London Loves.....Skinny Jeans

Mercedes Bunz thinks skinny jeans are finished.

So does Blockhead.

Mercedes Bunz and Blockhead are so wrong on so many levels.

First off, Mercedes, putting Kate Moss and “not fashionable” in the same paragraph? Oxymoron of catastrophic proportions.

Secondly, the skinny jean transcends fashion. For people like me with calves the size of freshly planted elm saplings, the invention of the skinny jean was more important than the wheel or combustion engine – who needs motorised transport when you can strut around in jeans you look good in? Seriously. You should see me wearing baggy jeans, or even normal jeans. I look like a famine victim who’s been donated random outsized clothes from an Oxfam campaign.

Normal. Jeans. Are. Too. Big. I had to live through the grunge and Britpop movements of the 90s, when jeans were ripped, corduroy, tie-dyed, turned up, anything but snugly fitting. They were normally Levi 501’s. I bet there are kids out there today who don’t even know what that means.

I would look at pictures of Paul Weller, or other Mods from a bygone era in envious longing for their super-tight jeans. Then, finally, they arrived. Suddenly, Kingsland Road was awash with scenesters who were actually proud of their twig-like legs. What a revelation.


At first they were meant for women not men. But when has that ever stopped me? Half of the clothes I wear are meant for women. My first pair, in 2005, were black Lee’s. I vividly remember the Swedish shop assistant allaying my fears that they made my thighs too prominent “people will just think you have shapely thighs”. Now, that’s what I call customer service. I still have the pair in question. Though they are now washed out to a virtual grey, and are ripped in the crotch to the point of indecency, I can’t part with them – they’re part of my cultural heritage.

Thirdly, Bunz makes the crucial error of aligning skinny jeans solely with hipsters – which is a term that doesn’t really exist in London anyway. It’s as if she hasn’t been to Topshop recently or taken even the briefest stroll down Oxford Street. Everybody’s wearing them. Maybe that is the true meaning behind Bunz’s anxieties; she doesn’t want to be part of mass fashion? She wants something more minority, more elitist, cooler. Hmmmm…bring something in Mercedes. I’m dying to see it. Some fisherman’s waders perhaps?

No, seriously.


No. Seriously.


The fact is skinny jeans are perfect. Anybody can wear them – and I’m not just saying that.

You don’t have to look like this to get away with them.


I’ve seen loads of girls with fuller legs wearing them on the tube, they look great. That’s what Lycra was invented for.


In some ways it’s just about having the confidence to put ‘em on, go out and flaunt them. Sadly, many people’s answer to lack of confidence is to cover up. But, look how great Beth Ditto looks here. Don’t be afraid! People have shapes and bumps. I have a bit of a belly. Not ideal on an otherwise skinny man. It’s fine. Get over it.

But, if you really feel they aren’t for you, then where do we go from here? Well, Mercedes touts an idea at the end of her blog piece - “something a little bit wider and maybe made of wool”. Interesting idea. I used to wear a pair of red wooly trousers. They weren’t knitted for the purpose I appropriated them for and whether they worked or not is massively open to question. But this was 1994, wooly trousers must have moved on a bit by now? Surely?


And when the day comes when the laws of fashion dictate we really must move on from skinnies, surely it’ll be to something even smaller? Every modern technological evolution involves reduction in size right? So maybe the next step from skinny jeans is micro jeans?? Jeans so slim you have to be airlifted and shoved into them by a squadron of paratroopers? I’m up for that.

Or, as one commenter on Bunz’s blog suggests “what about wearing no trousers at all?” Again, I’m up for that.

But looking for a genuine solution, and with the slurs and abuse of my work colleagues ringing fresh in my ears (“now you’re 30 Josh, are you going to stop embarrassing yourself?”, “they’re painted on”, “they’re so tight you’ll do yourself a hernia”, “get an elasticated waist band man”, “they’re so tight you look like you’re pregnant”, “they’re so tight I can see the outline of your cock and balls” etc.), I went into H&M on Wood Green high street and did the unforgivable, I caved in to peer pressure and bought two pairs of non-skinny jeans. One white, one black. I felt mature. Normal. Boring, even. After all, I’d actually bought some clothing from the Men’s section. I was proud of myself.

I still haven’t decided whether they work for me or not. I’ve decided the only way to wear them is with big old fashioned 90s style Reebok trainers. They just don’t work with skinny shoes.

The following Monday morning I went in to work anticipating the imagined praise I would receive. Has anyone even noticed? Have they fuck.

London Loves.....the North/South Divide

(ADVISORY WARNING: SOUTH LONDONERS PLEASE STOP READING NOW)

On Friday night I found myself stranded in Balham. Ejected from the bowels of the London Underground and keeping at bay thoughts of being savagely raped and murdered, I sent the following text message to a few close allies:

Northern Line fucked. Signal problems at Morden. The driver terminated the train at Balham. I’m now walking the streets surrounded by evil south London cunts.

If I’m never found alive, I reasoned, at least there’ll be textual evidence of my final movements.

I steeled myself for the slog to my destination: Tooting Bec (why, oh merciful God, why? …and what’s a Bec anyway??). I passed several icons of dejection whose symbolic meanings were alien to me: Balham Youth Court, an off licence called The Wine Junction, the budget German supermarket LIDL and a sinister building with a sign saying United Services & Services Rendered. “What are these unholy relics?” I screamed internally.

