 'We Buy and Sell'. Of course you do. You are a shop.
Where massive American ghetto-lettering does not suffice, the glass on the front door is filled with the hand-written information that here is the place for a 'Big TV Sale'. And my, aren't some of the TVs big? As big as the lettering some of them. Bigger. There are TVs in this shop, piled, strewn, jumbled, warehoused and crammed, which would barely leave room to sit in front of them in most of the parlours and living rooms of Walthamstow. These are ostentatious, over-compensating sort of tellies. They are tellies that visiting Nans are supposed to wow at. Swaggeringly bought - whisper it not- on credit - to leave the Jones's sleepless with jealousy, plotting revenge purchases on a Right to Buy housing estate. They are not about entertainment, these over-weight tellies are more serious than that. Every inch of their massive screens tells a tale about the false pride, the battered prestige and the unfulfillment of the lives of the sad people who buy them. These are the 1980s power dressing big-haired shoulder padded dinosaurs of the audio-visual world, an idea whose time never came, even when it was the here and now.
They are also very ugly tellies, in tawdry grey plastic, fit only for the Bright House showroom, Cash Converters, or a bailiff's white van. Well past being Last Year's Aspirations, they now clutter the premises of Pal Audio Visual, hoping that someone will buy, second-hand or refurbished, into their tarnished, big is beautiful, mind-deadening vision of success in modern Britain.
Over the other side of the cul-de-sac, is Elite Property Services, where people can rent a room to put these tellies in. Next door, to the left, is Ladbrokes.