Tales of the Riverbank

I had an interesting day in Hammersmith yesterday, collecting some art books from a man who designed this:

As I boxed the books, I enjoyed listening to anecdotes about his long career - one that included National Service in the Intelligence Corps, a spell as a paparazzo in the 60s, followed by many years in Hollywood as a production designer. As if that wasn't enough, he'd also found the time to climb the Himalayas, trek across the Kalahari and paint enough canvases to fill a gallery.

And he's just published a novel.

When he turned to me and asked one of the most feared questions in the English language - "And what do you do?" - I had nothing to say.

It was pretty obvious that Michael didn't really want to get rid of his books, but he'd been given notice to vacate the building where he rents a studio and didn't have room in the Notting Hill flat he shares with his wife.

The studios are right on the riverside and I suspect that they will be bulldozed and replaced with luxury flats, most of which will be bought by foreign investors. It's a great pity that this quirky, interesting building is going to be lost:

It's strange to see how Hammersmith has changed from being a shabby, depressed, no-man's land, sandwiched between the West End and the genteel outer suburbs, to a cosmopolitain, middle-class property hostpot.

This is how I remember Hammersmith:






Today, it feels completely different. The area seems to have undergone some form of ethnic cleansing in which anyone who is either working class, overweight or old (or all three) has been deported. As I tried to load my van with boxes, I had to dodge a constant stream of cyclists and joggers, all pursuing their lesiure activities with the same dogged determination that they devoted to the working week.

I also noticed that many of the cyclists were speaking in French.

Michael's charming wife bought us lunch at the pub next door and for a moment I thought that I had gatecrashed a supermodels' convention. Svelte young women in expensive clothes, with perfectly waxed legs, checked their smartphones as they waited to be served exotic drinks by trendy bar staff, half dancing to the deafening music. 

Where were the old-timers, like The Syrup?


(For non-UK readers The Syrup was a character in the TV series Minder: syrup of figs - wigs)

I suppose he's now in Margate, with many of the other original Londoners.

In many ways, I liked the new Hammersmith. It was a pleasant change to worry about being knocked over by a cyclist rather than being beaten up. It's a long time since I heard anyone say "Wotchoo lookin' at? Eh? Wanna smackinthamaahf?"

The new Hammersmithonians seemed bright, fit and friendly. Several people stopped to help me when my attempts to load shelving units into the van took a farcical turn. Nobody called me mate.

But there is a darker side to the process of gentrification, beside the absurd property prices. Michael's wife said that many of the flats in Notting Hill are now being converted back into houses for Russian oligarchs and there are whole streets full of properties that are only occasionally occupied. A neighbour of hers ended up feeling so lonely and isolated that she decided to sell up and leave.

I'd forgotten how much I used to enjoy weekends in London and felt invigorated by meeting interesting new people. It came as a welcome relief from a phone call on Thursday morning, when we learned that our closest friend in Lewes had died unexpectedly.

She was one of those people who hated technology and as a result, has no presence on the internet (apart from a brief entry on the IMDB for working on Halloween III). Perhaps I'll remedy that.

Teddington - a Dreary, Overpriced Suburb?

FOREWORD - This blog post ruffled a few feathers. Regular readers know that my writing is usually tongue-in-cheek, so please take this piece with a large pinch of salt.

In the 19th century, a rural Thameside village called Teddington underwent a huge transformation into a suburb of London, as the city's population increased sixfold. Fields and meadows were swallowed up by street after street of semi-detached villas, artisans' cottages and parades of shops.

It was part of a process that was happening all over the outskirts of London, as the gaps between villages were filled with parallel roads of redbrick semis. In this new suburbia there were no longer any boundaries. Teddington suddenly turned into Twickenham or Hampton, depending on which direction you walked in.

I was born in Teddington in the 1960s and spent the first 25 years of my life there. Then, one day, I realised that it was time to pack my bags and go somewhere a little more exciting.

I moved to Twickenham.

This is where I caught the bus to my new life, a mile away:

I wonder how many hundreds of hours I have spent at this bus stop in Teddington's Waldegrave Road (the slightly improbable birthplace of Noel Coward) waiting for a glimpse of red in the far distance. I dread to think.

Sometimes I'd wait for over half an hour, before two or three 270s appeared at the same time. The drivers had probably decided to ignore the timetable and have breakfast together at Fulwell bus depot.

Nobody ever complained.

In some ways, the bus stop photo sums up Teddington for me. The sense of waiting for something to happen; that life is elsewhere.

I've been thinking a lot about Teddington recently after I had an amicable difference of opinion with @TLTeddington on Twitter, who had objected to my description of it in the latest Crap Towns book. I'd described the town as a "very dreary, overpriced suburb", which had prompted the following comments:

"The cheeky 'bar stewards'. We know how lovely it is and what a great place it is to live!"

