Postcards (2): Brixton

 

Dear Brockley,

You’ll no doubt be pleased to hear that not only has the weather improved, but so has my well-being.  We escaped back to South London- albeit to what I have in the past referred to as the wrong side of Elephant and Castle – and, after a weekend of further inaction, I finally managed to perk up.

Perhaps my recovery was aided by being back across the Thames again.  The air feels different down here, more diverse.  It’s all a bit more familiar than Muswell Hill.  And yet, ever since I went to that party in the closed down shop, which I think is now a Polish deli, shortly after I first moved to London, I’ve always been somewhat wary of it.

This sort of thing doesn’t help:  Years ago, staggering back from an all day drinking session in Earl’s Court and then an unnecessary late night bar in Clapham, I found myself meandering in a stumbling shuffle along Coldharbour Lane towards the P4 bus-stop.  It was late, but not outrageously so by Brixton’s standards.  Slowly through my ale soaked brain, I became aware of a presence hovering just behind me.  I sneaked a glance over my shoulder and saw a car driving very slowly with three or four shadows hulking inside.  There was no reason for them to be hovering so close to me, no turn or doorway for them to be slowing down for.  My brain sobered itself up and automatically assumed the worst.  Suddenly, like a saviour, the bus popped out of its side road ahead of me.  I sprinted for the stop, waving my arms in a retrospectively embarrassing fashion to catch the driver’s attention.

Nothing happened, of course, and maybe nothing would have, but a threat is often more real than anything actually said or done.

Brixton has smartened itself up in the intervening years.  It’ll probably never get back to its pinnacle as the Victorian gentle-lady’s shopping destination of choice, second only to Oxford Street.  Back then, the self-explanatory named Electric Avenue was the first street to be fully fitted with street lighting on its opening.   Now, the equally heralded and maligned gentrification sweeps through the area at a pace dragging in more artisan cafes, so-called pop-up restaurants and purveyors of hideously expensive craft beer than one can shake a vintage frock at. 

Which, once again, sounds like I’m complaining.  I’m not.  Well, except for the use of the term pop-up.  I mean, really it doesn’t pop up anywhere.  That’s just disappointing.

Still, gentrification is change and change is always controversial.  Some people will always like a place just as it is.  The new Brixton, I suspect, is for the couple with the bottle of pink champagne in the bar of the Ritzy.  They rest their shortly cropped heads resting against each other and take an iPod earpiece each.  Or the less comfortable couple sitting on the other side of Windrush Square, hand in hand, looking trendily gawky in their bottle top glasses.  They have to reach across the two chairs that have replaced the benches where rough sleepers used to congregate for the night. 

It isn’t for the woman who followed me down Brixton Hill screaming that I’d stolen her Oyster Card or the old man stopped for a rest on the newsagent’s windowsill, his arthritic riddled hands gripping the top of his crutch, the cuffs of both his trousers and jacket frayed in a non-deliberate fashion. 

It’s more for the American woman asking the guys on Electric Avenue to give her the narrative behind the vegetables she wanted to buy and not the shop owners shrugged and reply ‘is spinach, innit?’   Sure, no-one really misses the sort of characters I once saw outside the Dog Star who leapt on to the bonnet of a car that took the lights a little too late and booted out the windscreen, but they’ve got to live somewhere.

If Muswell Hill is nice, then Brixton is cool.  Funky with an edge that London kind of needs.  Without the occasional sense of threat it feels like you’re living somewhere artificial, a sanitised environment where nothing really counts for anything.  Not anything real anyway.

So what did I do during our week there?

Stayed in and watched Mad Men mainly.

There were three reasons for not really taking advantage of our location.  Firstly, I continued to feel rotten upon our arrival to the extent that I shunned a Saturday night with friends in Shadwell for the sofa.  Secondly, we were, temporarily at least, reunited with the cat, who is spending the whole duration of this farce in Brixton.  Thirdly, I’ve never seen Mad Men and so was curious as to what all the fuss was about.  Our host had the first season on DVD and so I started at the beginning.

I didn’t finish it, which probably tells you all you need to know.  I found it slickly put together and pretty to look at with competent acting, but what exactly is it trying to tell us?  It feels empty and shallow, like an advert for a life that no longer exists, much like the images in my head of Brixton.  Which may, it suddenly occurs to me, be the point after all.

I did finally venture out on the Thursday to meet a friend for a drink.  On my late return to Brixton – having been informed by my girlfriend that she was off to bed and stashing the keys under the wheelie bin – I was possibly a little the worse for wear.  I found it overly confusing for the high street to be closed off.  The swirling blue police lights that drifted from further towards Stockwell in the damp night gave it a hallow feel, almost like an aquarium.  I’ve no idea what was going on, but it did feel like a very Brixton moment.  Too late in the evening, big fruitless queues waited for buses that weren’t coming while the change hecklers mingled amongst them and the longer queue snaking out of KFC.  People streamed into the road filling it with random shouting and there was just a snifter of danger in the air as I weaved up the hill.

Still, it wasn’t or grime and imagined edginess.  I thoroughly enjoyed my pint in the Elm Tree Tavern, waiting for my girlfriend to bring the front door keys back from lunch with her sister.  It was nice to be so close to friends in East Dulwich and a game of ping-pong in a familiar park.  Another lazy afternoon in Brockwell Park with the paper – even if I did doze off in the sunshine, which may have been the Elm Tree Tavern’s fault – felt more like part of our usual life.  Life felt on a firmer footing.  I knew where the buses went, where the shortcuts were, routines inched their way in.  I felt grounded.

But then it hit me.  On Friday I was just a snip hung-over and, as the afternoon dragged and the sunshine prickled through the office window, this overwhelming sense of melancholy washed over me.  I wasn’t home and nor was I going home anytime soon.  There was an aching disassociation from the world.  A sort of homesickness, I suppose, or at least a frustration at everything being so temporary. 

I am dearly grateful to all our friends who have rescued us from a cardboard box under the railway arches, but I’m not convinced I’m cut out for an itinerant life.  We’re so lucky to have the support structures, unlike the poor guy with scabbed blisters at his lips who kept following us around Brixton Market asking for change, but once upon a time I imagined myself being a bit like John Broome.  Broome spent his middle-age cutting back and forth across the world, happy to be on the move, posting his writing in to his publishers and taking inspiration from restlessness.  I think I need more stability than that.  When I settled down to write on Sunday afternoon the words wouldn’t come.  I had nothing to share, perhaps because I had nothing.

Still, take care of yourself and, I guess, we’ll find our way back to you eventually.

With love,

David.