Song 96: Jessica

Remembering this song has given me pause for thought.

It's by Adam Green, who was one half of Moldy Peaches. It's a crooned, scornful ballad about the TV star Jessica Simpson. I rather liked it for a while.

I remember playing it once to Juliette and she said "that's a really cruel horrible song", and it is. I'd had a bit of a blindspot to its cruelty.

I was generally quite good on post-millennial cruelty, whether it was The X Factor or the tabloid treatment of Britney Spears and Amy Winehouse. Obvious, mainstream, punch-down cruelty, I was pretty good at disdaining and steering clear of.

This seemed like indie, impersonal, cruelty. An irony-laden critique on the vacuity of celebrity. So I was ok with it, I guess. But the words are pretty horrible really. And it turns out Jessica Simpson was one of the many early 2000s female celebrities who, just below the surface, was having a pretty horrendous time of it.

Nowadays, Adam Green would be vilified on the twitter for the cruelty of a song like this. And the circle would keep turning.

Twitter is funny for the cruelty. Obviously, there are the many many vindictive shitheads and the poisonous mobs etc, but there's a real brand of good guy cruelty too, which can trip you up, where people who seem generally funny, good-natured and well-intentioned will direct their banter at someone who isn't necessarily a lord of a darkness, but maybe just a quite annoying person, and it will escalate and escalate and you'll suddenly think "god, this is all just cruelty" and that's how maybe I feel about the Jessica Simpson song, but also, in a weird way, maybe it's just ok to be cruel in an impersonal way after all. Maybe Adam Green no more thought, nor was required to think, about Jessica Simpson as an actual human being than the funny tweeters do about the target of their satire, and really that's fine, and it's better to treat the world as if it's not connected at all rather than completely connected, otherwise most of our actions and utterances are carelessly cruel.

B90: Mysteries

I have another London memory. A nice, strange one. I already wrote a little post about the South Bank, but not specifically about the National Theatre. 

Mostly, when I went to the National Theatre, it was to the Olivier and the Lyttelton. But around, I think, Easter 2000, a group of us went to see The Mysteries at the Cottesloe (now Dorfman), which is much more of a ruddy bloody brave space than the more traditional and grand Olivier and Lyttelton.

I was not entirely a willing attendee, had been a little dragooned into it. It was the story of the Bible. It was three plays in one day - morning, afternoon and evening. For the story of the Bible.

But it was a version of the medieval plays adapted by Tony Harrison, who I was already a fan of. The first play began, I guess at around 10.30am, with a stark naked Adam and Eve (played by Joanna Page, I've just looked up, years before Gavin and Stacey). I guess that woke everybody up.

The cast was distinguished, some still there from the acclaimed, original, 1985 production. Jack Shepherd, David Bradley, Don Warrington, Sue Johnston, Trevor Laird, William Gaunt - all faces you'd recognise if you saw them.

And it was musical, and the music was folk. John Tams, a folk musician/actor perhaps best known for being the folk singer in 'Sharpe', was the co-ordinator.

So, actually, I found myself hugely enjoying it. But it was hard work, and there was a lot of standing and sitting on the floor. And I'm very bad at sitting on a floor. 

I was in the middle of my biggest period of musical discovery, only having started buying CDs rather than tapes (there was a much bigger selection of CDs available by the late 90s) a year or so earlier, I was soaking up the history of rock and folk which didn't go straight down the middle.

So, that was a big Nick Drake time for me, and going from that, a big Fairport Convention, Richard and Linda Thompson time.

'I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight' and, particularly, 'Walking on a Wire' from 'Shoot out the Lights' were massive for me that year - Linda Thompson's stunning, clear voice. I'd read about them all a lot too - Linda Thompson who'd had a relationship of sorts with Drake himself (he might as well have been a mix of Greta Garbo and Elvis as far as I was concerned). She'd been married to Richard, and I knew about the legendary misery of their last tour, and how she'd pretty much disappeared from music after that, indeed, she'd had a condition which meant she couldn't sing. I knew all that.

And yet, here she was, unmistakeably, singing, accompanied by John Tams at this mystery play.

I think we must have had a pint at lunch after the first play. A big mistake for me at that time, not yet in control of my rapid nauseating headaches. So, during the second one, especially with all the sitting on the floor, I began to take a turn. Yet, at one point, out of nowhere, Linda Thompson, who'd just sang a song, was sitting next to me on the floor.

That's it really. It was just so surreal - a person, who, at that moment where I was learning so much about music history and treating it as almost mythical, and not yet understanding that people are just people who get on with their lives, could not have been more iconic to me, just sitting on the floor next to me.

Sadly, I couldn't last the pace. I remember the second play ended with the crucifixion, and the band played the magnificent Richard and Linda Thompson song 'Calvary Cross' and I was able to enjoy that, but then, in the second break, it was clear I needed to go home. So I never found out how the Bible ends.

2021, will you think about us?

Each year, despite my better judgement, I write a little about the music I've listened to in the year. Some years, there are many songs and albums that reach out and grab me, and I write enthusiastically and at length, while some years, for whatever reason, there is very little that quite takes me there. This has been one of those years.

I've still been listening to 'Song For Our Daughter' by Laura Marling and 'St Cloud' by Waxahatchee, both from 2020, more than almost anything from this year - particularly the latter, which I would simply say is one of my three favourite albums of the century, and an endlessly rewarding, involving masterpiece of perfect songwriting.

I still have listened  to a lot of new music, I always do, but often not with my full attention, or sometimes asking myself questions like "do I like this?", "what pat phrase would i use to describe this if I was asked?" and "am I feeling anything?"

Looking at the year end aggregator on albumoftheyear.com, their consolidated Number 1, by some distance, is 'Sometimes I Might Be Introvert' by Little Simz, which is very pleasing and extremely good on her. The singles 'Introvert' and 'Woman' were among the few songs that were genuinely thrilling this year, and the first few times I listened to the album, I certainly thought "yes, this is it, this is the universal masterpiece the year's needed" and I don't, per se, disagree with that now, I just haven't kept on listening to the album as much as I thought I would.

Still, it's a wonderful-sounding, beautiful, skilled and heartfelt record, and deserves all the praise it's getting.

There've been significant, well-reviewed albums by several of the artists who've been the bedrock of my listening for the best part of thirty years, like Damon Albarn, Gruff Rhys, Paul Weller, Manic Street Preachers, James Yorkston and Nick Cave, but again, none of them, as whole albums, quite did it for me for more than a couple of weeks. Not a slight on any of it, more just a reflection on my listening. Saying that, I do love the song 'Albuquerque' by Cave and Warren Ellis, and I love the chorus line of Gruff's 'Loan Your Loneliness' where he sings "Loan me your unholy lowly loneliness" and it's just such a classic piece of Gruff Rhys silly-brilliant lyricism set to a a good tune that it is, in and of itself, one of my favourite things of the year.

The Mercury Prize was won by Arlo Parks' 'Collapsed in Sunbeams', one of the few albums I did have a strong opinion on, if, "no, really, that's a bit meh, that's interesting-debut-EP quality, not award-winning-debut-album quality" counts as a strong opinion.

I really like the album 'Jubilee' by Japanese Breakfast, and have gradually warmed to 'Ignorance' by The Weather Station, but more through perseverance than inspiration.

I didn't listen to Sheeran, didn't listen to Adele, but I did listen to ABBA, and I've never been anywhere near an ABBA fan, but I found something so endearingly true to itself, in all its naffness and knack for the tune, about the album that I've actually ended up listening to it more than most others.

My favourite song, one of the songs that really felt like it had a sense of occasion, was the one-off 'Like I Used To' by Sharon Van Etten and Angel Olsen. Felt like a hit. Probably wasn't, in the scheme of things, a hit.

And my favourite album definitely wasn't a hit. I can, for once, fairly proudly say that I'm going to be out on my own on this one. I've not seen this album going around the lists at all, but it really deserves to.

Stephen Fretwell, a Scunthorpe-born songwriter who briefly looked like he was going to be the next big thing in the sad white boy boom of the early 2000s that was reduced to a husk by Blunt then eaten alive by Sheeran, who is only known to most folk for being the forlorn voice of the theme music to 'Gavin and Stacey', who released a couple of albums then disappeared for a decade, came back into my consciousness this year with a couple of somewhat heartrending interviews, then put out, to a small handful of gently supportive reviews, an album ironically called 'Busy Guy' which was, whilst sounding like he'd been hermetically sealed since this spare, sad, solipsistic stuff was all the rage, a giant leap from his previous work, a full, mysterious expression of a real, adult life by someone with that rare ability where the song, the simple song itself, is enough, and the rest, all the other stuff they do these days, is irrelevant. 

I know, I sound like a proper old man music bore, but sometimes someone hasn't thought about anything else but the songs, and the songs are memorable and intriguing and actually make you, someone who used to feel something all the time when listening to music, feel something.

So, that's my album of the year, and I'm actually right, despite what anyone else might say.

I listened to loads of other albums, but I don't think I've anything interesting to say about any of them, so, without further ado, before I start telling you my favourite artists of the year were actually The Beatles, Bob Dylan and Simon & Garfunkel, here are the songs and albums.