Finally, I began to encounter familiar signs. Fitness First, Nando’s a Kwik-Fit garage. Thank god. The temporary haven of something vaguely resembling civilisation…

Although you may not have guessed from the sentiments above, I’m actually beginning to quite like south London. Admittedly it’s a patronising fondness tinged with snootiness, but fondness all the same. I suppose my newfound tolerance has arisen from the fact that, over the past few years I’ve spent far more time south of the river than is healthy. It’s a secret liking, full of shame and regret. I can’t admit it to my north London friends. I’d be ostracised and marked out as a traitor.

As with most divides, the key to bridging the gap and getting over your prejudices is simply to bite the bullet (quite literally if you live in Battersea) and give it a try.

There are nice places south of the river. No really, there are. Dulwich, Kennington, Richmond, Greenwich, Camberwell. But for every quaint little Putney, there’s a Peckham, Lewisham, Nunhead or Plumstead Common.

Maybe it’s just a titular thing, but some of these names are enough to send chills down the spine of any north Londoner. They sound weird. They denote a barbaric wasteland perpetually stuck in 1952.

it goes further than simple linguistics. You have to be a Londoner to fully understand the north/south divide. It’s an innate, instinctive sense of right or wrong, heaven or hell. North and south London are just…….different. When I sounded people out about the differences I was told “it feels different”, “they speak funny”, “they're backwards”, and “it’s just not right”.

These comments might appear racist. If south Londoners were a race. But they’re not. They’re just a few million people who lucked out in the postal lottery birthplace stakes.

And, because there’s so little migration and cross breeding, the two sets of population gene pools remain largely isolated from one another. In a few rare cases people do migrate. Out of necessity. Or the threat of divorce. I’m not sure I could ever live down there. I’d be constantly looking over my shoulder for the knife in my back.

It’s not just us, the common folk, who see north London as superior. Nearly every building and area of notable significance or officialdom is situated in the north. Trafalgar Square, Parliament (the SW1 postcode fools nobody), Buckingham Palace, St Paul’s Cathedral, the Gherkin, the BT Tower and so on and so forth.

Perhaps the real difference is indeed phenomenological. North London is more built up and hilly. Streets seem narrower, more congested, busier. South London is flatter, and greener; it feels more open and sparsely populated. The architecture of both is remarkably different. Both have beautiful Victorian and Georgian buildings but the style varies. The metropolitan inner city in North London extends much further geographically, so even in zone 3 you are definitely still in the city. Whereas, most of the inner south is located very close to the river (and therefore the centre); an argument often used to claim southern superiority. By the time you get to zone 3 south you are in total, undeniable suburbia.

Although we are nominally sworn enemies, whenever two people from each clan get together and talk, they get along like a house on fire. Generally we enjoy the banter. Perhaps we’re not all that different after all? Maybe it’s just psychological. Maybe that big old, bendy river makes it feel different. As an old acquaintance pointed out, east and west London are far more different than north and south. He gave me a list of places that are symbiotic twins or replica versions of each other. Edmonton-Thornton Heath? Both equally grim. Belsize Park-Blackheath? Both equally fabulous.

I’m not sure how to end this blog except by saying these old engrained prejudices need to be challenged. East/west Berlin unified because the people had no choice, black and white in apartheid South Africa got over their differences (slowly). North and South can love one another. Give peace a chance man.

London Love/Hates Tower Blocks

I've always been obsessed with tower blocks and council estates. Some say it's an unhealthy obsession. I disagree. Others will see this piece as middle class snobbery wading through working class life like an American tourist on a cultural exchange visit to Baghdad. Again, I disagree.

If anything, middle class snobbery was imposed upon estates at the point of conception. Evidenced by ridiculous sights such as the name John Keats House affixed to the most unpoetic building you've ever seen in your life.

These are nothing short of in-jokes invented by architects to amuse themselves (Fatima Whitbread Mansions etc...) The Arden Estate in Hoxton is the best example of titular misattribution. A Shakespearean theme emerges as you explore its ugly hinterland. Lo, my liege here lies Macbeth House, and what is this good knave, but Juliet House? Not content with desecrating these characters you soon discover Oberon, Falstaff, Bianca, Miranda and lastly Caliban all assigned to truly hideous buildings. And yet the latter, Caliban Tower, is oddly appropriate. If any building were to sum up the shipwrecked, deformed, deranged half man/half beast character from The Tempest this monstrosity is surely it.

High rises are often so outlandish in the mediocrity of their design they become beautiful oddities capturing the eye and imagination. And sometimes they are so disgusting they provoke projectile vomiting.

But the people living in them are wonderfully warm and remarkably positive. Estates and their impoverished communities guarantee you a far friendlier welcome than the opulence of Sloane Square.

As a child I was hypnotised by the sight of tower blocks at night. All those lights on in each little bedroom. All those people living literally on top of each other, surrounded on all fours sides. The bundle of tightly packed human life seemed so cosy and protected. Strength in numbers. Little did I know of the piss stenched hallways and broken down lifts .

At age 5 in a park one sunny day in the mid 1980s i watched the demolition of two tower blocks in Hackney. The event has always stuck with me. The loud bang. The hundreds of pigeons flying into the air. The delay between the detonation of the explosives and the collapse of the block. The delighted cheering and smiling from the assembled local community. The space in the air where moments before two symbols of Thatcherite oppression had stood blocking the sky.

The sound of laughter, dogs barking, sound systems pumping, scooters revving, TV soaps playing through an opened window, kids playing on the swings, old people nattering away in corridors. The everday sights and sounds of the estate. But, every estate has a finite lifespan. And for some the end is imminent.