"Clearly have never set foot in the town. we should invite them for lunch at Retro or any of the other great places. Idiot."

"We have are fortunate to have a thriving town centre filled with lovely independent shops, not a cloned town."

@TLTeddington also posted an image of this manifesto:

It all looked very inspring, but was this the same Teddington that I grew up in?

In some ways it was - we certainly shopped locally. Up until the mid-70s, when Bruce Forsyth opened a new Tesco supermarket, all of our food shopping took place in corner shops where everyone knew me by name.

It was like being in a Ladybird book.

My mother and I walked everywhere, as we couldn't afford the bus. In Stanley Road there was the Chinese butcher, who sadly died of a heart attack in his early 40s, a hairdresser's where my mother had her 'perm' and the Friend Shop, where a man would cut slices of processed ham with egg in the middle for us.

Vegetables were either bought from a greengrocer run by two brothers in Waldegrave Road, or a shop in Broad Street where a mynah bird called Bobby would greet me with a loud "'Allo!".

Sometimes, as a special treat, we would walk up to Teddington Model Shop, where there was a coin-operated miniature railway in the window. The slot for the large, pre-decimal pennies remained long after the model shop had been replaced by a video rental business.

It seemed a quiet and benign world, where the pace of change was reassuringly slow and many people had lived in their homes for decades. We knew most of the people in our part of the road, either by their surnames or by some distinguishing feature: The German lady, The Irish family, The Lady with the son that makes the noises, The Woman with the beard and The Man with no thumbs.

One woman had lived in her house since 1899:

Mrs Plutheroe, aged 103, in 2002

Our immediate neighbours included two German Jewish sisters, neither of whom hinted at their tragic past, a retired couple I knew as Auntie and Uncle Fuller, and a gentleman in his 70s called Mr Gifford, who took his 1930s Austin Seven out for a spin once a year.

There was very little traffic, so in the summer I would play in the street with the local kids, only returning when it was too dark to see.

In hindsight, it seems strange to think that the centre of London was just over ten miles away, because Teddington felt very different, like a sleepy, provincial town.

I've tried to find some photos that capture the essence of Teddington as I remember it, but only came across a few snapshots. I suppose it wouldn't have occured to me to take photos of that ordinary, everyday world that has now disappeared.

Bushy Park. Much nicer than Richmond Park.

Teddington Woolworths, where my mother sold Pick 'n' Mix (known by the local schoolchildren as "Pick 'n' Nick") to the stars.

Outside my house in Church Road (I'm the poncey-looking one on the left)

Looking at the 'Live Totally, Shop Locally' manifesto, it is simply a description of how we used to live. We knew the name of the person behind the till. We smelled the fruit and chatted to strangers. We even ate food grown within walking distance, as my parents had an allotment next to the cemetery:

So why have I been so critical of modern-day Teddington? Does it really deserve to be branded a 'Crap Town'? Well, yes and no.

There's nothing uniquely terrible about Teddington. In many ways it is a pleasant suburb that offers a more relaxed pace of life than some of the more 'vibrant' London suburbs. I'd far rather raise my children there than Peckham or Perivale. But in its journey from being the poor relation of Richmond and Twickenham to becoming a property hotspot, Teddington has lost something.

Perhaps the first sign of danger was when Brucie opened Tescos. One by one, the corner shops began to close. Some were converted into residential properties, while others became takeaways. The familiar, friendly faces behind the tills disappeared.

Then, in the mid-1980s, the London property market began its gradual ascent into the stratosphere and Teddington, once seen as a bit drab and slightly too far away from London, became increasingly desirable, as Richmond, Sheen and Kew became unaffordable.

People needed to be near London for work, but they didn't want to live somewhere where they had to worry about being mugged. They also wanted something that wasn't London, but wasn't the sticks either. Enter Teddington.

What happened next is what's happened in most parts of London and many towns within commuting distance. Demand exceeded supply and house prices reached a point where people who had grown up in the area couldn't afford to get on the property ladder. They moved out and were gradually replaced by those who had the money.

The sentence in the manifesto "Show Your Kids Their Future" is particularly poignant, because unless they have a considerable sum of money or can afford a mortage for properties that cost, on average, over 30 times the average salary, these children won't have a future in Teddington.

Like me, they'll have to move somewhere else. That is the 'crapness' of modern Teddington. This blog post could have easily been about another London suburb - they're nearly all unaffordable now - but I know Teddington better than anywhere else.

Teddington used to be a socially mixed town. It had its rough parts - in York Road the policemen always went in pairs - but most of the town was a blend of lower middle and working class and, most importantly of all, it felt like a real community.

