The Walk to Muswell Hill

Muswell Hill is at the top of Londonworld. Home of the botoxed and well-to-do Bohemians and marketing consultants, it offers a panoramic view of the city and the Surrey Downs as clear and open as this fresh-warm April day.

This is a ‘desirable’ area. Not the most desirable but in the top quarter. I have no idea what people do for a living to be able to live in such a place but I’m pretty sure it’s nothing I can offer. Hampstead, Highgate ‘then’ Muswell Hill, and if you’re only ‘assistant’ head of media and marketing (without portfolio) at BafflingFuckWittery Productions, then maybe it’s only Palmer’s Green for now.

There are Turks in Palmer’s Green, young and old, possibly even Greeks bearing gifts from Iceland. It’s The Mediterranean in north London, though they tone down the natural macho-ness so as not to unnerve the local Guardian-reading intelligentsia. Big cars and kebab shops, songs of home. Work, family, property and maybe the od Besiktas game live at the local social club. London is multi-cultural but its cultures can be insular and exclusive.

 

Broomfield Park is where Stevie Smith wrote her poems of humanity. She told us there was angst and sadness behind the frilly curtains. ‘Not waving but drowning’. Today the park is well attended and the sun shines on the frolics of all God’s children (it is Holy Week, after all). I thought I saw a sketcher but it turned out she was uncovering numbers on a scratch-card with a new pound coin.

People live in Bounds Green. There is a Bounds Green Community. I have nothing more to add about Bounds Green except it leads one to Alexandra Park Road where, at least, they felt a little pinch of guilt when they didn’t vote for Jeremy Corbyn (I suspect the politically bland Sir Keir is far more their kidney). Canny, muesli-fed urban gentry with a social conscience that stretches as far as the Amnesty International stall at the weekly Farmer’s Market where a chunk of organic cheddar will cost you half your ESA payment.

And on, further up the hill.

In Muswell Hill, I look for newly knighted Ray Davies ambling around the charity shops looking for copies of his own albums and rueing the utter absence of a ‘Working Man’s Café’ in his native area. No chance, Ray. You’d sooner find a TKMaxx or a shop that sells lice-powder. This is designer coffee-shop land. This is where the charity shops charge more than the book originally cost. This is where there is a ‘craft’ porridge and muesli shop. This is where the down-at-heel genius, Vivien Stanshall set himself ablaze after doing a George Price and giving the local derelicts the run of the house. The Ginger Geezer went up in ginger flames.

I head back to Enfield Town after a pleasing visit with my brother and his karate-tough daughter, past Green Dragon Lane where, in some shared amenities accommodation, I uncharacteristically hit a man because he annoyed me intensely.

Enfield Cricket Club epitomises much, but what it epitomises most is an ‘easy’ Englishness: the yeoman class at play with maybe the odd Thane in charge. The Englishness of moderation in all or most things. Of vying for promotion. Play up and play the game but win at all costs. Mike Gatting lives around here, ex-England captain who took the Packer cash and went to apartheid South Africa.

Beardy little tit. May his testicles shrivel and forever smell strongly of mushrooms.