The Heygate Estate, Elephant & Castle

Human sounds are largely absent on the Heygate estate. Soon this silently sprawling world of ghosts will be no more. Row after row of former homes are boarded up with metal panels sealing doors and windows. Even the most hardcore squatters have been deterred by eviction notices warning of the imminent demolition.

I first noticed this estate in the heart of Walworth whilst standing outside the Corsica Studios under the arches of the railway station one summer night. Opposite me stood a huge, dominating rectangular sea of phosphorescent lights and concrete. It felt like a vision of a Warsaw suburb from the communist Soviet Bloc era. I was awestruck by the dualism of its shimmering majesty and cold hearted oppression. Returning home I googled it to find it described as an estate with "a reputation for crime, poverty and dilapidation."

Walking around it five years later on a cold but sunny afternoon in February feels like that opening scene from 28 Days Later. Yet even more desolate. A surreal detritus of discarded toys, broken glass and deflated footballs litter the untended gardens and trees. Oceans of satellite dishes point in unison toward the sky waiting in vain for a signal that will never come to transmit pictures that will never be seen.

And yet, astonishingly, amidst the desolation, signs of life still exist. As you wander through echoing walkways, across doomed footbridges, through puddles of collected muddy water, past infinite grey sheet metal, all of a sudden you find yourself looking through a window into a perfectly normal kitchen scene with dishes on the draining board and cereal boxes on the table. You have found survivors. Survivors like Riikka, (below) from a remote village of 3,000 people in the east of Finland and her flatmate Cindy from Sydney, Australia.

Smiling and bemused as she opens the door, Riikka, aged 20, explains how they moved in to the crumbling flat last December and expect to be moved out by June at the latest. "I'm going to stay 'til they demolish the place" she says, defiantly, "we like it because we can do what we want. We probably wouldn't have moved in if the community had still been here".

When I ask if they throw parties, Cindy, 23, who earns a living selling theatre tickets offers a sheepish grin and a semi-guilty confession. I suspect the parties are more frequent and wild than they are willing to let on. The fact they have just got out of bed at 3pm and the sight of every available wall in the flat covered in home-made murals ranging from beautifully abstract paintings to childish surreal graffitti (ejaculating penises, talking clouds, He-Man etc.) gives an apt indicator of the lifestyle of this apartment. I ask if they ever get scared being so isolated and alone. "It feels a lot safer with nobody around. Police patrol regularly now. It's not as scary as the [occupied] flats near the station." I ask if they are artists and they laugh "no, not at all" as they set about creating another artwork. Their home made art, like the rest of the Heygate, will soon vanish into thin air. I leave them to their painting.

On Rodney Street I encounter another survivor. Born in 1938 and having lived in Elephant & Castle all her life, Yvonne Castelle (below) has survived a lot more than council bureaucracy and botched town planning. World War II for example.

She remembers the days before the Heygate estate when streets of picturesque 'two up two down' Victorian terraced houses characterised Walworth. Looking up at her bedroom window one night she felt certain the world was on fire. "Daddy the sky's all red". And it was. The neighbourhood had been set ablaze by German V1 rockets. Her dad hurried Yvonne, her three sisters and pregnant mother down into the Anderson bomb shelter. The following night she witnessed another strange skyscape; barrage balloons as far as the eye can see. The simple, yet ineffective method of deterring low flying bombers. She was eventually evacuated but soon returned.

Later, her career in dancing, cabaret, variety performances and acting took off (she shows me the book of photos she keeps in her bag), yet she remained living at home with her parents. Then in 1969 disaster struck when, on the set of a film called Moon Zero II, she fell and was paralysed in an accident. Pushed, she claims, by a jealous co-star. "Six foot seven she was! And what's worse, she was German. I still haven't seen the film to this day!" Yvonne remained bedridden for 10 years, and when she finally emerged, wheelchair bound, the streets she once knew were no more. The behemoth Heygate estate had been erected.

So, after 36 years of living with it, what does she think of Southwark council's plans to pull it down? "I think it's disgraceful. There are thousands of people without homes in this country. It turns out the government only meant for these flats to last 30 years. They say the new flats will be cheap but you can tell it'll be for the rich; gated communities." She attends all the local housing meetings and feels aggrieved at the lack of care shown by local authorities and central government. "People should have right of tenure, not the council selling the land from under their feet. Thatcher started this whole thing in the 80s. And I voted for her. I'd like to blow her up and dance on her grave when she dies". She certainly knows her stuff, Ms Castelle.

So where have all the people gone? "Some of them have been put on the Aylesbury Estate over there" she points into the distance, "which is ludicrous because that's being pulled down soon too. Others have gone to Dulwich. That's alright, it's a better area."

Heading on I bump into two Community Police officers who have patrolled here for the past two years. "It's quite sad really" says Ross, "some people have lived here 30 years, they don't want to leave". Gemma, his beat partner explains how they'd got to know people here and were friends with them. She doesn't know where they are now.



On the towering menace of the Claydon block, an Eritrean woman with four children chats to an elderly family neighbour. She doesn't wish to be named or photographed, suspicious of my introduction as a journalist. Her family are the only people left on the 4th floor. That's about 35 empty flats surrounding her. It's the same on the floor above, and below. Despite the presence of the police she doesn't feel very safe. "It's very dark, here and the heating goes off all the time. I don't have heating right now." Why have you not moved yet, I ask? "I'm waiting for them to offer me something better." Despite her trepidation about the future she is still smiling and laughing as she closes the door to feed the kids. Brave, spirited and determined.

