About seven years back, a friend of mine left north London to live with his girlfriend in a mysterious place called Kennington in south London.. He may as well emigrated to New Zealand. I’ve yet to visit him. None of my friends have.
I’ve absolutely nothing against south London. I just have no experience of visiting areas south of the Thames. Myself and my close set of friends have happily enjoyed living in north west London since school days. We spent our formative days drinking in Camden, going to pubs in West Hampstead, Belsize Park and Swiss Cottage, before graduating to Camden Town. Friends of mine recall regularly being in the Good Mixer and the Hawley Arms mixing with leading figures in the Brit Pop era. I have no recollection of sharing a bar with Damon or the Gallagher brothers (apparently they did use to talk to each other). My hazy memories of that time probably were due to my incapacity to hold my drink. But looking back it was was a golden era for me before I heading up to University. Camden Town seemed to be the place to be during those years.
Later, we did occasionally stray into areas such as Kings Cross, Soho and Notting Hill for special occasions. But never did we even consider crossing any of the bridges into the hostile south. I recall the odd trip to Brixton Academy and foolishly braving visits to the old Cold Blow Lane on a couple of occasions. As we grew older, we did venture further afield, relatively speaking, but we very much at home in north London.
I bring this subject up, as I’m writing this post for my blog sitting in a pub where I’m attending a web developers meeting. But I’m not meeting in some cold, cheerless classroom in a college. I’m in the Sun pub, just a short walk from Clapham Common station. It’s a lovely place. Comfortable, with loads of character, with staff who don’t begrudge you entering the pub and dimmed lighting (v important to me….). There’s not a sky sports screen in sight, I’m listening to a retro, soothing soundtrack and the menu looks appetising. Close my eyes and I could be in one of Hampstead’s pretentious and overpriced watering holes. I actually felt very comfortable in south London.
It was an enjoyable evening mixing with a range of other web developers (no smirking please) and some really encouraging contacts where made. I was predictably the only north Londoner in attendance and even more predictably, the south Londoners had few tales of visiting my part of north London for a night out. I guess it just shows how disparate London is. Even though the tube journey from swiss cottage was a swift and painless experience, it was long enough to help explain why people living in our capital generally remain in their own areas when out socialising. We all make journeys across London to attend concerts, sporting occasions or other cultural events. But for catching up with local friends, it does seem a bit pointless to spend a significant proportion of the evening traveling across the Thames. I guess this is an obvious statement to make. But we Londoners are missing out on a lot in respect to exploring neighbourhoods which are a matter of only half a dozen miles away.
There seems to be an unwritten rule amongst my circle of friends, that you’re naturally free to move wherever you like into south London. But if you do fly the nest, then don’t expect a visit in the near future. Or ever for that matter.