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| The horror of Clapham Common on the first hot weekend of the year. To be fair, this was taken in May 2018, long before social distancing was an allowable phrase. I took this to illustrate yet another unpublished article on the strange behaviour of the tribes of Clapham. |
In an epic 17-post twitter thread yesterday, the Clapham-raised, Stockwell-based writer and podcaster Daniel Ruiz Tizon explained why he now avoids the place he so loved as a child.
And why these days, he says, "You cannot get me to #Clapham for love nor money and those that know me well, know not to ask to meet in SW4".
Like Daniel, I also loathe what the name "Clapham" now stands for in discussions about London suburbs (these discussions have been getting very heated on twitter of late).
It has long been a mockable address. People have been joking about "Cla'am" for two decades or more now. I stopped rising to the bait in 2003, when those same people saw the values of their sensible homes in New Cross and Nunhead and Dalston soaring.
It got to the point in the early 2000s where I started to lie, rather than admit to living here. I would say "close to Lavender Hill". Sometimes more blatantly, by saying Battersea or Stockwell. In my defence I'd point out this flat is less 100 yards from the SW4/SW8 border. But that's like saying you're slightly pregnant.
Face it, hypocrite: you live in Clapham! And are you going to move? No, of course not. Like it or loathe it, I am rooted.
In fact a lot of this blog has been about trying to justify my presence here, even though I am now much more like one of those sad old relics living and dying in their bedsits back in 1985.
I agree with each of Daniel's points about the awfulness of Clapham now. I also agree that "No part of this city, or any city, should be exclusively white and middle class".
I agree that we've lost much of the diversity, the blessed shabbiness, the easy-come-easy-go transitory character Clapham had that made it attractive to all manner of migrants, external or internal.
I was about to argue that Clapham still has a lot of that diversity, it's just not quite so visible, and of course it has. There's still that patchwork of social housing; there are still the old grandees living on the North Side in their well-padded bohemian splendour. With their views over a Common, often including the little camouflaged tents of migrant workers: late evening campfires, accordion bands, short stay visitors, sharing common turf with the crows. Park bench business dealings. Skunk smoke under the horse chestnut trees. Lone music students practising flugelhorn scales by the paddling pool.
There is still diversity here, but as in most of London's inner-zone residential areas, it's not the diversity you notice so much as the polarity.
There's a local photographer, Jim Grover, who has revealed some of richness of the Clapham demographic, right now. His work, inspired largely by the African-Caribbean congregations of his local church, tapping into the family histories of Jamaicans of the Windrush generation, or by the Jekyll/Hyde character of Clapham High Street, by day and by night.
Yes, here I am on the defensive again, sorry. The problem is that the most visible section of the population, especially in summer, are those youngish, well-off, white, "just-down-from-uni" types that Daniel complains of. The 2020s versions of the 1980s yuppies, of which I was one, if a distinctly shop-soiled example.
The worst time is early summer, when they (we) emerge all at once from their (our) flatshares like flying ants on National Flying Ant Day, to crowd the pavements of the "Old Town", pastel-shade tailored shorts, flip-flops, carefully casual cashmere jumpers, pink flesh turning red, oh Lord. This year, perhaps because of the press coverage of breaches of social distancing, they have been more noticeable than ever.
Poor old boring old Clapham Common. Come on, you can't blame it for the packs of loose-bowelled doggies on shared dogwalker leads who foul it so, nor for the hordes of keep-fit fanatics who will happily shower you with thier sweat if you get in their way.
But Daniel has much deeper reasons for the anger he feels towards SW4 as it is now. The gentrifiers have defiled the neighbourhood he grew up in. It is much more painful for him, than for a latecomer like myself.
I grew up in the leafy suburbs of Croydon, which in those days was categorically not in London. As a child of 7, I remember how the cityscape changed as we pulled out of Clapham Junction on the way to Victoria. The view across the smoking chimneys to the steep terraces on Latchmere Road, the then-new tower blocks of the Battersea council estates, and then the billowing clouds of steam above the power station: it might as well have been the title sequence for Coronation Street.
Yes, here I go, defending the place I arrived in almost by accident after a decade of moving around the postcodes north of the river, from NW1 to W9 to SW3 to E8. Despite claiming to hate everything Thatcher stood for, I too was lured into getting a mortgage, a foot on the ladder. My foot's still on the same rung of that ladder, but all around has changed beyond recognition.
As I peer out of the window so there's a god-awful howl reverberating off the houses, a black open-top Ferrari is hovering and revving up outside, a couple of thirty-something fellers in their designer shades, are braying away. Lockdown? Wtf's that, matey?
Yep, OK. Clapham now. You win, Daniel.