As I return to my car, heartened and proud of what I have seen I pass the Latin American Multicultural group and its colourful display of carnival costumes. I pass the defunct doctor's surgery and the Angelus Temple Foursquare Gospel Church where a small group of black teenagers are having lunch, taking a break from singing and playing instruments. I pass the Institute of Traditional Karate and Performing Arts which, it occurs to me, is rather a strange combination of physical activities. All of these things will soon be gone. The sounds of human beings are largely absent on the Heygate estate. But those that remain have stories to tell.

London Loves.....Foxes

by Lu-Dos-Tres
(creator of the crossfrontier blog )

London loves foxes and foxes love London. They’re everywhere, from sprawling suburbs dotted with parks, to the concrete jungles of inner city estates.

I remember the first time I saw a fox. I couldn’t have been very old, maybe ten. They were quite rare, strictly nocturnal animals who are, or more to the point, were very shy. In the early nineties, you would have been lucky to catch a glimpse of one. They seemed as wild as wolves and yet harmless as cats. Afraid to approach humans, they would dart off at the first sight of us. Yet their reclusiveness only made them more intriguing. The 'wily old fox' saying casts them as the embodiment of cunning. Indeed, what could be more cunning than the fox; a cute little animal that strikes only to eat pet rabbits under the cover of darkness when no one is looking?

But the funny thing is, no one ever blamed foxes for their pillaging. They were untouchable. If a rabbit was eaten, it was the fault of whoever left the latch open on the rabbit hutch. Foxes had somehow managed to muster political clout in (sub)urban households, and even right up to the upper echelons of the Houses of Parliament.

Seriously. By the end of the nineties, the country was up in arms as people came out on to the streets to defend foxes. The citizens of London in particular, protested, en masse, at the inhumane sport of fox hunting. They derided its cruelty to foxes and the pleasure it gave to old-fashioned country gentry. In turn, country folk descended on London to defend their way of life, and decry city people as ignorant. It was a heated polemic, featuring physical violence and police arrests. It finally ended with the outright banning of fox hunting in 2004.

OK, so maybe the ban was not strictly down to the cunning of the fox. But, it must be said, that their popular image definitely played a part. What if, for example, it had been rabbit-killing rats that the hounds and huntsmen chased down and savaged; would we have protested then? No we wouldn’t.

Foxes seem to know about the media game and working it to their own ends. Their media savviness can even be traced back to the 60s. They worked their way into the dictionary, with ‘foxy’ a slang synonym for ‘sexually appealing, exciting, attractive.’ You’ve got to admit that was a masterstroke by the fox’s PR people. The definition has endured the test of time and has been propounded by artists such as Foxy Brown (pictured right), and more recently the Fleet Foxes – not that they’re sexy.

Its penetration doesn’t stop at the English language or the music industry either. Like most people, my first image of the fox came not from a real fox at all but a cartoon fox; Disney’s Robin Hood film. Remember? Robin Hood as a fox, King John a Lion, the King’s soldiers all rhinos. Classic. I loved it.

Then there were the Animals of Farthing Wood! Featuring on children’s television from 1992 to 1995. Another classic. Again the foxes leading the show were moral crusaders against… erm... the baddies of the forest?! Or something…

Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr Fox. Where we all rooted for the fox to triumph.

Fellow brethren of my generation, I think we have been mightily brainwashed.

Oh well.

The fox is having the last laugh. Immune to hunts in the country, they’ve come to urban centres in search for more excitement. Fox immigration is high. Local communities all over the capital have reported rises in fox numbers.

Inevitably, fox crime has got worse. I don’t know about you, but when I was a boy, I never saw rubbish bins half emptied out in the street. Now I see the remains of last night’s supper strewn across the front lawn, week in week out.

I’m no expert fox criminologist, but I blame it on the young‘uns. The fox cub hoodies. The first generation to have grown up free of the fear of the hunt, and the associated discipline that that enforces. Quite an astonishing behavioural trait adaption.

They’re certainly not shy anymore, that’s for sure. Only last month, a fox was spotted shooting down the escalator at Walthamstow Tube Station. TFL ticket inspectors did not let it continue its journey… it blatantly hadn’t topped up its Oyster card.

It did, however, come coolly came back up the escalator, where Kate Gray managed to capture this magnificent photo on her mobile:

Photo: copyright Barcroft Media

London loves.....Monopoly

My brother owns three properties. In real life, I mean, not in monopoly. In monopoly he’s probably never owned more than two. Although I can’t say this for sure. In my family, when we play Monopoly, nobody is ever entirely sure a) when the game has finished or b) who has won.

It’s fair to say our games end in a degree of acrimony and recrimination. Often we revert to stealing (both from the bank and each other). Often properties get vandalised. I say vandalised, I mean fed to the dog. Community Chest cards get chucked across the room, defaced. Amidst the accusations and denials my mother is often heard to say “right, that’s it, I’m never playing with you lot again.”

In our family, the only game that ends worse than Monopoly is Scrabble. We have literally never finished a game of Scrabble. As for Cluedo, a three year relationship with an ex-girlfriend once unravelled and was effectively terminated during the course of what began as a light-hearted game. (She won the game. I was a tad ungracious in defeat. The solution, I believe, was Miss Scarlet with the lead piping in the Billiards Room, but don’t quote me on that. It was late, we were drunk and there were tears involved).

Monopoly is fun because it allows even the most hardened socialists among us (by this I mean Rach and Euclides) to be greedy and capitalist for an hour or so. (I say an hour; a game has never lasted longer than 45 minutes in our house. To put this into context, the instructions on the box say an average game should last 2-3 hours). Some people say Monopoly is like a metaphor for London life. Some people are idiots. Monopoly is about as far removed from real life as you can get. Unless you’re Michael Winner.

Who, for example would ever buy a hotel on Whitehall? Is that even legal? You’d have a job getting planning permission. Who even knows where Northumberland Avenue is? Or Bow Street, Coventry Street, Vine Street? Ok, maybe Vine Street (30 years in London has never improved my knowledge of the West End I admit). But the point is, there are far more relevant streets in today’s London that would make the game feel more real. Commercial Road for example. Or Holloway Road.

Who has ever been sent directly to jail for no apparent reason? Nobody. Oh ok, maybe anybody who was black in the 1970s or Muslim er….now. Who has ever won £50 for a beauty contest? Who ever heard of free parking in London? Who randomly pays school fees on demand, surely there should be a regulated system in place? A monthly direct debit perhaps? Even the stations are odd. Kings Cross and Liverpool Street, fine. But Fenchurch St. and Marylebone? Two quaint and beautifully designed little stations granted, but surely Waterloo and Paddington, the two biggest stations in London deserve more prominence. About the only realistic thing is that the two ends of the social spectrum are accurately identified: Old Kent Road for a mere sixty quid, Mayfair setting you back to the tune of four hundred nicker. (Tip: try to buy both. a) you’ll look diverse and cool b) you’ll monopolise that corner of the board near ‘Go’ and c) they are nice colours.)

But hey, we don’t play Monopoly for a reality check do we? We play it as a throwback to an age of innocence. I say innocence, I mean a time of colonialist Empire building, the Wall Street crash and war in Europe.

But just look at the pieces we play with: the dog, the boot, the ship, the iron (hold on, the iron?!), the top hat and the car. Pure innocence and eccentricity. The beauty of Monopoly lies in its simplicity. The colours, the near symmetry, the collecting £200 just for passing go. It’s very much the Kate Moss of board games.

Sometimes I wonder what it must be like to actually finish a game. What does that look like? Does ticker tape explode from the ceiling covering the players and scaring the dog? I don’t think I’ve even got as far as buying a hotel, let alone monopolising the whole board. I have been made bankrupt. That’s it. This Christmas, just for once, maybe my family will play a game to its conclusion. I have dreams of a string of houses on Bond Street. It’s never going to happen.

London loves.....crime scenes

My boss has a habit of giving directions to London locations by referring to the infamous crimes that have taken place there. Instead of simply saying “take a left on to Commercial Road” he will add "you know…where that bloke got shot in the head six times outside the bingo hall”.

Wherever you are in London he could tell you what murders have happened there. Slightly morbid? Perhaps, but when you think about it, many places are forever linked to and even defined by the murders that have taken place. The Dakota building NYC, the town of Omagh in Northern Ireland, The British Medical Association HQ in Tavistock Square stained red with blood.

This week’s London Love is not really a love of ours. Rather, a morbid fascination, driven by media bloodlust and the folkloric nature of tales of local murders. A recent personal example illustrates this. A few weeks ago a body was dragged out of the Regent's canal and laid on the towpath within site of our office windows. Rather than respectfully bowing our heads and continuing our work, the primary concern of 100 or so co-workers was to gleefully pontificate as to the nature of the poor man’s demise. “Was he pushed in by local kids? Was he pissed out of his face and fell in? Was it a heart attack? Was he decapitated?” And amongst the hubbub, the most frequently heard cry was: “can you see it? Can you see it? CAN YOU SEE IT??”

I have never seen a dead body. But I know people who have: police officers, morticians, scene-of-crime forensic experts. They tell me it is a surreal yet perfunctory activity when bodies are dealt with by the authorities. At a distance it seems such an unreal thing to encounter. And yet, that is how we will all end up one day. (Dead that is. Hopefully not murdered).

Back to my boss. The most poignant example he refers to (on an almost weekly basis) is the scene he walks past daily on his way to work. At the height of the summer of teenage killings in 2008, 16 year old Ben Kinsella was killed at the corner of York Way and North Road. Now a London landmark, this corner was adorned with flowers, football shirts, scarves, mementoes and heartfelt letters for months afterwards. While Kinsella’s murder marked the key turning point in London’s fight against knife crime, the scene of crime itself became a focal point for locals to vent anger, to collapse in sorrow but also to celebrate a young life, all too soon expired.

London has many notorious murder spots. The one which holds most gruesome fascination for me is in Muswell Hill a couple of miles away from where I live. Close to the top of an oppressively suburban, long, steep hill of semi detached houses sits the house at 23 Cranley Gardens. Driving past it today one wonders whether it is occupied and if so, by whom? And are they aware that 30 years ago Dennis Nilsen murdered men there? Keeping their dead bodies hidden around the house, practising necrophilia on them, butchering them, burning them in the back garden, depositing pieces of the bodies down drain pipes, cooking them and indeed eating them.

Equally creepy is the thought of 10 Rillington Place in Notting Hill where John Christie murdered at least 6 women in the 1940s and 50s. You can find out more about this particularly bleak sequence of murders in the film 10 Rillington Place starring Richard Attenborough. Be warned, it is one of the most depressingly sad films you will ever see.

