Welcome to Wankerville: at last, we know where (and what) we are...

You know how you often pass a big welcoming sign when you drive into a village in the countryside? Like, "welcome to Upper Dicker, twinned with....etc..etc".  Well some kind soul of a signwriter has done the same for the area of south west London defined by the postcode, SW4.

In a none-too-subtle follow up to the helpful directions painted last year on one of Brixton High Street's rail bridges, a generous human has helped the often confused (or drunk) residents of Clapham know exactly where it is that they reside.

This bridge - which carries the Overground line trains from Clapham Junction to Highbury and beyond, as well as a lot of the Kent  commuter traffic (and formerly Eurostar trains) - is well chosen as a portal to the decidedly faded pleasure zone of Clapham High Street.

How long will this last one wonders? Will the burghers of Clapham take offence and whitewash it over asap? Maybe not. The inscription has gone down well on social media, with Clapham residents among its most fervent fans. See, for example, this post on Instagram.

As I live close to the borders of  C*****m and a neighbouring zone, I quite often lie about my own location - what a dastardly betrayal that is! But if it were to be officially re-branded, maybe I would have a bit more civic pride....OK, no, perhaps not. In fact I think there are very strong grounds for re-naming the entire city, all of Greater London, with this inelegant moniker. Grounds which I will explain in another post very soon.

Meanwhile, people leaving the OK-yaah Babylon of Clapham High Street and heading  for the relative paradise of Stockwell are also reminded of just what a lucky escape they are making.

Three cheers for another good use for spray paint!

Photographer gets under the skin of Clapham High Street's Jekyll and Hyde character

This uninspiring photo of Clapham High Street is by me: to see this much-maligned thoroughfare in a totally different and much more interesting light, check out Jim Grover's photos on the BBC Online site or better still get along to his exhib-
ition at the Omnibus Arts Centre in Clapham, April 3 - 20

Thanks to photographer Jim Grover, the south London Babylon otherwise known as Clapham High Street is being shown to the world in all its glorious ghastliness - and even a bit of unexpected beauty -  on the BBC website.

 Jim Grover's amazing photo essay has been chosen as this week's  BBC Online"Picture This" feature  - a few days before the photos go on show locally at  Omnibus (the arts centre in the old Clapham Library building on Clapham Common northside).

Jim hit on the brilliant notion of treating his subject, rather like Hieronymous Bosch, in two parts - heaven and hell, and photographing them differently, one in colour, the other black and white.   The division is between night and day - cleverly working on the split personality of this singularly unattractive thoroughfare.

And he works some real alchemy with his camera: sometimes it looks almost beautiful, sometimes as sordid and threatening as a Mean Streets era New York. The real stars of the show, however, are the people, and thankfully there's hardly an upturned-collar rugger shirt in sight.

His daytime shots beautifully capture a suburban world of shoppers, street cleaners, mums, kids, shop keepers, rough sleepers, pensioners, commuters, itinerants; the same old Clapham set. These photos are all in colour, and are all taken on the south side of the street.

The nightlife shots are all black and white and are all taken on the north side of the street, focusing on the true inferno of Infernos, the notoriously tacky night-club, and that strip of bars leading down towards Clapham North. You don't get too much sense of the literal tackiness of this street on a busy summer night, when your shoes can stick to a pavement awash with puked-out Baileys, half-digested kebabs and a mixture of human and canine urine.

Generally he's very kind to Clapham - he doesn't mock or caricature it, and the yuppie-buppie-yummie-mummy-rugger-bugger set don't get too much of a look-in. They tend not to use the thoroughfare that much anyway, in my experience, sticking mostly to the "Old Town" area of max wealth, the plus Venn Street and the pubs around Clapham Common tube station when there are big matches on.

Jim Grover makes gold out of the base metal of this conflicted bit of Lambeth. There are many beautiful photos, even on the BBC site: I am eager to see more at the exhibition.  Favourites so far include some of the long-term shopkeepers and some very atmospheric shots of made-up revellers, and of my favourite bit of the street including the old Greek restaurant (Sappho) and that strange mystical charity shop.