SONGS

1. Like I Used To - Angel Olsen and Sharon Van Etten

2. The Long Water - Stephen Fretwell

3. Albuquerque - Nick Cave and Warren Ellis

4. Introvert - Little Simz

5. Loan Your Loneliness - Gruff Rhys

6. Got Me - Laura Mvula

7. I Have a Love - For Those I Love

8. White Dress - Lana Del Rey

9. Hard Drive - Cassandra Jenkins

10. Thumbs - Lucy Dacus

ALBUMS

1. Busy Guy - Stephen Fretwell

2. Sometimes I Might Be Introvert - Little Simz

3. Jubilee - Japanese Breakfast

4. An Overview on Phenomenal Nature - Cassandra Jenkins

5. Voyage - ABBA

6. We're All Alone in This Together - Dave

7. Ignorance - Weather Station

8. Pink Noise - Laura Mvula

9. They're Calling Me Home - Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi

10. The Wide Wide River - James Yorkston and the Second Hand Orchestra

Song 95: This Feeling

I heard this song again recently and I thought it juxtapozes pretty well with 'She's a Jar' by Wilco, the last song I wrote about, which came out in 1999. 'This Feeling' by Puressence was a single from mid-98. They were a Manchester band, and this was their most successful single, peaking at Number 33 in the UK charts. It had some, though not a vast amount of, airplay.

This Feeling

I remember hearing it on the radio a few times and I suspect maybe a flatmate owned the single, though I never did. The album received ok reviews but, back when money was scarcer and decisions on music were more weighted, not enough to tempt me to buy it.

I didn't hear the song again, I don't think, for close to decade but then, as often happened, in the age of downloads, you could suddenly go, oh yeah, I liked that song, that'll do for 79p. And I've listened to it now and then since then.

It's one of my favourite post-Britpop singles. I read a little interview with James Walsh, the lead singer of the much-maligned Starsailor, recently, and he good-naturedly pointed out that journalists now like to make out that it was all such a wasteland in those few years and everyone was just waiting around for the Strokes, but it wasn't like that at all. Whatever the legacy of the indie music of that time, a lot of it did do well and people were genuinely excited by it.

For my own part, though I see the likes of 'Deserter's Songs' and 'Summerteeth' (from 98 and 99) as major and lasting shifts in my music taste from Britpop to Americana, it's not like I wasn't listening to Ooberman, Ultrasound, Idlewild and whatever else.

Defining next-big-thing thinking in British music at that time, I reckon there was a sense of mashing together Oasis and Jeff Buckley. There were lots of attempts at epic ballads, there were big emotions. Travis and David Gray were the first things, then the apotheosis came with Coldplay, and the reckoning came with the aforementioned Starsailor.

And, in all of that, I reckon Puressence's 'This Feeling' was a very superior shot. It's formulaic, but it shakes and soars in all the right places. The voice is very good. It's a choirboy voice like Tom Chaplin from Keane but with far more oomph. In fact, it strikes me that I can imagine this being a Keane song - which I imagine is rightly offputting to most, but, still, in a way, is true.

I realise I haven't really sold this song, but it really defines an era for me, a messy student era when there was more going on than the history books tell us.

Song 94: She's a Jar

I'm not sure I've ever written about this song before, though it's a significant song for me. This is the second track on Wilco's 1999 album 'Summerteeth' and so, in fact, the second Wilco song I heard, since 'Summerteeth' was the first Wilco album I listened to, though my interest had been piqued by a 1997 review of 'Being There'.

Mercury Rev's 'Deserter's Songs', from late 1998, saw the start of my shift from Britrock to Americana, but Wilco turned out to be the one I would hold on to longer. They remain one of my favourite bands and I would say that they are a) one of the two best live bands I've seen, and b) the band with the strongest catalogue of the last 25 years.

I think I'd heard 'Can't Stand It', the single and opening track, before I'd bought the album. It's quite sharp and poppy, good enough, tacked on the album because the label needed a single. Otherwise, 'She's a Jar' would have been Track 1, and that would have been quite a start.

She's a Jar

I'd never really heard anything like it before, strange as that sounds in retrospect. There's a great darkness to Wilco between 97 and 2004 (some would say in their recording prime) which hasn't been there since, however much they've continued to make fine records and put on glorious live shows. On 'Summerteeth', that darkness is allied to a musical sweetness that is unnerving, and 'She's a Jar' is the epitome of that.

Jeff Tweedy sings these short, associative, phrases, strumming on an acoustic, while all manner of sweet keyboard orchestrations and mellotron wobbles go on behind him. There are a lot of Dave Fridmann productions around that time (Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev, Delgados etc) and this is the nearest Wilco get to joining that, woozy and rich and beguiling. That's the Jay Bennett influence - this could be Bennett's finest moment.

Lyrically, it's a mix of obscure and brutally straightforward, in a way that is involving and moving. I'd go so far as to say it's one of the greatest lyrics ever written. The most notorious moment is the "twist" ending when Tweedy turns the refrain "she begs me not to miss her" to "she begs me not to hit her", one of the few genuinely shocking moments in a song you'll hear.

I remember once playing it somewhere on a boombox (it's one of the last albums I ever bought on tape) and someone came into the room and told me to turn it off cos it was shit and depressing, which is just the reaction you want from certain people sometimes.

Anyway, I've seen Wilco a few times and they've played this a couple of times, and the live versions have been phenomenal. There are a handful of truly beautiful Wilco songs, and 'She's a Jar' is the darkest of them, and still, just about, my favourite. 

I'd say it's alongside Like a Rolling Stone, More Adventurous and a handful of others as one of the most seminal (in the correct sense of the word) songs in my music taste, one of those moments of "this is it, this is how I want a song to make me feel", and I've never really got tired of it.

B89: the last verse

I've been pretty obsessed with Simon and Garfunkel lately - with them together, and individually, apart. As much as I've always liked S&G and not been averse to Simon's solo work (we had 'Me and Julio...' as our wedding dance, after all) some greater admiration and fascination has embedded this year which hasn't been there before.

I wonder when the last time they spoke was, when the last time they thought about recording together was, how it went sour each time it went sour.

I don't know what precisely has prompted it. There were a few cool TV programmes about them, Simon's doing this audiobook thing with Malcolm Gladwell, I probably felt sufficiently incensed by the sentiment of that sour as fuck article saying Simon would only be a footnote to the Beatles and Dylan.

He's sure written a lot of great songs, Paul Simon, and yes, there's that funny thing which he himself has acknowledged astutely enough that he's never been and can never be cool, and, somehow, though probably there's no difference to most people, there'll always be something that means Simon and his fans are seen as ... prissy ... compared to others, rightly or wrongly.

That's long since stopped mattering, of course. Simon's solo career is as much of a triumph as his fabled group work. He has kept on making good albums - I enjoyed 2016's 'Stranger to Stranger' a great deal (indeed, it may well be that it was that album, late in the day as it was, that made me appreciate Simon the solo artist).

Still, the funny truth lingers. His mother said it herself - "You have a nice voice. Arthur Garfunkel has a fine voice". So Simon sang lead, or they harmonised, sang top and bottom, and it all worked beautifully, and there were many wonderful, occasionally prissy, songs.

Then he wrote this song that he knew was better than what he usually wrote, and he also knew that it was one for his friend to sing. So he gave it to his friend, and his friend and their producer, Roy Halee, persuaded him, against his better judgement, that it needed to be bigger, that it needed to have a third verse which soared, so it is that the most famous, most beloved thing Paul Simon's ever written is "LIKE A BRIDGE OHVER TROU-U-BLED WATER, I WILL EASE YOUR MI-I-I-I-IND" and really that bit belongs mainly to Art Garfunkel, and that must be a little bit annoying.

There are intriguing clips on youtube - them together being interviewed on Letterman in about 1983 talking about their new tour and album together which of course never got made, because they got sick of each other. Them on stage for a successful tour in the early 2000s, before they got sick of each other again in the early 2010s. Garfunkel lost his voice then, though it's come back in some form. Simon has retired from touring.

Perhaps, who knows, they're friends once more, safe in the knowledge they won't have to be Simon and Garfunkel again.

Anyway, I made a Paul Simon playlist once before, but this will be a better one:

Song for the Asking - S&G

American Tune - PS

America - S&G

My Little Town - PS&AG

Old Friends/Bookends - S&G

Still Crazy After All These Years - PS

Kodachrome - PS

The Only Living Boy in New York - S&G

Stranger to Stranger - PS

Leaves that are Green - S&G

St Judy Comet - PS

The Sound of Silence - S&G

The Boxer - S&G

Kathy's Song - S&G

You Can Call Me Al - PS

Graceland - PS

Slip Slidin' Away - PS

Homeward Bound - PS

The Late Great Johnny Ace - PS

Something So Right - PS

Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard - PS

Mrs Robinson - S&G

B88: Tucson is in Arizona

I've watched all of Get Back now. It's been quite an overwhelming experience, & I can only say it's one of the best things I've ever seen. There isn't room for much more critical analysis than that. I was taken aback by some of my emotional responses. The Beatles are not, after all, the band of my generation, though my generation is, perhaps, by virtue of Anthology, Free as a Bird, Britpop etc, the last to wholeheartedly embrace them en masse. I don't know if that's true, but it doesn't feel like the Beatles have been anywhere near as connected to this decade as to the 90s and turn of the century - till now. [I mean, it's still the Beatles, it's not like the Beatles industry has gone quiet, but maybe you know what I mean ...]

Anyway, I'm already blathering more than I intended. I'm here to make a list, primarily. I'll, for once, let other people make the points. Just two things:

1) holy shit, McCartney and Lennon could sing. I guess we've seen McCartney very impressively still able to sing all his songs deep into his late 70s and got used to it being a slight struggle, but, back then, it was no struggle. His voice was immense and limitless. Likewise Lennon - even though he's messing about so often, disinterested sometimes, when he goes for it, it's magnificent. Obviously, George is a fine singer too. I think the fact that the Beatles were incredible singers is something I've slightly taken for granted.

