North v South
Time Out has decided to hop blithely onto one of the oldest and most venerably creaky London bandwagons: the is North London better than South London debate. I mean, have they only just got around to this particular chestnut? Let’s face it, us North Londoners have been despising our southern brethren for several hundred years now (and with good reason too). I can only guess that rising levels of gentrification in Dulwich and Camberwell have reached such a pitch that South London has finally appeared on Time Out’s radar, presumably once the ipod-per-square-foot ratio reached a certain permitted minimum. In any case, I refuse to be drawn on su…
I was interrupted by the sound of the telephone.
“Hi!” said the Editor. “Fancy doing a piece comparing North and South London?”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” I said, somewhat irritably.
Prologue
As it turned out, I was on my way out of the office anyway, but thought I’d use my appointment for a spot of research. I thought I’d better get some other opinions first, my views on this so-called ‘debate’ being best described as somewhat partisan.
“Well,” said Francis, sipping nervously at a cup of nettle tea, “I’m not really sure the two areas are even…remotely…comparable.”
Francis, I should explain, is an architect, who is in fact responsible for the stunning steel-and-glass-and-former-fishpaste-factory-in-Hoxton assemblage that is Decline and Fall‘s London offices, or will be when we move out of the Portakabin that has been our home since one wall collapsed. I was meeting him over a spot of afternoon tea in order to discuss the situation.
“I’ve always thought a more interesting dichotomy is that between East and West London,” I said. Francis pushed his wire-rimmed spectacles up his nose with an extended index finger and sniffed. “I concede you do have a small point. Respectable suburbia versus regenerated slums. Service industries versus heavy industries, and in the centre retail versus finance. Though that is a gross simplification, of course.”
“It’s certainly less simple than the North versus South issue,” I said. “Which is essentially an issue of whether you enjoy having a fast, relatively modern transport system, or want to get on a bus.”
“It’s not so bad,” said Francis. “They’ve got a tram.”
“Brilliant,” I said. “Something that can’t decide whether it’s a train or a bus. How quintessentially South London can you get? Anyway, I tire of this argument – I’ve decided to go with the East against West thing. I presume you’re up to speed on trying to sort out the temporary offices, then?”
Francis raised his eyebrows slightly, and nodded.
“Good,” I said, “I’ll tell the Editor everything’s in hand, then.” Looking forward to writing an article that would untangle yet another of the miserably knotty arguments that befoul our capital, I left Francis with a blithe wave, and the bill.
continued next issue