I'm looking forward to seeing these pics at the Omnibus - especially as I have been trying to do something similar in words for years, and failing.

For as long as I can remember the authorities have been trying to clean up and gentrify the high street, to make it more yuppie-friendly. I remember when the Sainsbury's opened on the site of the old bus depot (and later, British Transport museum) - when, for a while, people thought this might be the beginning of an invasion by upmarket retail "brands".

Thank God, it never happened!

Instead it remains as scuzzy as ever, even after the building of that posh new library and health complex with its classy (but vandal-friendly) Andrew Logan artwork spelling out "LIBRARY".

As Jim's photo essay confirms, Clapham High Street remains a real Jekyll and Hyde of a street, a bit down at heel during the day, and an all-out alcohol fuelled war-zone every Friday and Saturday night.

It's rather quaint and old-fashioned in its way. It has nothing to do with the world of cool, arty nightlife so highly prized in places like Shoreditch and Dalston and Deptford and Peckham. It is totally uncool, unfashionable, and un-smart. And yet it remains incredibly popular, mainly it seems, for the kids from the further-out south west London suburbs. In short, it's a rite of passage place for kids with fake IDs.

They come to get hideously drunk in the bars here, they hope to pull, but most seem just to wander up and down in groups, vomiting occasionally, and shouting loudly to each other (I heard one say last week, "Guys, I really have to take a shit right here right now") - before tapping their phones to rustle up some sort of Uber car to take them back to dad's post-divorce black-leather-lined bachelor pad in Putney or Purley.

But, like so many other of London's suburban high streets, the real boss here is the traffic. Like the A23 through Brixton and Streatham, this is a trunk route, combining both the A24 as well as the A3. It is just too big a road to tame.

The pedestrian crossing lights are some of the most ruthless anywhere in London - you get half way across and they start blinking at you. Impatient drivers in their white vans, Audis and Aston Martins - they are  all in such a hurry. You run the last yards and off they go, heading perhaps for lovely gated homes in Nappy Valley, or further out, in Surrey and Hampshire. Heading north, they're looking for posher places to spend their bankers' wad of an evening.

They don't care that they are on Clapham High Street.

But there I go, fantasising again. See the reality of 48 Hours On Clapham High Street in Jim Grover's great exhibition at the Clapham Omnibus, April 3 - 20.

Correction: Peter's non-stop closing down sale is still on

Catch it while you can…Peter's second-hand store on Prescott Place
survives to trade another day or two, but it won't last for ever...

My one hundred percent record for getting things wrong when it comes to reporting the demise of Greek-owned local businesses remains unblemished, you will be relieved to hear.

Five days ago I reported that Peter's second-hand lock up, in Prescott Place just off Clapham High Street, was finally closing. Yesterday, there he was, the lock-up was  unlocked,  stuff on the pavement, clothes on the rails,  books and bric-a-brac on the shelves, customers nosing out bargains, just like always.

For me it was a delightful reprise of my summer debacle,  prematurely reporting the departure of Andy the Barber on Landor Road. You can see why I never got far as a journalist.

For chapter and verse on Andy's 50 years in SW9, his plans for the future and the views of some of his most loyal customers, please listen to the two-part podcast interview  by Daniel Ruiz Tizon.

But back to Peter. In fact it wasn't quite like always, as his usual crew were not with him, nor his son. He saw it this away: the owner wants to knock down the lock-up and build some sort of luxury accommodation in this tight little plot of land just off the High Street. "Well, they're not going to start building in the middle of the winter are they," he says.

Of course it's possible even probable the owner will resort to using bailiffs, but what would be the point? As Peter says, all he wants to do is clear his stuff. He's keen to finish with this business, and perhaps sell a few Christmas trees on the side.

So - what could be better than  have Peter's festive long-running closing down sale acting as a sort of necessary balance to the over-priced Yuletide fare on sale in the Venn Street farmer's market a bit to the west? Exactly. So get yourselves down there quick - this is one bit of old SW4 that once it has gone will never return.

