I grew up in a suburb of Harare called Avondale. Here is a picture of Avondale Primary School (motto: Attempt, Persevere, Succeed) courtesy of Avondale School Rocks Facebook Group
and here is what used to be called Second Street Extension shopping centre.
Long gone, of course, are the Dairy Den, where the general unpleasantness of the cantankerous old couple that ran it had to be offset against the delights of a choc 99, and Readers Corner, the bookshop whose owner moved to Seattle, Washington some 40 years ago or so.
But there are other Avondales. There is, for example, Avondale, Auckland, New Zealand, which in its early days had numerous market gardens, in one of which the kiwifruit was developed.
It is also home to Avondale College, the second largest high school in New Zealand and gave its name to the Avondale spider (harmless apparently).
I now live in Hackney, London. According to the Hackney Council website, the first real records of settlement in Hackney date back to Saxon times. The name 'Hackney' was first recorded in 1198 AD and "is probably derived from an island or a raised place in a marsh (an 'ey') in the vicinity of the River Lea, together with the name of a Dane called Haca or Hacon, who owned it." Hackney, Kansas, on the other hand, was named after William P. Hackney, a frontier lawyer.
Today is a bit grey and damp. Hackney, Adelaide is having a better day and can look forward to a sunny 27 degrees tomorrow.