Ok, so we’ve covered a gay murderer and a misogynist woman killer, what about one for the girls? Perhaps the quintessential feminist killing in modern times happened in an inconspicuous corner of Hampstead. The Magdala pub still carries the evidence of the final bullet, fired from Ruth Ellis's gun. Intended for Ellis’s former lover, David Blakely, whom she had already pumped five rounds into, the sixth bullet ricocheted off the wall plunging the pub into eternal infamy and Ellis into history. For the murder of this man, the final in a string of hopeless, abusive, womanising drunks who had plagued her life, Ellis became the last woman ever to be hanged in Britain in April 1955.

Although London is more peaceful than most major metropolitan centres in the world, there are still way too many killings. Stephen Lawrence (1993), Damilola Taylor (2000) or the French students Laurent Bonomo and Gabriel Ferez (2009) stabbed 244 times in Deptford, are just three examples of events that Londoners really do not love.

It is strange, however, that the further away in time and history one moves from a crime the more lightly it is viewed…

…Our final death spot is not necessarily a scene of crime per se. Unless of course you consider bad driving a crime. Which I do.

Driving home through Barnes, well-fed, quite probably pissed and tonked up on qaaludes on 16^th Sept 1977, pop star Marc Bolan was killed when his girlfriend declined to follow the one of the lesser known laws of the Road Traffic Act: don’t drive off the road into a Sycamore tree.

London loves.....postcodes

Do not underestimate the power of a London postcode.

They are the definitive alphanumeric signifiers of status and location. It isn’t the boarded up council estates or luxurious mansion houses that decide whether your area is grit or glamour, it’s the postcode. SW1 and SE17 are very close to each other geographically. In postcode terminology they’re in different universes.

Paris has its arrondisements, New York its boroughs, London has its precious postcodes.

Trying to sell a house? Your postcode could literally halve or double your selling price. Been on a hot date? Getting the night bus home to N17 rather than say NW3 might wreck your chances of a second date. Postcodes can even influence the way your CV or job application is viewed. There is a class thing going on. Some postcodes signify wealth and charm, others signify poverty and dereliction.

I have a personal bugbear. I don’t like my postcode. And I’ve lived with it for 18 years. N22. I often feel embarrassed saying it. I don’t know why. It somehow just seems so bleeeurgh. Prosaic. Silly. Boring. Suburban. It’s the highest of the N numbers making it sound really far out. It’s not. Look at the map; it’s just above N8 and next door to N10. I can’t help it, sometimes I just long for my beloved old N4. Everything seems ok in N4, surrounded by part-time hippies, eco warriors, middle class Arsenal fans and alternative therapists. N22, on the other hand, sounds like you’re at the top of a massive hill like some kind of freakish Gulliver accidentally stomping over the N1’s and E2’s.

Ok, rein it in Josh; you’re firing off postcodes like an anti-tank gun. Some people may be a little confused. If you are confused, i.e. if you are not from London, I don’t have time to go into great detail. Sorry. There isn’t any great logic to the system to be honest. For a start the numbering goes in no logical sequence (almost the complete opposite to the Parisian system which runs from one to twenty and is arranged in a near-perfect clockwork spiral beginning on the banks of the Seine and ending in Belleville. In London, W13 is squashed in between W5 and W7! Crazy.

The suffixes themselves are not even logical; there is no ‘S’ prefix (simply South) in London (only SW’s and SE’s) and there is no ‘NE’ (North East) only N’s and NW’s. Crazy. There is of course an explanation for this; in 1866 ‘S’ and ‘NE’ were scrapped and re-assigned to Sheffield and Newcastle-Upon Tyne. But that kind of logic cuts no ice with me. It makes London seem messy and disorganised!

Just to make things even more confusing, some central areas, the EC1’s and WC1’s have random extra letters attached (e.g. EC1V or WC1H). I find this little quirk an endearing feature I must say...

But please don’t ever attempt to work out which London borough you’re in by using the postcode system because, as Wikipedia rather eloquently puts it “the boundaries of each [postcode] sub-district rarely correspond to any units of civil administration such as parishes or boroughs. Despite this they have developed over time into a primary reference frame”…... Primary reference frame?! Yeah, thanks Postmaster General. Thanks for making things so easy to understand back in the 1800s.

Ach, what am I moaning about? There’s no geographic consistency in London anyway so why should the post coding be well ordered? London is an insane hybrid mish-mash of bending, maze-like roads built totally at random at different points in its two thousand year history. Starting with the Romans and hybridising all the way up to us. There’s even a possibility the construction of the 2012 Olympic Games site could create a new postcode where once barren wasteland was simply incorporated into surrounding codes. It’s happened before. Thamesmead in the 1970s was assigned SE28, after extensive development work was done to create the area.

But of course postcodes do not exist in isolation. When we think of them we think of the areas and what they signify. So, for example, E1 we think Whitechapel (Kray Twins, murdered Victorian prostitutes, skinny jeaned Scenesters). SW1, Sloane Square (‘could one please pick me up from Harrods in the Bentley?’) while N16 Stoke Newington and Stamford Hill is an odd blend of quintessential liberal Socialist Worker middle class North London and orthodox Jewish families.

I’m so obsessed with postcodes I once wrote to the Notes & Queries page of The Guardian requesting an explanation for the randomness of their assignment. I’m still waiting to hear back...

I’ll leave you with a few of my personal favourites…

1. N5 - majestic, crisp, beautiful. Highbury

2. EC1-to-EC4 - the City sends Dickensian shivers down my spine

3. E8 - Dalston and London Fields. Horribly trendy and yet a fantastic blend; the epitome of gentrified, shabby chic, arty, industrial-turned-Bohemian, beautiful Victorian semi detached, railway arched, fabulous pubbed, retro, multicultural, down to earth, working class liberal East London

Go on readers. Show yourself some love. Move to the postcode you’ve always dreamed of. (But remember kids, SW3 might be a little bit out of your league...)

London loves.....cycling

Some love affairs are actually love/hate affairs. So it is with London and cycling.

As a recent convert to cycling I cannot claim to speak for the longstanding cycling community. I can, however, speak for myself and the army of rubbish cyclists who cycle back and forth from work everyday in the London streets foregoing the luxury of more ordinary and dignified modes of transport. Like the Piccadilly Line. As I am totally non-expert, there will be no mention of 160 psi tyres, or tubular frames. There will simply be tales of things that occur on bikes in London.

Recently, cycling home from work I spotted a faster cyclist in front of me and conducted an impromptu experiment by catching up with him and then remaining close behind him in his ‘slipstream’. My rationale being that the aerodynamic effect would make it easier for me to cycle. Something to do with less wind resistance? I don’t know. I got a D for GCSE Physics*. Anyway, it seemed like a good idea at the time as I glided through Manor House.

In actuality it was a fairly poor idea. While I was unable to discern any noticeable easing on my cardiovascular exertion, I definitely got wetter, as the spray from his back wheel flew up into my face coating my glasses and rendering me temporarily blind. I didn’t stop to pull over and wipe my glasses. Oh no, that’s just not London cycling. Instead I made it to the next traffic light, half blind…. and then wiped my glasses. Therein lies a metaphor for the madness of the London cyclist; the oscillating emotions of green or red: possibility or halt, to see or to be blind. It’s always about the next traffic light. And nothing else matters**.

Suffice to say, I have not attempted the ‘slipstream’ trick again. But I have done and indeed observed other things that encapsulate the city’s cycling obsession.

In London, the nature of the gruelling slog of our thoroughfares, means no matter how much poise, confidence and Tour De France spirit we begin with as we leave our front doors, within 20 minutes we’re all reduced to a strange horde of sweaty, slightly confused-looking, suspicious, competitive people. Hard-breathing and lolling our heads like Paula Radcliffe. We London cyclists are not a pretty sight. Amusingly, the sweaty horde status quo is disturbed along the way into town as we, the moist ones with raised heart rates and in slight disarray, come into contact with new, fresh, un-crumpled cyclists who have clearly just left their front doors and are still half-smiling, before the anarchy besets them.

Putting sweaty unity to one side for a moment, there are also more divisive forces at work causing meltdown amongst even the most placid London cyclist. For starters there’s the hideous competitiveness. Racing bike riders are, generally-speaking, outrageously macho. (Even female racers are outrageously macho). This can be intimidating. You never quite know where they are, who they are or how they may attack. They are very much like the faceless Russian fighter pilots in Top Gun, only less egalitarian. The tell-tale signs of the racer (the alpha male or queen bee of the cycling dominion) are the calf muscles. Exposed, hairy and obscenely muscular. A warning sign equivalent to glimpsing the rapidly disappearing back view of Aryton Senna’s yellow helmet roaring past you (you, of course, being Gerhard Berger, less technically gifted and therefore provisioned with a slightly less impressive machine)***.

Other cyclists are not the only competitors out there. London’s traffic-laden roads between the hours of 7-10am take on many of the qualities of the Battle of The River Plate. Rush hour is very much ‘move out of my way, or I’m taking you down, and I’ll deal with your insurance claims and/or paralytic brain injuries problems at a later date’. Cyclists clash with anyone and everything: cars, motorcycles, pedestrians, buses, dogs, squirrels, weather, hills, darkness, drunkards, trick or treaters, road markings, speed bumps, pot holes, traffic lights and professional wrestlers. …I made the last one up. But you get the point.

I realise this blog is becoming fairly ragged and irreverent. I fear I may be set upon in the coming days by lycra louts wielding bicycle chains****. While initially I had intended to inject a modicum of intellectualism into this piece, in the form of a philosophical conundrum concerning the metaphysical position of the lonely solo cyclist vis-à-vis the empowered social cyclist as member of a community, sadly I have chosen instead to leave you with a few giggle-happy anecdotes about cycling in London. Sue me.

I recount a friend of a friend who managed, against all the odds, to cycle his bike uphill into the back of a bus. Quite a tricky feat at the best of times, the person in question managed to achieve the feat not only after many months of experience as a professional cycle courier but whilst the bus was stationary, offloading passengers at a bus stop. I often wonder whether he laughed or cried….

Finally, I re-tell the tale of a somewhat Machiavellian, enthusiastic cyclist, new to the game, who, upon exposure to the ‘us vs. them’ world of London cycling found himself battling with anything in his path. Including fowl. One summer evening, whilst cruising down a slight incline on Grays Inn Road he spotted a fat, lazy, unmoving pigeon on the road ahead. Taking it upon himself to engage in a spot of cheap sport, the cyclist headed straight for the fat pigeon, clearly expecting it to move and take flight. The pigeon did not move. The pigeon remained precisely where it was as the cyclist careered on, squishing the bird unceremoniously into the tarmac. Upon returning to the injured creature, the cyclist was able to ascertain from its unmoving remains that it had indeed not been faking indolence but was in actual fact very old, very decrepit, very fat and very lame. And now, as a direct result of his Shimano-gear driven homicide, very, very dead.

Such things are the way of life for the London cyclist. And we must take them in our lycra-clad stride.

Squawk.

