For continuity purposes, I should point out that we saw this
place on the same morning as Tressillian Crescent and Montacute Road. So the
fiasco at the end of the previous post has yet to happen.
Rushford Road is a funny little street in the Crofton Park
area of Brockley, where the roads generally run northish to southish. It’s one of the few routes that cut between
its longer neighbours Manwood Road and Bexhill Road. It is also strangely bleak. A short street, with a hump in the middle as the
road mounts a ridge and drops down either side yet offers limited views, as
though, despite what logic tells you, the houses are in some way shorter. Maybe it was just the light that winter
morning, although we hadn’t noticed it at the other properties, but there was a
smoky grey misery hanging over the street.
Which was a shame, when I’d lived on Salehurst Road I’d
really liked living down that end. It
always felt like I was in the middle of everything, so much more surrounded by
SE4 that the more highly rated conservation area which lurks on the northern
reaches. You were close to Mr Lawrence’sWine Bar, Jam Circus, the Brockley Jack – basically I just liked having a range
of options of somewhere to go for a drink.
The rows of two or three bedroom two storey terrace houses built at the
end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries felt more
realistic to me; they were somewhere I could believe that we’d end up rather
than the fantasy of a four storey Georgian mansion.
Once again the agent failed to materialise making me begin
to wonder whether it was our fault. Did
we exude the scent of people who weren’t serious, or at the very least didn’t
have that much money to spend? The nice
family who lived there showed us around anyway which, while very friendly of
them, made it harder for us to have a frank conversation. It’s not as though we intended to be rude,
but that’s how taste works: everything we were likely to recoil at, they would
have loved.
1990: Ali sat
in an old deckchair on the concrete slabs and sipped a can of Skol. The three o’clock sun felt soft on his
neck. A couple of gardens up, the old
chap, the Portuguese fella, tended to his garden, snipping off flower heads and
dropping them into a plastic sack. Ali
had never understood why people did that.
Sure, he got that it would make them grow afresh, but why cull back
something still alive? Out in the street,
over the tops of the houses, he could hear Jimmy Morris and his mate bunking
off school again, yelling and shouting at each other about bands and other
rubbish that wasn’t really important.
Ali took a sip of his
lager. It was beginning to go warm, but
he had to make it last. He couldn’t
afford many more. A brief breeze caught
his newspaper and he had to reach out and grab it, stuffing it under his
chair. He wasn’t sure why he bothered. There wasn’t anything in it, just more empty classified
pages. It wasn’t as though there were
any jobs to apply for.
Ali felt sorry for
Jimmy and the wakeup call he was going to get when school finished. Ali was nearly twenty and the only work he’d had
was casual, cash in hand stuff. He
should have tried harder, concentrated more.
He should have been like Jimmy’s sister, Gemma. Got himself onto some sort of vocational
course. She always had been smart, now
she was a nurse over at King’s. He heard
that she was doing well for herself while he, he just sat in his Mum and Dad’s
garden wishing there was something else
to do.
His Dad had blamed
Thatcher, of course. That was what
everyone did, wasn’t it? ‘Economic
miracle? Not round here, son. S’alright for the city workers. Sodding yuppies. Real jobs for real people? Nah.’
It wasn’t that Ali
didn’t agree, but she’d been gone for a year and there was still no change. He didn’t hate the yuppies with their flash
cars, smart suits and bulging wallets.
He was jealous of them. He was
young and he wanted some of the high life too instead all he had was a garden
and a steadily warming can of cheap lager.
He wanted more to live than south east London; at least he was honest
about it.
I could guess at what my girlfriend was thinking: that
compared to the two places we’d seen that morning already the rooms were very
small. The ceilings seemed lower thanthey really were. I talked up how we could knock the living and dining room
through into one and she nodded, but perhaps a little unenthusiastically. I could see her point. I too was geeing myself up, but it was hard. I’d fallen hard for Montacute Road’s hall, but
also it was difficult to see beyond the decor and clutter already
installed. Heavy dark wood panelling in
the dining room, so much greenery in the living room it was hard to move,
fluorescent pink walls and white lace trims in the front bedroom and in every
single room, even the empty ones, a television switched on and broadcasting a
different channel creating a cacophony of noise that cluttered over
itself. A background soundtrack playing out
multiple narratives all at the same time; it was like having the whole damn
city in there with us.
The small concrete yard offered at least some outdoor space
if not much option for doing any proper gardening. The strange clay faces affixed to the wall at
the end of the neighbour’s garden were a little disconcerting. Strange devils in bright reds and sea blues
leered down at us threateningly. Come
on, they seemed to be growling with forked tongues that lolled long and heavy
across swollen luminous lips. Say
something about us, reel away from the sight of us. Go on.
We dare you.
I'm enjoying this series David, perhaps because I was in the same boat about twelve months before you. Possibly even saw some of the same places.
ReplyDeleteOn estate agents: having been on the other end of that business, I can tell you that the service can be shockingly poor. I learned it's not a numbers game - more viewings do not mean more likely sale. They have to actually sell the damn place. Turning up is a good start; actually knowing about the place and answering questions is a nice second; but actual sales are what do the job.
We wasted months and months on crappy agents. When we found the right one they sold the house within a month.
Ahem. Sorry about that. Talk about your middle class moans!
Thanks, Patrick. I think estate agents in London have become complacent after years of an overheated market and expect people to just be so damn grateful that they're being allowed to even see somewhere that they instantly hand over all their money. That said, there are some crazy buyers around who probably make the agents' lives hell too.
ReplyDeleteStill, turning up certainly helps.
Mind you, our relationship with estate agents is going to take a drastic turn for the worse in the post after next...