Once they do start building, they'd better take care not to damage that grapevine.

Peter bows out: a bit of Clapham High Street that should forever be Greece has gone. Almost...

Peter the Greek's final, final closing down sale last week: another bit of old, untidy Clapham is about to disappear
to meet the tidy, buttoned up and thoroughly steel-gated demands of London's property vultures.

2015 will be remembered for plenty of bad reasons. For some of us, amongst much else, it will probably go down as the year in which two of the pillars of Clapham's small but tenacious Greek Cypriot community finally chucked it all in, and called it a day.

If you've been listening to ace SW8 podcaster Daniel Ruiz Tizon's marvellous interviews with Andy, the Greek Cypriot barber of Landor Road, (Part 1 here and Part 2 here)  (and if not why not?) you will know that he is now really on the verge of retirement, after half a century of expertly wielding the clippers and the cut-throat razor to the astonishing parade of characters who have navigated this important furrow between SWs 2, 9 and eventually 4.

So, if you believe him, Andy will be back on the isle of his birth, tending his vines and the olive trees, in January 2016. Meanwhile, it seems that Peter,  the Greek second-hand-goods dealer of Clapham High Street, has also finally had to shut up shop. His lock-up on Prescott Place will soon disappear and be turned into yet more expensive residential property.

His final day was officially  Monday 23 November - as the often repainted "Closing down sale" banner made clear. But by the end of that day the bailiffs had not turned up, so Peter kept on trading a little longer….and then, a few more days…but one day soon, he will be gone.

The vine begins in the soil of a tiny garden
outside  St Peter's Catholic Church...

You wander down Prescott Street today and the shop is shut-up. But even when the single storey lock-up is demolished, there's going to be a durable reminder of his two or three decade presence here. It's a grape-vine, which was planted back in about 2009 in the tiny bit of garden by the side of the catholic church, which by happy coincidence is dedicated to St Peter.

Amazingly the vine has thrived, twisted itself round the corner, and started out on a long journey towards the joys of Clapham High Street. If you look at it even now there are clusters of this autumn's black grapes still hanging down.

According to Peter, once it was established the vine needed very little maintenance, "Just a little cutting back in the spring".

Will he be there to do it next spring? "Who knows."

It has now advanced about two-thirds of the way along the wall of the Two Brewers bar and nightclub on its way to the main road. Peter's hoping he'll live to see it make  the full distance. He;s got another growing along the alley-way behind his flat. It seems vines like Clapham soil, and like Andy, Peter clearly knows how to cultivate.

Unlike Andy, Peter's not planning to return to his birthplace. He likes Clapham and wants to stay here. It seems though he still has further battles, to do with where he's living, to get through.

And it continues along the wall of the Two Brewers, one of Clapham's most
famous gay bars, on its way to the wide-open spaces of the High Street

But, as for the shop, from what he told me, he did not intend to oppose the closure, as he's ready to give it all up. The shop had been quite busy recently, and whenever I visited there were plenty of people trawling through the boxes of books, records, glass, china, and the rails of clothing.

For Peter himself, maybe not such a bad outcome - but for this curious bit of Clapham, which had hung onto its 1980s feel far longer than you'd expect in an area now swamped by a second or even third generations of blond and blazered and chubby-cheeked ex public schoolboys and their well-groomed gals - it's a serious loss. One more of a very small and fast dwindling number of independent, totally  ungentrifiable business ventures, makes its exit, stage left.

Peter the Greek, Captain Cook's widow, a lyrical student film from 2003…and much else besides

Clapham High Street 2015: it has changed a little bit since Mrs Elizabeth Cook, widow of Captain James Cook, lived here over 200 years ago

It's been an odd week.

Something strange has happened each day, and each time it seemed essential to write an entry for this blog, if only to get these matters out of the brain and onto the internet, where the strangeness could be shared. Then, I found I could not write anything down.

Well, today's strangeness sort of brought all the other strange things together. As previously arranged, I go to see my new friends up on Prescott Place.