2) Yeah, the songs. Their last couple of years is not my favourite Beatles period, but they're all concocting songs which are standards 50 years later. Even Ringo. Sometimes, I wonder, are these songs particularly memorable because they're the Beatles and they've just had more chance to be memorable than other people's songs? And I suppose there is that, but hearing John tinkering away at "On the Road to Marrakesh" which will later become 'Jealous Guy', I'm reminded that I didn't realise 'Jealous Guy' and 'Instant Karma' were by John Lennon until I was about 19. I'd heard them on the radio growing up and just thought "wow, those are powerful". I mean, those guys just wrote and sang powerful songs powerfully. And it's Lennon that's the one that's visibly struggling for inspiration, yet he's still got 'Don't Let Me Down', 'Across the Universe', with 'Come Together' and 'The Ballad of John and Yoko' on the way, not to mention 'God', Instant Karma', 'Working Class Hero' and 'Imagine'.

So I'm just going to make a big old Beatles song list, and I'll stop when I run out of songs I love. I'll include solo work, though I am not an aficianado beyond pretty basic hits and classics when it comes to solo material.

The numbering's all over the place really, and I've missed plenty. I'm actually not that great on the earliest albums ... We Can Work It Out being my favourite is a real point of principle for me.

1. We Can Work It Out
2. Penny Lane
3. Instant Karma
4. And Your Bird Can Sing
5. For No One
6. Happiness is a Warm Gun
7. In My Life
8. Revolution
9. A Day in the Life
10. All Things Must Pass
11. Here There and Everywhere
12. Live and Let Die
13. Yesterday
14. Got to Get You Into My Life
15. Ticket to Ride
16. You've Got to Hide Your Love Away
17. Jealous Guy
18. Come and Get It
19. Drive My Car
20. While My Guitar Gently Weeps
21. Strawberry Fields Forever
22. Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
23. Watching the Wheels
24. I Am the Walrus
25. Maxwell's Silver Hammer
26. Band on the Run
27. She's Leaving Home
28. Oh Darling
29. The Long and Winding Road
30. God
31. Helter Skelter
32. I Feel Fine
33. Girl
34. Across the Universe
35. Let it Be
36. I Want to Hold Your Hand
37. Get Back
38. My Brave Face
39. Eleanor Rigby
40. Please Please Me
41. Something
42. Why Don't We Do it in the Road
43. Woman
44. When I'm 64
45. Sexy Sadie
46. Tomorrow Never Knows
47. She Came in Through the Bathroom Window
48. The Ballad of John and Yoko
49. Hey Jude
50. Two of Us
51. Magical Mystery Tour
52. Hey Bulldog!
53. I've Got a Feeling
54. Come Together
55. Yellow Submarine
56. Here Comes the Sun
57. Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds
58. And I Love her
59. Blackbird
60. She Loves You
61. A Hard Day's Night
62. She Said She Said
63. Michelle
64. Maybe I'm Amazed
65. The Fool on the Hill
66. Good Day Sunshine
67. From Me To You
68. I'm Looking Through You
69. Free as a Bird
70. Imagine
71. Baby You're a Rich Man
72. Nowhere Man
73. Bungalow Bill
74. Paperback Writer
75. Martha My Dear
76. Pipes of Peace
77. Nobody Told Me
78. Hello Goodbye
79. My Sweet Lord
80. Golden Slumbers
81. Carry that Weight
82. Don't Let Me Down
83. Everybody' Got Something to Hide Except Me and y Monkey
84. Help!
85. Norwegian Wood
86. You Never Give Me Your Money
87. Coming Up
88. What is Love
89. Old Brown Shoe
90. Polythene Pam
91. Within You Without You
92. Day Tripper
93. With a Little Help from My Friends
94. Mull of Kintyre
95. All My Loving
96. Isn't it a Pity
97. Octopus's Garden
98. All You Need Is Love
99. Lady Madonna
100. Jet
101. Taxman
102. Gimme Some Truth
103. We All Stand Together
104. Can't Buy Me Love
105. Love You To
106. Ob La Di Ob La Da
107. Ebony and Ivory
108. Dance Tonight
109. Give Peace a Chance
110. Dear Prudence
111. Happy Xmas
112. Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite
113. If I Fell
114. Dig a Pony
115. Rocky Raccoon
116. Mother Nature's Son
117. If I Needed Someone
118. Fixing a Hole
119. Rain
120. Julia
121. Eight Days a Week
122. The End
123. I'm So Tired
124. I Want to Tell You
125. Real Love
126. Because
127. Getting Better
128. Here Today
129. Let Me Roll It
130. Wah-Wah
131. I'm Down
132. The Word
133. Lovely Rita
134. Jenny Wren
135. I'd Have you Anytime
136. Birthday
137. Photograph
138. Misery
139. Just Like Starting Over
140. Love Me Do

London Places: End

Right, I think I'll knock that on the head. It's been fun, and there are, I do believe, a few other places in London, but I think I'll move on to something else. I wish I could write about structures better. I have found with this, more than almost anything else I've ever written, a frustrating inability to quite find the right word.

I wonder if my favourite place in London, all in, in terms of positioning, the feeling it gives me, the outside, and the inside, and what went on there, is Brixton Academy. I loved seeing it there, lit up with the name of a band I loved, back from the main street, on its corner, touts and t-shirt sellers, queues and like-minded friends, I loved the sticky, sloping floor, the sound of it, the ersatz grandeur. I used to get lost in the decor halfway through gigs. I guess I saw Super Furry Animals there four times, maybe five, and they were all great gigs. I estimate I spent, say, 100 hours in total at Brixton Academy, and every single one was a good one.

And I think the section of London most ingrained in me is the Piccadilly between Northfields and Hammersmith, where I did nothing but look at the same stretch of world, without a book, without headphones, for 10-15 minutes one way and back every day for 10 years and beyond.

I did that journey (at least the Hammersmith to Acton Town bit) for the first time in a couple of years, a month or so ago, whizzing past Ravenscroft Park, Stamford Brook, Turnham Green, Chiswick Park, and I thought about how much everything around the tube line has changed since 1986 but the tube line itself has stayed the same.

London Place 30: South Bank

Right, let's cheer it up a bit. Obviously, there are a lots of places on the South Bank and there are a few different definitions of the South Bank - I guess I mean the right angle between Westminster Bridge and Blackfriars Bridge - all that bit. So the Anchor and Hope, the Cut, the Young Vic, The Old Vic and the pubs near it, the Eye, Waterloo, but most of all, the actual bits on the river - The Hayward, Queen Elizabeth Hall, BFI, Royal Festival Hall and National Theatre.

Foot for foot, maybe the best bit of London? Maybe? If you like all that stuff? The plays and the films? The heritage gigs and the art? The dirty old river, the dirty old trains ... the skateboarders. Of course.

I was taken to the South Bank for plays like Waiting for Godot and One-Way Pendulum when I was little. For weird art and ballets, too. I did think it was a bit grimy. It was a bit grimy back them. They have tidied it up a lot, without disguising the brutalism.

After I went back to London after university in the summer of 2001, I was there all the time. I remember, a couple of days after 9/11, going to, of all things, a slightly stilted tribute show to Tim Buckley there, walking back across the Jubilee Bridge, there was a security alert near Leicester Square, a city on standby.

Brian Wilson, Dexys, Super Furry Animals, smaller stuff at QEH, so many plays at the National and the Old Vic. I remember walking up to the Old Vic from Clapham South at Christmas 2007 for a pantomime. Then there was the reassuringly average upstairs backstage bar in the National, like a school canteen. 

Every year around Christmas, I meet a couple of old school friends and we go to one of the pubs behind the Old Vic and then the Thames Tandoori underneath Waterloo East. It's nice to have rituals. I have a yearly appointment at St Thomas's, too. Good vibes, man.

None of it is wildly beautiful, it's not that, is it? It's just what you hope a city will be like. Pleasant and bustling, full of incidents and memories.

Sorry, I've got a cold. There isn't going to be a point to this. I had a cold when Juliette and I first went to the Hayward. It was some kind of interactive exhibition, there was swinging on ropes. I was struggling. Then the Anchor and Hope, a pretty good pub.

Two different Hamlets. Who would I put myself through that? But, yes, basically, The South Bank, the most reliably enjoyable part of London. That's what it is.

London Place 29: Tottenham Hotspur Stadium

Last month, I went to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium to watch the NFL game between New York Jets and Atlanta Falcons. It was the first time I'd been there since this new, state-of-the-art colossus opened a couple of years ago, and it was a great experience. The show was good, the game was patchy but fun, the facilities tremendous, the beer decent. Added to which, it was strangely powerful, in and of itself, to be among so many people again. 

My friend explained where the old stadium would have been. We'd been to White Hart Lane together in 2010 to watch Spurs-Fulham - only the second time, in fact, that I'd been there, despite being a lifelong Spurs fan. There are few longer journeys in London than South Ealing to Tottenham, after all. It's actually easier to get there from Ashford, where I live now.

I recalled the first time I went, in 1989, and that took me down the path I'm going to go down now.

I went, along with a couple of other boys, with a schoolteacher, a man who committed suicide last year faced with renewed charges of historical child abuse. 

When I heard that news, I told a friend of mine who'd been in the same class, and we both agreed to mixed feelings, that it was sad, that, despite everything, we had fond memories of that year.

When stories about my school were first in the national news, almost a decade ago, I saw his name amongst several others, in the context of being investigated but not charged with grooming. At that stage, I confess, part of me went to defend him, to wonder if he'd been misinterpreted, if rumour and malice had implicated him amongst other, more exploitative men.

When charges were later brought once, then again, and further details emerged, I was not naive enough to imagine that he was an innocent in the crossfire.