Perhaps Teddington still feels like that, with its smart resturants, pleasant cafes and artisan bakeries, but I suspect that the town's population is far more transient than it used to be, if the estate agent signs are anything to go by.

Maybe I'm just a grumpy middle-aged man, resenting the inevitable process of change, but I'd like to feel that if my children grow up in an area, they can choose to stay if they wish and not be priced out of their home town.

Of course, by that same logic I shouldn't have moved to Lewes, as I've probably helped to price Lewesians out of their local property market. It's all very complicated, isn't it.

I think I'll go and have a lie down.

One final thought. Although Teddington may not always have been at the forefront of the avant garde, my mother may have been an inspiration to at least one contemporary artist: Grayson Perry:

That's a point in Teddington's favour, surely.

P.S - On reflection, one positive thing I must mention is that my mother spent her last few years there surrounded by very caring neighbours. She probably wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for one particular neighbour. They were all families with young children who'd managed to move to Teddington just before the house prices went into meltdown. I saw an encouraging resurgence of the community spirit I remembered from the 1970s and 80s. But will any of those children be able to remain in Teddington when they grow up? That's the question.

A Commercial Break

It has been a rather odd few weeks. My best supplier of books went bust, a friend learned that they were in the final stage of lung cancer and my oldest son almost managed to burn the house down.

My wife says she feels as if we're in a badly-written soap opera. I know what she means, although I'm sticking to the 18th century novel theme that I mentioned in an earlier posting. Our lives are more Smollett than Eastenders, not relentlessly grim, but oscillating unpredictably between triumph and disaster.

For example, only days after my book supplier went out of business, a far bigger one got in touch and said that they would be able to supply me with whatever I needed. Then a week later, a corporate customer contacted me about supplying books. My only role in both events was to say yes.

Sadly, I don't see how there will be a change in fortunes for the friend with cancer.

20 years ago, she was living in Los Angeles. Her father was a Hollywood screenwriter, her sister was married to a movie star and our friend worked for a film studio. She seemed to have a gilded life. But then the biological clock began to ring and she convinced herself that a man she met at a party was 'the one'.

She became pregnant and looked forward to a new life with her husband and child, but two things happened. First, she quickly realised that the father was not husband material (or even father material). Second, the baby turned out to be babies.

For some reason, she decided to raise the children in her native England and found a house in Lewes. As a single mother of twins in a new town, life must have been hard enough, but it would become even more challenging when it emerged that one of her boys was severely autistic.

I've no doubt that smoking played its role in the lung cancer, but I also think that she was run into the ground by a life that was unremittingly hard. Her autistic son never sleeps for more than a couple of hours at a time, so neither does she. Sometimes he hits her. She looks frail and worn out.

When I drove her home from the hospital, I tried to think of something to say. I thought of all the people I knew who had survived cancer. But I also knew that whatever I said, it would sound like a hollow platitude. In the end, all my wife and I could offer was practical help: homemade soups, lifts and visits.

This year has made me feel jittery. I think most of us like to believe that we have a certain degree of control over our lives, but during the last 11 months, most of the evidence has been to the contrary. I notice that I have become obsessed with certain household chores, as if the chaos of the external world can be counterbalanced by the order of the internal.

Perhaps that's why some people in Russia and East Germany have expressed their nostalgia for the days of communism, when people could feel reasonably confident that nothing would ever change.

Take this old Soviet commercial, for example:



There's no existential nonsense about lifestyle or aspirations of auditory perfection. It's a radio. It's got a volume/on-off button and a tuning dial. You can be certain that it will be slightly crap and that you'll have to wait for two years before yours is delievered from the Novgorod People's Transistor Radio Combine.

I wonder if the Soviets included batteries?

In the next commercial, the announcer is saying "Can you guess which one of these men is a Zionist enemy of the people?"



It's a little menacing.

The next commercial is jollier, but notice that the man has to try twice to shut the door of the car, and the numberplate is wonky:



In the next commercial the message is clear: if you want to eat a decent meal, you need to be a magician:



The final clip has some groovy music and features a couple on their journey to nuptial bliss:



It's a pity they'll have to share their flat with another family. The whole business of flat-sharing was, perhaps, the single biggest failure of the Soviet Union. In a country with such a low population density, why was it impossible for the communist authorities to provide every family with a home of their own?

But perhaps that will be London in a few years, unless someone stops people treating the city's property as an investment opportunity. Apparently, 75% of all house sales in inner London go to foreigners (and by foreigners, I mean people who live outside the UK, rather than the ones that have moved here) who want a good property portfolio. It's utter madness.

It's interesting how the two extremes of a completely planned economy and a totally free market end up producing the same results. That's why I'm always suspicious of people on both the right and left who pursue ideologies at the expense of common sense.

I apologise for being so serious in this post. Let's have another commercial break: