Every time I eat a sun-dried tomato I die a little inside

So, I’ve spent the last year liv­ing in High­gate, hav­ing felt my time in Arch­way had come to a nat­ural con­clu­sion when Decem­ber arrived and the house I was liv­ing in had no heat­ing, no work­ing oven, no func­tional light­ing in the kitchen, 90db Hip-Hop at week­ends and a mouse infes­ta­tion so chronic that the other ten­ants had taken to approach­ing the kitchen with heavy foot­steps, to give the mice a chance to run away; out of sight, out of mind, you see?

High­gate is only one tube stop north of Arch­way but when you arrive there it’s like you’ve acci­den­tally arrived in some sort of Oxford­shire vil­lage, all leafy and judg­men­tal with a nice park and some­thing called a Fruiterer. It’s part of this vaguely wealthy, not very stabby part of North Lon­don, along­side Muswell Hill and Crouch End and doesn’t feel like you’re in Lon­don any more, some­thing high on my list of require­ments for com­fort­able living.

It’s been nice liv­ing here; I buy food from local butch­ers and green­gro­cers and cheese­mon­gers and that’s turned out to be cheaper and bet­ter for me than buy­ing from super­mar­kets as I no longer acci­den­tally stock up on Frosties. I spend many relax­ing hours on park benches ded­i­cated to a wide vari­ety of dead peo­ple and I rent a drafty, empty, one-bedroom flat about 300% too large for me that’s about 60 sec­onds walk from the tube sta­tion. I seem to be, gen­er­ally, doing ok.

I’m never happy

The only real prob­lem I have with High­gate and the sur­round­ing area is that it’s largely full of the sort of peo­ple you might expect to find liv­ing in High­gate and the sur­round­ing area; young, wealthy white cou­ples with spaniels and well-dressed chil­dren that never seem to age beyond five years. Every­body seems to have a double-barrelled pushchair that must be accom­mo­dated by all restau­ran­teurs and shop-keepers, at the risk of hav­ing the mother act aghast and out­raged as she dis­cov­ers that her armoured vehi­cle doesn’t fit down the quirky, rus­tic, wind­ing staircase.

Then there’s the con­ver­sa­tion, usu­ally loud con­ver­sa­tion in affected plummy voices – plummy enough to indi­cate wealth but not plummy enough to indi­cate actual breed­ing. The smug, middle-class tedium on offer to the casual eaves­drop­per make me want to drive a spike through my head. For instance, “Tasha’s going to look after the rab­bit while we’re away in Africa” and “He’s going to buy her the ring from what­ever money is left over from his new bath­room” and – my own per­sonal favourite – “So, we finally bought a pep­per mill”. I had my hair cut the other day and over­heard the man sit­ting next to me explain to his hair­dresser than when he first went to Thai­land he was there back­pack­ing, and it was a real strug­gle to refrain from stand­ing up, shout­ing “Yes, of course, of course you were back­pack­ing! Because that’s what you lot do, isn’t it? You back­pack around fuck­ing Thai­land” as I repeat­edly drove a comb into his sternum.

It’s hard not to eaves­drop, so loud and weirdly fas­ci­nat­ing is the banal­ity. For instance, Lit­tle Casper and Sasha, ref­er­enced briefly a few weeks ago, are not just names I picked out of my “Ridicu­lous names wealthy mid­dle class par­ents would pick for their vile spawn” hat but are in fact real chil­dren whose mother sat near me in a café rant­ing about her ex-husband not ful­fill­ing the terms of their divorce, i.e., that he would get lit­tle Casper and Sasha for 40% of the time, which was going to be impos­si­ble as he was talk­ing first about mov­ing to Edin­burgh and then to Corn­wall, and the mother of course would be happy to have lit­tle Casper and Sasha 100% of the time but that isn’t what the divorce con­tract says so she’s going to have to call in the lawyers again and he’s just not think­ing of the chil­dren and oh my god my brain has drib­bled out of my nose.

So I’m get­ting rest­less, and curs­ing myself every time I do some­thing that seems, to me, to be a typ­i­cally North Lon­don thing to do, like eat sun-dried toma­toes or get involved in any­thing bal­samic or buy some­thing need­lessly rus­tic or pro­vide my own shop­ping bag. The men of High­gate all wear plain shoes, blue jeans and sim­ple GAP sweat­shirts, which pretty much describes what I wear all the time, annoy­ingly. It’s dif­fi­cult to go around being aloof and cyn­i­cal when you look exactly the same and act exactly the same way as every­one else. I caught myself con­tem­plat­ing buy­ing a top hat the other day, just to mix things up a lit­tle, but my heart wasn’t really in it.

Still, at least I don’t look like all I’m think­ing about is putting up some shelves and maybe hav­ing a light beer. I hope so, any­way. I’d like to think that I look like I’m think­ing about com­mit­ting the mur­der act upon every­one I pass, which, if noth­ing else, keeps peo­ple out of my way.