And yet, my feelings remain complex. I cannot speak for his mentality and actions, I cannot speak for the victims who came forward against him, I can only interrogate my own experience.

Like countless children of my generation, generations before and after, there were no shortage of predators around when I was young. Nor is he the only one that seemed to take, for a period of time, a particular interest in me. There were three. The other two I have no complex feelings about. I can see them for what they were.

Nothing happened to me, to the depth of my recall. As I've got older, I've doubly investigated my memory - have I missed something, hidden something? But I don't think so.

He was the first male form teacher we'd had, after five years of kind, nurturing women. The year he taught us was the last time I enjoyed school, indeed, didn't dread it, perhaps until the final few months of the final year, eight years later.

The switch at the start of the following year was pretty much instant. Teachers were intimidating, strict, uninspirational. The odd one would try to be inspirational but it felt two-faced. School was an eight-year trial after that, where I steadily fell away from top standards, did not feel I was highly regarded, valued or liked.

So, what's to make of that year? With the benefit of various levels of hindsight. In the years that followed, there were whispers about him, innuendo. For older, street-smarter but also meaner boys, he became, along with a few other teachers, a byword for something negative. But, even at that time, I think I thought it was all talk, that they didn't know anything I didn't know, that perhaps they were even a bit jealous, but perhaps they did know something specific, perhaps they weren't throwing cruel rumours and stereotypes about, but honing in with righteous fury.

He was funny, in that trendy vicar kind of way (he was a Christian), played guitar, told stories, had in-jokes and well-honed systems for getting the best in people. Everything seemed fun, and he rarely got angry. He gave us Mars bars for improving our times in his weekly times tables competitions. I broke records, week on week, the star of the class. I performed in plays we put on for assembly. He made me captain of the year's football team that year, one of the few times I ever had the chance to captain. I played rugby for the year above, performed in the school musical. I felt capable of anything and genuinely loved being at school.

He took me, and other boys, to the David Lloyd Club, where we played tennis, badminton, squash. pool. He took the football team to the Richmond Slides, then back to his flat to watch the FA Cup final. He took me, with other boys, to Plough Lane to see Wimbledon, Loftus Road to see QPR-Spurs and, as I've said, to White Hart Lane. That summer and the summer after, he took a group of us on walking holidays in the Peak District. 

But, there's the thing, I don't remember being alone with him. We were always in groups, large or small. Was I being groomed, I who received all that favour? Or was I party to someone else being groomed?

The answer feels more complex. I said I wouldn't try to answer it, but I'll say a few things. I think he loved teaching and was a good teacher, I think he had kindness in him, I think he certainly enjoyed the company of boys, and that was capable of being in a non-exploitative way. But, I suppose, if there was ever any exploitation, any misdeed, then it was all exploitation. He was tactile, there were innuendos, that I do remember. And, like I say, I'm not a fool. This story's played out many times in many contexts. I'm not going to be anyone's apologist, even in death.

My mixed feelings don't really matter, I know. My sense of sadness at his death. Yet it remains.

London Place 28: St Barnabas Church

As much as last time I thought "I should write about a gallery", this time I thought "I should do a church", though, in this case, rather than not really having an angle, I have too many angles when it comes to churches. The three churches I attended regularly at any point were Ealing Abbey (bad monks angle!), St Mary's Acton (losing faith angle!) and St Michael's Barnes (all kinds of bittersweet good vibes angles!).

But I'll leave those for now, because I'm thinking about Ealing and not in a bad way. I'm from Ealing, distinct world that it was, as much as I'm from London. 

So to Pitshanger, perhaps the Ealingest of Ealing. I don't think I've been to Pitshanger in more than 25 years, but I doubt it's changed much. Why would it change?

Just looking at Googlemaps to remind myself of how it all fitted together, it gave me a strange feeling - so many places of interest within a small place, some much closer as the crow flies than I imagined them to be - "was that really there? That felt like it was in a different timezone."

Roughly speaking, Pitshanger is North Ealing, the part just beneath the A40. There's a connected area of different green spaces, which the River Brent runs through, incorporating sites like Hanwell Town Football Club, St Benedict's School sports ground, Scotch Common, Cleveland Park, Gurnell Leisure Centre, Brentham Cricket Club, Ealing Hockey Club, Ealing Golf Club and Pitshanger Park itself. My first home, until I was 5, was just to the southwest of Cleveland Park.

Some of it is quite historic, like St Mary's Church Perivale (13th century), and Pitshanger Village itself.

To the village's north was Pitshanger Park, to its south Notting Hill & Ealing High School, where my sisters went, & St Benedict's School, where my brother and I went when we were young.

As I remember there was a row of shops on Pitshanger Lane, including a fishmonger, greengrocer, toy shop, shoe shop, amongst others. At the eastern end on the left was St Barnabas Church and its church hall.

St Barnabas figures prominently in my memories as, above all, a place I couldn't sit still. My three older siblings were in Ealing Youth Orchestra, which rehearsed in the church hall (where I also remember my sisters having ballet lessons).

They'd rehearse on a Friday evening and often go to the Kent pub, along the road, afterwards. I remember being jealous of this social life which my musical incompetence would never allow me to partake in.

So I'd regularly be dragged along to concerts which took place in the church. doing my best (I thought) to not let my wrigliness show too much. It would be unfair to entirely blame my chronic indifference to classical music on these childhood trials, but this was not my natural element.

Yet now, there's a stillness and beauty in those memories. There were concerts, there were carol services, they're terribly evocative evenings now. What's more, I think those memories help me place my siblings as teenagers, which is sometimes something I find tricky, since I myself was so sollipsistic at that age, and they, somewhat older, were living more expansive lives where it sometimrs felt they'd become strangers to me.

It also reminds me, on a similar line, of how often, as the youngest, it was just me and my mother, and those are memories I treasure too.

I remember one time (and this might have been one of the last EYO concerts I attended) they were bold enough to plan an outdoor summer concert in Cleveland Park - they had a stage, a tent, it was the social event of the season. Needless to say, the day saw the worst weather of the summer. Not just rain, which they were prepared to deal with, but torrential, impossible, swirling rain. So everyone was forced to take the picnic back into St Barnabas. I have this sharp memory of eating potato salad and drinking lemonade listening to the orchestra playing the music from Raiders of the Lost Ark, finally free to wriggle just a little. I think I'd have enjoyed the concerts more if they'd all been like that.

London Place 27: National Galleries

I've wanted to mix it up and makes sure all bases are covered in terms of the kinds of places I recall, and so a museum or gallery seemed an obvious place, but I've found it oddly hard to know what to say. When I think of other major cities I've been to, whether it's New York, Paris, Chicago or Stockholm, it's the museums I think of. MoMa has been pretty much my No.1 spot in New York, the Musee D'Orsay in Paris. 

It's not that I don't like, or haven't spent time in, London's many great museums, big or small. I just can't quite find an angle. I suppose I could have gone with the time I kept on being told off, wherever I went, the Wallace, or Knole House, or the Tate, wherever, for doing nothing, just looking a bit scruffy. That was pretty fun. Scruffy in London was very much my thing. Not artfully scruffy, I'm proud to say. Clumsily, hopelessly scruffy.

But anyway, I'm going to go with the two big siblings, The National Gallery and The National Portrait Gallery. They're pretty fabulous places. The fact they're free is an endless blessing.

Just the ability, as I used to do when I was regularly round there, to pop in for a quick quarter of an hour's browsing. Oh yeah, look, there's Sunflowers ...

Perhaps that's why I haven't got much to say. I've nearly always done them both in small chunks - half an hour, a bit, safe in the knowledge I could come back and have another look soon.

 Portraits of the year, quick looks at Titians, odd little Bob Dylan art showings, all in passing, all on the way somewhere else, as if I'm embarrassed to be there.

I surveyed them both for disabled access, which was pretty arduous, as there are lots of escalators and mezzanines and bits which are hard to explain in writing. I did the Sainsbury Wing soon after it opened - that was easier. I remember a school trip to the Portrait Gallery when I was 8 and remember drawing a portrait of Francis Drake which, though you'd think any effort by an 8 year old to draw a portrait of Francis Drake is commendable, was not a commendable effort.

I've met various family members in the cafes and restaurants, complacent with the glorious London-ness of it. Genuinely, the most memorable visit was a family get-together at the cafe in the Portrait Gallery in 2011 or 2012 where we were told by one of the waiters that David Cameron and some foreign dignitaries would be joining us in the building, so we spent the whole meal thinking about what we'd do/say and my cousin saying "We really ought to shout something like, I don't know ... "A disgrace!" ... since when "A disgrace!" has been a catchphrase in this house ... but that disgrace Cameron never showed in that cafe. I think he could see we had a bit too much edge.

Anyway, there we have it the National Galleries and the Trafalgar Square, where we've all been an awful lot, for various reasons. I do remember another fun moment when I was walking down Duncannon St behind a group of Brummy lads, and Nelson's Column was under scaffolding at the time and one of them said (insert accent) "I dunno, you come to London to see Nelson's Column in all its glory and you see.... that!" and it was both very funny and entirely understandable at the same time.

Also, I remember a busker in the Charing Cross subway playing She's Got Spies by the Super Furry Animals. Now, that was a work of art I paid good money for.

London Place 26: Richmond Park

Richmond Park, the centrepiece of the green space, interspersed with small fancy towns, that is southwest London. Every direction you go, there's an entrance for Richmond Park. There's no escaping it.