*there were complex mitigating circumstances concerning this poor academic result which I don’t have the time to go into here but may return to at some later date. Suffice to say that the circumstances preceding the failure were nobody’s fault but my own.

** I threw this sentence in merely as a reference for Metallica fans to enjoy. I probably shouldn’t have. (I should make clear here that I am not a Metallica fan).

*** I recognise that this is the second reference to Formula One in as many blogs, for which I apologise. (I should also make clear here that I am not, particularly, a Formula One fan)

**** this is a reference to the Morrissey song ‘Such A Little Thing Makes Such A Big Difference’, the b-side to the 1989 top 10 single ‘Interesting Drug’ (I should make clear here that I am a massive Morrissey fan).

London loves.....break ups

Some might say this opening topic of London Loves is not entirely Londo-centric. I would have to agree. But I've never been one to be swayed by what some people might say. It is true that the whole world, not just London, loves break ups (other people’s I hasten to add, not their own). There is, however, something peculiarly Londonite about the zeal with which relationship malfunctions grip and excite Londoners. It’s almost perverse.

For beginning this blog with a topic many might see as dour I lay the blame bi-directionally. Firstly, the eponymous Blur song after which this blog is named offers two important hints at the romantic sadism of Londoners in it’s lyricism. ‘London loves the way people just fall apart’ and ‘London loves the misery of a speeding heart’. Secondly, somebody, let’s say for argument’s sake…me, has just undergone a break-up. So, it's topical.....for me.....sue me.

To take the Blur lyrics as my starting point. While the song itself may be seen as glib, trite or throwaway, there is actually an important take-home message. If we’re being honest for just one second; everybody upon hearing that somebody they know has broken up with their erstwhile lover, feels a certain sense of pleasure. This may seem controversial. It’s not. It’s true. I don’t mean in 100% of these cases, occasionally we hear of a break-up and are genuinely sorry, empathetic and disappointed. But 9 out of 10 times we take satisfaction in it. It’s human nature. There are many things about somebody else’s break-up that we love:

1. The fact that it’s not our break-up it’s somebody else’s (aka: smugness).

2. The fact that the news of a break-up allows us to indulge in a certain sense of self-satisfaction. This may manifest itself in ‘well I always knew they weren’t right for each other’ (trans. 'I'm a genius at predicting human folly') or in the fact that you now have a sense of one-upmanship over your acquaintance (your relationship is stable and fine, theirs is fucked…you must be a better person then they are) or worse still, your acquaintance has now been de-throned from their prestigious position and is now down wallowing amongst the love detritus with you and all the rest of the singles (the classic fall from grace anticipation finally coming to fruition).

3. It suddenly and immediately allows us to vent the true feelings we’d been masking all along. Usually feelings about the person your acquaintance has broken up with. This takes two forms, both of which are virtually identical. a) If it is your friend who has dumped their former lover; that’s your cue to slag off the former lover (who you never really liked anyway) in a litany of unedifying personal abuse. b) If on the other hand it’s your friend who has been dumped by their former lover…..that’s your cue to slag off the former lover (who you never really liked anyway) in a litany of unedifying personal abuse.

4. It’s our chance (seldom experienced so make the most of it) to play the agony aunt role you always knew you were cut out for. This is particularly unsavoury because of the fact that we, as a general population, are rubbish agony aunts. No, seriously. In my entire life I have only ever experienced one good agony aunt. The person I refer to being almost psychic in her ability to read, analyse and advise upon a situation. She could have made some serious cash off of her talents by now. She chooses not to. But I for one am indebted to her wisdom and salience... The rest of us are shit and shouldn’t even bother. ‘You’re better off without her’, ‘this is probably the best thing that could have happened’ or ‘plenty more fish in the sea’ are not lines that people will take to their graves revelling in awe at the eternal consoling wisdom of your heart-felt though impotent utterances. We all do it though. At least we're trying to display sympathy. That's better than nothing.

5. It’s an excuse to take your recently-heartbroken mate out and get very, very pissed.

It’s the fifth point, above all, that makes this particular London Love so quintessentially Londonish. It’s difficult to imagine a city that likes getting pissed more than London. We rarely need an excuse. So when there actually is a genuine excuse, like a break-up, to bemoan/celebrate, we do not hold back.

All of the above may tend to paint Londoners in a schadenfreude-esque bad light. I should probably take the time to point out that we Londoners are not entirely heartless. We are just quite heartless. To quote the song again, we actually do love the way people fall apart. It gives us something to laugh about.

Worse still, occasionally, it’s not even deliberate, angst-induced, superiority-driven guilty pleasure-taking that motivates our reactions. Sometimes, we just don’t give a fuck. (Another Londonite trait is the fact that we simply do not have time to give a fuck, we‘re soooo busy). I’ll leave you with a hilarious example. When I recently texted my older brother (he was in Ireland on holiday at the time) to tell him of the demise of my latest relationship, which had lasted almost 2 years. His response, by text, was this: “Why did you break? Your choice or hers? Whens the Brazilian grand prix on today (sic) Button is losing the plot due 2 pressure. He has been for the past 6 to 8 races.” Ah, the compassion. Oh, the humanity. I was deeply, deeply touched. In all seriousness though, it was a London response. To be perfectly honest, it was the best response I could have heard at that time. Deeply nonchalant. Deeply cynical. Deeply I-care-more-about-the-fate-of-the-formula-one-championship-than-your meaningless-difficult-and-quite-frankly-tedious-relationship. More to the point, it made me wet myself laughing. Thanks brother, I appreciate it.