Clapham, now! Too much ordure, too many toff-fests

Oh no, hang on this must be a mistake. It can't be what it seems to be.

Something came through the front door last week.

My street is an an odd street. Have you read "Capital" by John Lanchester? If you have you might latch on to this strangeness.

This street has some of the more expensive property in this very expensive bit of south London. The SW4 bit, formerly known as "Cxxxxxm".

Like many of these "most exclusive and luxurious" areas, it is basically a bit of Victorian speculative jerry-building over a few muddy acres of the Battersea and north Surrey marshlands, the Wandle basin and its surrounding dung-fields.

Lots of collapsing old buildings, lots of mud, dirt, dog muck, dumped infested mattresses, festering bomb-craters, used condoms, burned out Rage Rovers, you name it.

A valley of used disposable nappies, and a plateau paved with well-filled dogshit bags.

A pizza box filled with yuppie vomit. I named it.

Lots of three or four storey houses, each one costing £2 to £3million, and that's before the lads have scooped out another house underneath, a basement paradise with bubbling water-features and extra garage space or whatever it is they do down there, in the deep mud.

Something came thru my front door. It wasn't a plump buff package of dog shit this time.

No, nor even human shit. I know that's what you wanted it to be, but you lose this time.

Well, around here you wonder. These streets are paved with filthy lucre. Last week I narrowly missed seeing a young lady poohing behind a parked BMW suv. Her drunken, well-dressed friend was on watch-out and when I appeared around the corner, she signalled for me not to proceed, but to cross the road.  Good advice.

Next morning I passed said BMW and said pooh - large, humanoid, stinking - was still in situ.

This is Cxxxxxm. Now.

You'll do it next time, and I know your name. And your address, by the way. But I haven't got a dog.

ANYWAY…..It was something worse!

It was an invitation, like I said, an invitation to a party.

A "street party".

Only £15 a ticket! Well it included some lunch, soft drinks, a dog show and so on...

So, as I was saying. This road or street has certain aspirations, it seems, certain pretensions shall we say. It thinks it is, it believes itself to be ….to be a bit better than the  rest, or so it thinks.

You might not be surprised to learn that this street party was sponsored by an Estate Agent and was held to celebrate a royal birthday.

Now, I'm a strict roundhead, I have no interest whatsoever in the Windsor family, who have always struck me as just as dull as my own family and almost as sad. If those with a different view want to celebrate this birthday, then fine, that's up to them. But this is the third royal-themed street party in this street in the past decade, for Thunderclap's sake!

I mean, why this street? I've never seen any of the royals around here, why do we keep on kow-towing to the old dears? (Mind you the old ones are preferable to their children and grandchildren, don't you agree? OK, maybe not.)

Later this year there's another anniversary which might be a more interesting excuse for a party. Of course it will be too cold and dark for a street party by then, but maybe a genteel house party.

In December it will be the 100th anniversary of the death of the great Japanese writer, Natsume Soseki.

He lived in this street for his last few miserable months in London, early in the 20th century. He put up with the prejudice and stupidity of the local Brits, and he put up with cold, the wind, the rain, the ugliness, the filthy food, the hideous manners of the locals, just because he adored English literature and  history, and had a sort of reverence for a London of the imagination.

His subsequent writing added to that image of London …. but also set him on the path to becoming one of the most famous Japanese novelists of his time, maybe Japan's first real modern novelist. And it seems his unhappy few months Clapham was a catalyst for all this.

Thank god this street has something in its past, to make up for the embarrassment of the here and now. A house wrapped in pink, for heaven's sake. Well, maybe it's a good joke…yes, let's take the positive view.