Of course, it's when I look back at how integral it was to my childhood that I realise how lucky I was. We'd run the dog there, we'd go with friends to climb trees there, we'd amble through the Isabella Plantation and gaze way across at the as yet relatively prominent St Paul's Cathedral. My mother's great friend lived just off it, as did school friends of mine. We'd drive past the Richmond Gate, the Star and Garter Home, on the way to my grandmother's, drive through the park sometimes too, spotting deer from afar.

I'm going to remember three sponsored walks I did there, when I was 9, 11 and 13. I was just a running boy. Always running. Really, until I was about 12, just always running, needing to run, sad if I wasn't, with a football, with a rugby ball, with a cricket bat, but always running.

I cannot tell you how much I looked forward to the sponsored walk. The prep school's version was every two years, so I'd already worked out, to my disappointment, that I'd only get to do two, in 2nd and 4th year.

It was in spring. I don't actually remember too much of the first one except that my mum provided me with a great picnic but the thing I was looking forward to the most, her cupcakes with chocolate icing and Cadburys mini eggs on top, weren't in my bag went I went looking for them at lunchtime. Then my friend Colin's mother was driving us back to Ealing and he said to her "thanks for lunch, I particularly loved those cupcakes with mini eggs on top."

I did 21 miles that time, which seemed solid. I didn't overextend myself.

I knew my big shot would come a couple of years later.

It was laps of 3 miles, not all of the park, just a lovely inner section, up a couple of hills, through a couple of woods. I still remember sections of it pretty well. I sometimes wondered if it was a full three miles or if it was a bit less, to increase the amount of sponsorship money. but I don't suppose that would have happened.

So, yeah, here comes two years later. A good tale about what an odd little fucker I was.

John W and me were the two top distance runners in the year, swapping first places in the school cross countries and 1500ms. With a couple of other boys, we even started a running club, and went round the reservoirs, towpaths and bridges with a teacher at lunchbreak.

Before the sponsored walk, I was told it was traditional for someone from Leonard Cheshire homes to sponsor, per mile, a boy who was going to walk/run a long way, and this year it would be me, which seemed a great honour. I was set for a pretty big amount if I went as far as I thought I could.

John and I agreed to run together. The walk was from 10 til 4 on a Sunday in the Easter holiday. Another Ealing mother agreed with mine that she'd give me and her son a lift, and my mum would pick up.

I was waiting by the door from 9. No sign. Nor at 9.10, 9.20 or 9.30. I'm getting nervous. I persuaded my mum to give her a ring at about 9.40. They were still at home, just ambling about, completely unaware how central to my whole life this was. I was picked up, inconsolable, at 9.55 and arrived at the park at about 25 past 10. John and the leading group were, of course, nowhere to be seen. Indeed, as I'd find out, they were already about a lap and a half ahead of me. 

I set off full speed, which is not the best thing to do if you're planning to run for six hours, flying past assorted joggers and walkers. I remember my relief when I caught up with John and a couple of others towards the end of my first/their second lap. I ran that first lap in 17/18 minutes.

We settled in. It was a hot day, I remember John and a couple of others running with their tops off, and I remember a guy with a camera tried to get us to pose for him. Gross. We told a teacher.

Gradually, John and I dropped everyone else. We started fast and our pace slowed a fair bit, but we were, no lie, a pair of really good little runners. I'd got to 21 (meaning John had done 24) by 1.30ish. But then, of course, as it always does with me on a hot day, cramp set in. I laboured on but much more slowly and I felt bad because I thought I was slowing John down. 

At 3ish, I had to call it a day, having done 27 miles. John pushed on for one more, meaning he managed a mighty 33 miles. I was super upset and disappointed.  I also think I never ran quite so freely and joyfully ever again. I finished a miserable 3rd in the cross country the following year. Too many chocolate buns with mini eggs.

The weird part (if that wasn't weird enough) was, having collected all my sponsorship, including a really sizeable amount from both the Leonard Cheshire guy and my mother, I was given a cheque to hand in. But I lost it. Not sure where. I was messy and careless and always losing stuff. I didn't really understand how cheques worked, that you could simply replace them, and, I don't know, I told my mother I'd handed the cheque in, and I was caught in a lie I didn't go back on.

The class teacher began asking for all the sponsorship not yet received, and I was pretty much the last one. I kept on saying I'd forgotten the cheque, or was waiting for one more sponsorship, or something.

Eventually, to resolve the situation in the way only a moronic, embarrassed, proud 11 year old would, I went to the post office and withdrew all the money in my little account. which was about £30, which was a lot, lot less than I'd been sponsored, and I took that £30 in to school and gave it to my teacher, and he looked a bit puzzled, but accepted it.

I mean, I was really fucking weird for a few years then, there are lots of examples but that's a pretty good one.

Oh yeah, and the last sponsored walk I did in Richmond Park, first year of the big school - the lap was basically the whole park, so close to 7 miles. The whole event was not a big deal like it had been at the prep school, but I rolled up, I remember it was a nice day, bumped into some nice guys, did 20 miles, then went to the Sunday CU meeting. 

But I guess what's important is that it didn't matter anymore. I was no longer an obsessed, desperate runner. It was just a Sunday stroll. I didn't think much of it. And yet, even there, I had an easy strolling 20 miles in 4 and a half hours in my legs. I wish I could take some of those miles back.

London Place 25: Tap East

Sometimes there are new connections. Like Westfield Stratford City, where I've spent more time than I ever expected to, half-connected.

2012 wasn't the first time I'd been to Stratford, Stratford had existed for a long long time before that, but it was, in a way, a new place that I, and hundreds of thousands of others, went to in the summer of 2012, shuffling through one-way systems, warmly greeted by volunteers, a bit disoriented but getting to where we needed.

I went to the Stratford site three times that summer, but only began to get a good sense of the layout during the Paralympics, when there was space to move around freely and go to whichever events one chose.

In that context, it certainly seemed a beautiful place - sunset in the stadium, the new landscaping, the sense of achievement.

I was still a bit suspicious of that big old Westfield looming though. I kept a wide berth. But we moved to Ashford in late 2013 and Westfield became a necessary.

It's HS1 man, it's high speed. You whizz through east Kent, sometimes close to the M20, there are a few tunnels, then the first really striking moment is crossing the Medway on high, a lovely line of boats to the left and, to the right, the estuary, look down to Chatham and Rochester. Soon after that, you're at the internationalest of the internationals, Ebbsfleet International, where you kind of hope no one gets on. Then pretty soon, plunged into darkness, under the Thames, and you're in Essex and to your left are lots of big boats and  and grids of trucks and the Dartford Bridge. In the distance, if you look, you can make out the towers of Canary Wharf. It's very flat, marshy, round there. Kind of Dickensian and murderous. Then you're plunged into a greater darkness and you're under London for a long time (I mean, 5 minutes or so). You emerge, somewhat, though still well below the surface, and Westfield and the casino hang over you and you're at Stratford (not actually) International.

Though it's more often St Pancras, I've made my way in and out of London many times through Stratford, which often means you have to walk through Westfield to the Stratford station which doesn't falsely claim to be international. I don't mind the vibes. I mean, I know it's a monster and I also know it has its incidents, but generally the vibes are good, young, young Londony, groups of bouncing children and young adults hanging out or on their way.

In summer, in the outside bits, with the countless mid-price chain restaurants that have come to dominate the landscape, the vibes can be genuinely good.

We know this is soulless, we know that, but soul isn't the only thing. An outside seat at Wahaca and one of their spicy beers is also a thing. London became this. There's no point complaining.

And the first place, the first place you come to and the first place I spotted, is this oddity at the International exit, this open plan craft beer bar/brewery called Tap East. You just wallk right in, walk walk walk right in.

Probably, in the last 8 years, that and the Parcelyard in King's Cross (where I have work meetings, amongst other things) are the London pubs I've spent most time in, which says everything about my relationship with London now. I can still do a day, do a night out, but even pre-Covid, I'd be looking for the places from which I could make a quick escape.

Tap East is fine, it's no one's dream spot, but they have a wide selection of IPAs and NEIPAs and Pale Ale and sprarkly citrussy whatevers, served by slightly offhand staff, they have big windows to the world going past, they have stools and a sofa, somewhere to sit if you've missed your train. It's not really a place for a big night, for settling in and feeling home, but it'll do for a couple and then home to bed within an hour.

For me, it's where London starts and ends now, the first place I see, and there are worse places.

London Place 24: Serpentine

Like, I presume, many people, there are significant moments in my life at every corner of the Hyde Park/Kensington Gardens green space.

My life and related lives.

The first Hyde Park memory I'll share is so trivial. I can't remember what the exact point in my life was, but it was definitely a point where I was free of something and time was my own again. I bought a pack of 10, entered at Hyde Park Corner, walked towards the Serpentine, sat on a bench, opened the pack, took one out, lit it, determined to luxuriate in it, probably taking exaggeratedly satisfied puffs. An old lady, who had, I suppose, watched some or all of the scene, walked past and gave me the biggest, most approving smile. I loved that.

I know Hyde Park is meant to be rubbish for concerts, but the Dylan concert I saw there was the best Dylan I've seen and the Blur concert in 2009 was quite likely my very favourite show ever.

I broke my leg in Kensington Gardens. I think I've mentioned that.

I worked those months at the Mount Royal, by Marble Arch, often walking up through the park from Hyde Park Corner tube to get there. Then a taxi back at 2.30 (or 7) am, usually going to the north of the park, down Bayswater, back to West London, but sometimes going south via Knightsbridge.

I walked through the park with my sister, after visiting St Mary's, in a bright spring day in 2010, with such a sense of clarity about the next few months. That's an oddly happy memory.

We were there a lot as children. Maybe just walking off a lunch, watching horses, boating, all sorts. We were always there. I think it was my father's favourite place.

So, here's the funny thing. I was reading, a year or so, I think via one of Tim Burgess' Listening Parties, about a guy called Finbarr Donnelly, a post-punk frontman from Cork, who led a band called Five Go Down to the Sea?, a bit of a force of nature, so I read. I was stopped in my tracks to realise that he drowned in the Serpentine on 18th June, 1989, a lovely summer's day, just going for a swim with a mate. Those summer's weekend days in the late 80s were very much the days we were there. I can practically feel the horror of the moment.

Also, it was part of my family folklore that my Cork father was hauled out of the Serpentine by the coppers on the day in September 1972 he was out gallivanting with his chums and was informed, to his delight, that his first daughter had been born, prompting his midnight dip.

So, sorry, I wrote a little poem about it a few months ago.

Summers 1972 and 1989: Hyde Park/Cork

And he was oh just messing around;

the newborn girl was crying

and he was high on life itself

 

the ambulance comes flying

through currents to the undergrowth

a swirling, bombing hunger

 

the summer of a second love

when we were so much younger,

and roll and spin,

you’re free from sin

 

you’ve found your own great harbour.

you’ve sung your air to blazing June

And danced your danse macabre

 

the serpent’s tongue will clean her young

and sting them out of sorrow

you jumped for joy, you foolish boy,

for now, to no tomorrow.

London Place 23: London City Airport

I had cause to travel from London City Airport once. It came up as one of the options for my destination, and I thought "that'll be a fun thing to do, go from London City Airport, in the heart of the city of London, or fairly near it".

I'd read it was an excellent, hassle-free, fast airport, the airline I was travelling with rarely had delays. Ideal.

But it was a heavily foggy London day in December 2009, and we heard that no planes would be leaving the airport for the foreseeable future.

And in that circumstance, you don't want a London City Airport, you want a Heathrow, which, though hardly a palace of delight, at least has a few ways to pass the time and a few metres to walk.

There were lots of people looking frantic and agitated. It was frantic and agitable people who went to London City Airport to ease their troubled minds, after all

It being late 2009, I didn't have a smartphone. I think I had a book (I think it was The Suspicions of Mr Whicher). I suppose I had my ipod. But, simply this; that's the last time I remember truly owning boredom. I'm not sure I've ever been totally, satisfactorily bored since.

But, there, sitting in one plastic seat at London City Airport for four hours, I let the time pass with almost no stimuli, no brainwaves, no communications, no games, no checking of the news, no twitter, no facebook, no connections.

I'm not saying it was a golden age. I'm not saying those four hours taught me valuable life lessons. It just was. I haven't been bored quite like that since, and boredom's an important skill to have.

I realise this is a tremendously boring piece of writing. I hoped to write something interesting about boredom, which is certainly possible, but it's not this. I feel I should mention the time I woke up on a night bus which had reached its final destination at Heathrow, but that would only be a fun story if I'd then caught the first plane out of there. But I didn't. I took a bus back to Ealing, feeling stupid and bored.

London Place 22: Hampstead Garden Suburb

Here was a funny turn in a road not taken.

Hampstead Garden Suburb is a noteworthy name for a small area of London, isn't? A triple lock. Not only is this HAMPSTEAD but it's a GARDEN and not only is it a GARDEN in HAMPSTEAD but it's a fucking SUBURB, right? You get it? It's nice round here!

Let me say, I was no stranger to the "garden suburb". Ealing's Brentham's has its own Garden Suburb. Arguably, Ealing's Brentham Garden Suburb could have been the most suburbanly pleasant name of all time. Missed a trick there.

I think I've been to Hampstead Garden Suburb twice. I think I went there for a play in the middle of a wood once. Was it 'A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum?' ... something like that. I noted, on that visit, that Hampstead Garden Suburb was quite a fair bit of travelling from South London.

Yet that did not deter me, in 2005, from applying for a job in a school there. I can't remember the name of the school.

Of all my adult life, that's really the most dreamlike period, most disconnected from reality. On paper, the plan was "finish PGCE, qualify as teacher, get job in North London, move from South to North London, probably buy house in North London, on with life".

But, in truth, none of that was a viable reality. I knew full well I was entirely on the wrong track. My placement in Peckham was going terribly, I couldn't teach, I didn't want to teach. I was meant to be buying a house with a friend, which is a cock-eyed idea anyway, but I was being completely flaky about it, and I'd say I'm not usually flaky.

Because it was what I was supposed to be doing, I applied for a couple of jobs, got a couple of interviews. It was, at the very least, a good excuse not to be in my school for half a day. 

The first one was ok, I actually can't remember anything about it, I don't think it went well or badly. The second one, I think it may have been the next day, was at this very nice primary school in Hampstead Garden Suburb, and I dressed up, took the tube up from Clapham North, did an interview, which went fine, took a lesson as part of the process, and I remember thinking halfway through, "aah, this is how it's meant to be, I'm actually teaching".

I went back to my school in Peckham for the afternoon, went home, I got a phone call, the headteacher of the school I'd interviewed said she was so sorry, I was a whisker away from the job, she'd really loved my interview and my lesson, but in the end, they'd gone for a someone else on the basis that she had a great idea about starting up a conservation club, or something. 

Well, thank god for that conservation club.

It hardly ever crosses my mind that's there's an alternative reality where I get that job, I finish my PGCE, I move to North London, I become a teacher and after a few teething problems, I make a good fist of it. Maybe there's a tiny chance that might have happened. Maybe I'd be the king of Hampstead Garden Suburb by now.

London Place 21: Earls Court

I had a friend at my first school called Niall. He was probably my best friend for a couple of years, in what would be Years 2 and 3. He had two older brothers and a baby brother.

They lived, to start with, in a fair-sized house in Ealing. They had an au pair, which was quite a thing to have. The dad was an Irish businessman. I remember Niall and I, two Anglo-Irish boys, found it funny that his baby brother had a bit of an Irish accent.

I remember us singing "Satsumas, robots in disguise" and that being hilarious, and playing our own version of "The Adventure Game" (Doogy rev) in the snowy school playground.

We went to The Royal Tournament at Earl's Court twice, some peculiar piece of military triumphalism which was pretty entertaining and where no one died. First in 1985, then in 1986. In 1985, we travelled there and back from Ealing. By June 1986, Niall and his family had moved to Kensington.

Now, look, I went to posh schools and friends had big houses. But there's big and big. My family had moved, post-divorce in 1983, into a terraced two-up two-down in South Ealing, then my mum got a loft conversion in 84 which meant all four children had their own bedroom. Niall definitely came to stay a few times at ours. Our house was a good house; certainly it felt full when there were five in it, fuller when there were more than five.

For a lot of friends with well-to-do parents, all through my childhood, in London, you could tell their houses were fine and fancy, but there was nothing disproportionately spectacular compared to ours. There's only so much space in London after all. Maybe they were detached, maybe they had three floors, maybe a basement, but mostly, they weren't a whole thrill in themselves.

Niall's house in Kensington, though ... that was something. I think it was Kensington Church Street, in that ridiculously wealthy rectangle between Notting Hill, Holland Park, High Street Ken and Kensington Gardens.

It was white, I think, and was on 5 or 6 floors. All those floors. And it had a roof garden of sorts. You get the picture. 

So, one weekend in June 1986, I went to stay there for, I think, two nights. The thing about staying with Niall is I don't remember his parents being there. There was the au pair, brothers passing through, but mostly it felt like we had the run of the place.

The Saturday, which was the 21st of June, we went to the Royal Tournament at Earl's Court, watched the soldiers and the sailors and the pilots doing spectacular battle in which no one died, then had a meal at Tootsie's, that fancy burger place on Holland Park Avenue which used to have a  couple of other branches, but endures in its original location.

So far, so excellent. Then we went back to Niall's to catch the end of the Brazil-France World Cup quarter-final (which had an epic penalty shoot-out), then we went to the park and played football, on the longest day of the year, til the sun went down and I still remember that game of football, all the disparate kids in the park, young and old, joining in, how it felt like it went on for ever, then we went back and watched the Germany-Mexico QF, which began at 10pm UK time, can you imagine, and we just watched all of it, probably with a couple of beers, who knows, we felt so grown up.

I've always had in my memory that that's the last time I saw Niall, but that can't quite be true. It was the 21st June (the evening of the 22nd I remember being at home to watch the England-Argentina QF, a little-talked about game of football that no one remembers) so there'd still have been a couple more weeks of school.

But I left that school then, and never saw him after that, and have no idea what happened to him. I saw lots of other boys from that school down the years, maybe just around Ealing, or at Ealing Cricket Club, or when my new school played that school at sport. But I didn't see Niall. I remembered that day, for a very long time, as just the best that a day could possibly be, the longest day of the year, out and about in London like grown-ups, staying up past midnight in this huge mansion of a townhouse. And I missed him the most of my old friends, and always assumed I'd see him again some day. Maybe, since he'd moved to Kensington, he left that Ealing school as well. I must have asked someone. I must have known at some point.

There's a name that pops up on twitter occasionally that is similar, but the surname is one letter different from what I remember, and, anyway, it's not that uncommon a name, really. 

I just noticed that two of these blogs, this and London Place 13 are about 21st April and 21st June 1986, and I remember both days in precise detail, which is a weird feat even for me. I looked up to see if I could continue the series, and yes, 21st August, I remember it well, I was watching test cricket all day, Ian Botham breaking the test wicket record.

For days that were half a lifetime ago, they sometimes seem pretty close.

* A few days later now, something was bugging me up, I looked up the 1986 Royal Tournament and I realise I got this wrong. It took place in July, not June. So the Royal Tournament was not on the same day as the football. Makes sense now. I had definitely thought there'd been more than one sleepover, and I'd definitely thought that one of them was the last time I ever saw Niall. So I was right in some sense. There we go. My memory's not what it ever was.

London Place 20: The Shard

I actually love skyscrapers. I don't know if that counts as a guilty secret. A lot of people don't, they find them an obscene symbol of this world gone wrong, but, heyho there we go.

I don't think London's been ruined by its skyscrapers, or defaced by them. When I was young, the tallest buildings were the Post Office Tower (now BT Tower) and the NatWest Tower, which are now pretty low in the pecking order, but London's hardly gone skyscraper crazy.

I find it a rather comforting, exciting thing every time I come in on the fast or slow train from Kent, or Essex, capturing that first glimpse of the small cluster at Canary Wharf, then the small cluster in the city. That's it, those are the clusters, of medium-size, somewhat eccentric cloud-grazers. It's hardly Hong Kong. 

I remember One Canada Square being built, but I didn't see it first hand. I did see The Shard being built first hand. I went into Guys Hospital for INR level blood checks every few weeks, first for a few months in 2007, then from early 2009 to mid-2012, those three years pretty much the exact timespan of The Shard being built.

I'd come out of London Bridge station then cross a walkway directly passing the construction site, which took you to the first floor of the hospital. I didn't know, and wasn't curious, what it was for quite a while. Just a big building site. But then, I thought, jeez, they're not getting anywhere fast with that, so I realised it was a pretty big project, and found out it was going to be Britain's tallest building.

I'd sometimes stop and watch for a few minutes - hardly very exciting. As I say, not much seemed to be happening for quite a long time, then when it started to go up up, it went up fast.

It would generally be every six weeks or so I'd have the tests. They were a pain in the arse, caused by the fact warfarin is an unstable substance which reacts with various other things and can change the effect it has over a period of time, so it was about making sure your blood was thin but not too thin. A standard INR level is 1, and as a blood-thinned person you were looking for something between 2 and 3. Over 3 was a bit much and ran the risk of internal bleeding.

So, if I went out for a drink the night before, I might mess up my level and I'd need to come in again a week or so later, so I tried to make sure my levels would be ok. then it would only need to be every 6-8 weeks.

One time, early on in my treatment, when I was on an 8mg per day dosage (so I'd take 1 5 and 3 1's) I absent-mindedly took 3 5's. Realising my mistake and quite new to the game, I called NHS hotline and they said "well, we're not sure, but take yourself into A and E just in case". So I did, and the triage nurse, a nervous lady who failed to find my vein three times in a row, which was the last thing anyone needed, put down in my notes "DRUG OVERDOSE" which was one to tick off the old bucket list. Anyway, it was fine, was just advised not to headbutt any walls for a couple of days.

Anyway, at Guys, phlebotomy patients shared a waiting room with cancer patients, which was, for a guy in his early 30s who didn't really have much wrong with him, a sobering occurrence, espiecially, as happened occasionally, seeing people I recognised.

I'd stand at the back of the small waiting room with not enough chairs, try not to catch anyone's eyes, wait to hear my mispronounced name, hope not to miss it, hope my veins were popping and my blood was flowing. A real relief now to be on rivaroxaban, a more stable antocoagulant which doesn't require the regular tests.

Anyway, skyscrapers. I've not been up the Shard, but I like to have a good look at it from London Bridge station. It's a pretty sinister character. I went up the Empire State Building, as well as the Hancock Tower and Willis (Sears) Tower in Chicago and unshamed to say I found all those experiences very moving and thrilling.

I do get the anti-skyscrapers thing. In New York, a lot of the tall buildings are surprisingly mundane, Trumpian and dirty. If you're going to go big, go weird. And skyscrapers should not be oppressive and cut down space. They should increase the sense of travel and distance, of being to look and move beyond. 

London Place 19: Curzon Soho

To me, the Curzon Soho was the absolute heart of London, the calm at the centre of the storm. There was outrage, wasn't there, a few years ago when they said they were going to demolish it for Crossrail? Quite right too.  It's just one of those real good London places.

It looks quite forbidding from the outside, like it's a private members club, full of cool folk, which you won't be allowed to enter.

There's not much upfront, but I guess that's true of most cinemas. There's a ticket office to the right and a bar to the left (forgive me if any of this is wrong or has changed - I haven't been for a decade or so).

Then you go downstairs and there's another, larger, bar, and, what, three screens? On a couple of floors?

For a while it was a go-to place for meeting in London, even if not for a film. Just a cool place to start.

I can't even remember what I saw there ... bloody foreign films, most likely. Sneaky with its foreign films. Eating your wasabi peas while watching a film in, I don't know, Peruvian.

It's actually bugging me now. I'd like to remember the title of one film I saw there. Without being an absolute film fiend, I watched at a decent trot for a couple of decades. Darkened the door of most of the cinemas from Park Royal to Bethnal Green. I'm not a superfun person to go to the cinema with, to be honest. Not only do I hate talking before and during the film, I don't want to talk about the film afterwards either, not for at least half an hour. I want my own experience. I will growl and scowl at a hasty opinion. 

I did enjoy the experience of going to the cinema with friends, don't get me wrong, but it's the experience of being in your own head, together, that is part of what's good. There can be something great about that.

Because J is not a big fan of going to the cinema, I've mainly gone on my own since I've been in Ashford. When I say on my own, that can mean, if you're watching a somewhat leftfield film in Ashford in the middle of the day, you might well be entirely on your own. Which is rather marvellous.

Since Covid, I've only been to the cinema twice, to see The Paw Patrol Movie and Peter Rabbit 2. For those I was not on my own.

Me and You and Everyone We Know. There we go, that's one I saw at Curzon Soho. That was good. That was my kind of film. Early 2000s, when I was listening to Midlake and watching Thumbsucker. Early 2000s, when I was listening to Bright Eyes and watching The Squid and the Whale.

Oh yeah, that was me, a moment-in-time hipster, ignoring the extremely famous people at the Curzon Soho.

London Place 18: Brent Cross

Jewel of the northwest, they call it. 

I was taken to Brent Cross a fair bit when I was little. It was one of the regular expeditions a single mother of four children in west London in the 1980s made. For a long time I didn't really know if it was far away or not - the distance seemed to vary considerably. That's the North Circular for you. 

It elicited a strangely nuanced range of emotions - it was exciting to go there, it was a mesmerizing place, but I knew I'd also be mainly bored to my eyeballs.

Brent Cross was a big fucking deal back then, let's not forget. The first of its kind, an out-of-town, specialized, American-style shopping mall. It was a beast among pygmies, rearing up out of the asphalt pasta.

I need to say, hard as it may be to believe, I was a little nightmare to take anywhere, and needed to be kept on a tight leash. My recollection is of patiently waiting while my mother made her way meticulously through that gargantuan John Lewis. I suspect there was more rolling around on the floor amidst the textile aisles than I'd care to recall.

I remember it was hard to deal with all the beautiful televisions and items of sports equipment I wasn't allowed to touch, not to mention toys.

But still, if I made it through John Lewis, Brent Cross had its rewards. Kind of. There was the fountain, the eery lighting in the main walkway which made you feel like you were in a dystopian science fiction film. Fenwicks had a bit which seemed a bit like an aeroplane or a ferry. And I think my genuine reward would be a chicken drumstick and carton of orange juice from Marks and Spencer. Such glamorous days.

To be honest, I don't remember much else. The vibe, the lighting, that's about it, There were lots of other shops, but I don't really remember what they were. There were other people, but I couldn't say what the demographics were.

I was taken there on my birthday once, which strikes me as funny. Then again, I was taken to the newly-opened IKEA nearby (another biiiig deal) the next year. I feel like by that point I was the only one of us four that was, by necessity, dragged along.

My trips to Brent Cross by and large ended in about 1988. I guess I would not be compelled after that, and was usually busy on a Saturday. 

I did go again. I remember buying a stereo there in the 1990s and thinking that not much had changed. I also played in a summer football league across the big road in 2002. It defintely took longer to get there than it should have done, by car, bus or train.

It did not seem such a colossus by then. There were more big shops around. Nevertheless, it is, apparently, still one of the UK's biggest shopping centres and a a pioneer in something lots of people pretend to find repellent but secretly love.

It's all tied up in how much of my childhood is attached to the big west London roads. Brent Cross as the gateway to London, the start of the M1, the consumer dream.

London Place 17: Infernos

I kind of felt, writing one or two of these posts, that I was overly giving the impression that in my London youth I was a cool, chilled-out Londoner about town, one of the lads, a real social animal, whereas, of course, vast swathes of my London youth tell, as they do for so many people, a tale of profound loneliness and alienation. 

So, Infernos ... Burn. Baby. Burn.

I didn't go to Infernos often, maybe three or four times. It was never, as such, my choice to go. I think I fell asleep a couple of times. I may have enjoyed myself for a few minutes on one occasion.

What's Infernos? Infernos is/was the aptly named heart of Clapham High Street, if Clapham High Street is every bad thing you think Clapham is. It's probably where Dom Raab and Matty Hancock went on the pull in their glory days, where hundreds of young estate agents sing along to Livin' on a Prayer and the theme from Baywatch.

Let's not be too snobby. I wouldn't know how to run a successful club. I'm sure many many true romances have begun within its hallowed walls. I've never been a clubber and I don't know that Infernos was that much worse than that many other places.

But, for a person whose main settings are misanthropy and embarrassment, and whose main task is the concealing of the two, Infernos was the place where there was nowhere to hide.

I never had a tribe, but there were places which felt more like home than others. I liked pubs with friends, gigs, the cinema, I liked being part of football teams and cricket teams, going to football and cricket matches. That's plenty of places to blend in and feel at ease. I'm lucky. All the while, the main business was going on for most of the young folk elsewhere, in the bars and clubs, dressed up, hunting in packs, doing shots, asking if she wanted to dance, looking for a little romance, given half a chance.

I couldn't get to grips with any of it at university, when it was inescapable, I couldn't get to grips with it back in London, but there were usually ways to avoid it.

I thought I hated dancing and couldn't dance, but it turned out not to be that. For a few years I rather enjoyed dancing, in the right place, at the right time. But that was never somewhere like Infernos. That feeling when you know you're simultaneously more hung up, more repressed, and yet, in your own pathetic way, still a little cooler. I won't have been the only one on any given night, though it felt like it. Infernos is the kind of place that spawns a thousand monstrous Morrisseys, and that's no good thing. Panic. Burn. 

London Place 16: Oxford and Cambridge

The town where I went to university, St Andrews, would, amongst its many claims to fame, assert that it had the most pubs per square foot of anywhere in Britain. Whatever the dubious truth of that, those pubs did not, at least in my day, match the beauty of the town.

Some of them were fine. I spent many happy hours etc ... but the best of them were perfunctorily cosy, the worst of them were rammed hellholes. Most of the pubs in St Andrews were either trying to attract students in to drink so much that they puked, or repel students so that locals could drink so much the puked.

Considering it is a town surrounded by sea, none of them had a sea view. I also don't remember there being any great pub gardens (tbf, I was there all year round apart from the summer but I just don't think they were there).

Apart from some twee golf theming in a few, most of them could have been anywhere, not in one of Britain's most distinctly beautiful towns. Looking back, there are only one or two I hold in any affection, and they were nothing other than well-run, not overly busy, Irish chain pubs which had a decent quiz machine.

Whereas the pubs of home, the pubs of summer, they were a fine bunch.

If I was to explain where I grew up in one pat phrase, I'd describe it as Fuller's country. Even as a child, when I wasn't interested in the product, the brand and its buildings were everywhere - Ealing, Chiswick, Barnes etc every other pub is a Fuller's pub. The brewery is in Chiswick. You can't miss it.

There was also the Mortlake brewery (not Fuller's, went through a few hands before closing in 2015) which we could sometimes smell from school. And if it wasn't Fuller's, especially heading further south, it was Young's (based in Wandsworth).

From my teens to my early 20s, it was nearly always the pubs clustered round both sides of the Thames in Hammersmith and Barnes. North of the river, The Black Lion, The Ship, The Dove, The Rutland, The Blue Anchor, The Old City Arms (there were also reasons to meet up in Hammersmith Broadway's less picturesque Hop Poles and William Morris, but let's ignore them for now). South of the River, The White Hart, The Bull's Head, The Sun Inn, The Red Lion, The Old Rangoon/Garden House/Brown's (now a nursery, I see), The Bridge (plus there were a couple of others I never went to).

They were good pubs. They had river views, gardens, good beer, people I knew. They'd been around for years and they knew they'd always have as many of West London's well to do young and old as they needed passing through.

I had good times in all of them. Usually not epic glorious nights filled with romance and intrigue, just pleasant enough evenings. The nights young men have. Occasionally some drama, but not much.

Then there's the Oxford and Cambridge. I passed by the Oxford and Cambridge, on my way somewhere else, around 5000 times (literally). And only ever felt the urge to go in once (it would have been a bit odd if I'd wanted to go in when I was an 8 year old boy on his way to school, but still ...). The day I went in was the last day of school. There were a lot of "last days of school" of course - last day before exams, last day of exams, exams result day - all of which involved celebratory trips to local pubs, but I'm pretty sure this was the official last day of school, and Wieland and I, for some reason, took ourselves to the Oxford and Cambridge at midday for one pint and a roll-up. We were the only people in there.

The Oxford and Cambridge was the saddest thing with its "hey, we're a boat race pub" name, with its vast separated desolation. It shut in 2006 for good, but in the 20 years before that, whenever I passed it, it never looked open. Where all those other pubs had, in their way, an ideal situation which made being a good pub hard to fuck up, the Oxford and Cambridge was so near but so far away, on Hammersmith Bridge Road, no more than a very short walk from the river, but on the corner which went up to the slip road to the Great West Road flyover. It was bleak, always bleak.

Perhaps it survived for decades because it served kids. Perhaps that's why Wieland and I went there that day. I don't recall. But the other places served kids too. And why would anyone ever go to the Oxford and Cambridge if they knew that the Rutland and Blue Anchor, with their outside rows of benches overlooking the sun setting idyllically on the Thames, were only a couple of hundred metres away?

Businesses, especially eating and drinking places, that don't work intrigue and sadden me. Usually you know immediately they've opened, wonder how long they'll struggle on, wonder if the owners know they're on to a loser. I remember going past a pub in some unprepossessing part of London, and the pub was called "Inn the Middle of Nowhere" and I thought, ha, ha, that's funny, and the pub was boarded up. And I thought haha that's funny, but in a different way.

Or sometimes there's a business that does work, that deserves to work, and then something changes, something out of their control, and you know they'll never work again. That happened for a really nice coffee shop in the town where I live now. I used to take the baby there when she was tiny and I was trying to get her to sleep. It was thriving, it was classy, it was packed. Then somewhere cheaper opened next door, a Wimpy-like chain place which does coffees and milk shakes and burgers and has big seating outside. Sometimes places can survive a healthy rival (eg the Blue Anchor and Rutland have been bang next door to each other for decades and it's never done either of them any harm), but the geography of the street just means the coffee shop, where once it was part of things, is cut off, sparse, miserable, and is just now in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Just like the Oxford and Cambridge.

London Place 15: Chatkhara

I lived in a 1st floor flat on Balham Hill, just down from Clapham South tube station, for four years precisely. I really liked it there. The flat itself was an oddity, with some long corridors and diagonals,  rooms narrowing to a point, holes in walls, peculiar substances stuffed in cracks. But it just about worked. I had the bigger room at the back (having had the smaller room in the previous flat). We lived above a chemist's. The pharmacist was our landlord, a fair but intimidating man called Mr Amin.

There was (nearly) everything you needed round there. Burger King to the left, pub across the street, newsagent two doors down, supermarket 3 minutes away opposite the tube station (I'll get back to the tube station).

I used to go to an internet cafe (remember them) when our broadband was being set up or struggling, there was an old-school everything-in-one-place hardware store, a beloved cafe called Fuel, and, of course, curry places. There was what claimed to be Britain's Number 1 Pakistani restaurant, which was pretty good but joyless, there was a supercheap kebab place which also did tupperwares of rice and korma/tikka/jalfrezi which I'd get on the way back from running quizzes.

I started my current job at pretty much exactly the time we moved in (early 2006) so that was the life I lived there. Work in the day, in the flat, which took a bit of getting used to, then out 2 or 3 nights every week to run a quiz somewhere, usually in London, but in those years a fair few out of town - Nottingham, Leamington Spa, Edinburgh, Holland, Eastbourne, all over the place. 

I once got back at 3am from running a quiz in Bristol to find the flat had been broken into, through my bedroom window at the back. Mikey returned from a pub shift at almost exactly the same time. One or both of us must have disturbed them (presumably looking for drugs from the chemist below). Almost nothing had been taken, just a bag and a hoodie of mine. The police came the next day and asked if the thieves had ransacked my room. I said no, not really. They said I might want to tidy my room a bit more.

I ran Clapham Common itself so many times. That's a place I really know the geography of, every root and puddle. Time gaps between each landmark. Variety was not for me, I just liked to go round and round the same perimeter. For a few months, I was getting somewhere fast, faster each week, thinking, still in my 20s, only one clot in, no broken legs, thinking I still had real pace in me.

My fastest laps of the common, I'd just had a weekend off, drinking and smoking at a music festival. Thought I'd ease myself back into running on the Monday, found my legs were fresh and fast. Still, couldn't really believe the speed. Thought I'd check the next day. 15 seconds faster again. 

Never managed that time again. Couldn't even figure how I'd done it, section for section, minute for minute.

Because of that thought that I might have real speed in me, I put too much emphasis on getting thin when I was training for marathons. Didn't eat most of the day then would have a curry in the evening.

The two places I loved - one was called Holy Cow, which was just delivery, claimed to be healthier than the average, and so I used to eat accordingly. And Chatkhara, one opposite Clapham South, one just by Tooting Bec (where I'd live for the two years after Clapham). Loved that place. A restaurant, but no frills, decked out like a cafe. Always full of Asian guys chatting at the tables, while the takeaway side was often drunken city workers dropping in for their astutely-priced "tikka roll" on the way home.

The food was in trays under the counter, no glam, no illusions, they made the naan in front of you. Best naans I've ever had. Best jalfrezi. I'd always go, take a look at what was on offer, order and wait, rather than eat in or look for delivery. I just loved watching the naan get made.

I'd sit and wait, watching the crowds leaving the tube station on the corner, often being cajoled, entertained or berated by Terry, the local homeless fixture. It's one of those grand, elegant tube station facades, Clapham South, unchanged since it was opened in 1926. Being that nudge further south, Clapham South was less hazardous and packed than Clapham Common and North stations, which were pretty unbearable to commute from. There's a lot going on round all the sides of the common, a lot of history, layers of culture, obviously the reputation for a certain kind of oblivious young graduate. To me, that little section at the south corner was the part that was most comfortable in its own skin.

I liked it round there. City living of a sort. Fun and games, football matches and broken limbs. 2006 to 2010. Things were changing then, though, insidiously. City boys and smashed bottles. I don't even know what I mean.