Peter's shop is looking good, with loads of stuff on the shelves, LPs and books and stuff. People are looking and even occasionally buying (an old chrome-plated alarm clock, 50p).

I pick up a copy of Jung's memoirs and offer to pay. Peter won't take money from me. I have given him a print-out of the first entry I wrote about his second-hand shop last week, and now he wants to tell me more.

First though, he wanted to make sure I fully understand that Elizabeth Cook, widow of Captain Cook, really did live on Clapham High Street - in a house that could now be the Trinity Hospice  shop, the Barber's, or maybe the McDonald's next door.

He has an old local history book. It looks like a 1960s or 70s book, with photos that I hadn't seen in any of the more recent crop of Clapham Society books. The framed page I saw on the last visit was a photocopy of the page from this book, the pages about Elizabeth Cook.

So - to remove any further doubt - Elizabeth Cook, widow of Captain James Cook, did live in Clapham from  1788, until her death at the age of 94, in 1835.  She outlived not only her husband, but also -

The page from Peter's local history book showing
a contemporary portrait of Elizabeth Cook and
the bit of Clapham High Street where she  lived
(as it looked in the 1930s).

horribly - all six of her children.

The book suggests she lived in a house in what are now shops, at 136 - 138 Clapham High Street.  These are typical London suburban  single-storey shops built over the former front gardens of once quite smart houses, and if you cross the road you can begin to imagine this ageing lady, living out her long old age there.

Now, back to Peter - because he also had more to tell me about his time in Clapham.  As we were talking another local celebrity appeared. Yes, Andy, the barber of Landor Road.

"I had no idea you knew each other" I said, stupidly.

"Of course we did, we're both Greek and we were both in Clapham since way back. I was barber as well in 1967, but not in Andy's shop".

At some point though he moved into selling stuff. He starts showing me old magazines. One, an accountancy mag,  has an article about one of his sons, who's now a successful accountant working in Poand.

Some more recent local history: Peter
outside his lock-up shop in 2008, as featured
 in  The Economist's Intelligent Life
magazine

Another has a great full-page colour photo of Peter standing outside his lock-up - exactly where we are standing right now. It's a very upmarket glossy mag, that was distributed free with The Economist back in 2008, called Intelligent Life. Peter's a star of their regular photo-essay, this time the subject was "Shops with character". You can see the pic in its full glory in the Economist's online archive, here.

Interestingly, Peter's store has a sign above - "Joe's Television, Audio, Video, DVD repairs" – where now he has a big "Closing Down Sale" banner. The caption states that Peter's looking after the TV repair shop in Joe's absence. It also speculates on Peter's future: "…you wonder much longer such a place can remain in business….The problem is it's not just the proximity to such a competitive and relatively upmarket shopping area…it's also the success of eBay".

Well, that was six years ago, and here he still is. Well, until November 18. Clapham High Street is still not really "upmarket", and I'd say it was as much charity shops as eBay that have driven second-hand dealers out of business. But in Peter's case, the real problem is the sky-high value of land in this part of London. Peter says his former landlords are planning to build a house on the little plot occupied by his lean-to.

The Morning Song, 2003: Peter becomes a film star

Next, he gives me an old VHS videotape and a few DVDs to watch at my leisure. The VHS tape is labelled "Peter's film" and I put it on as soon as I get in. (Of course I still have a VHS player, check the title of this blog!)

It turns out to be a really charming, lyrical documentary, made (I think ) by students from the London Film School in 2003. It's called The Morning Song, and was edited and directed by  Giusi Vittorini. They've chosen eight people - a butcher working at Moen's on Clapham Common, a Chinese girl working in  a food store, a retired primary teacher, a fireman working at the Soho station in Shatfesbury Avenue, a girl working in a cafe, a girl working in Neal's Yard cheese shop in Covent Garden, a motor mechanic - and Peter.

Peter inside his 'Pandora's Box' of a lock-up shop in 2003
(still from the film, The Morning Song, LFS and Giusi Vittorini)

Oh yes, and one other - a liquor store owner who looks very much like the proprietor of the famous Gerry's Wines and Spirits in Old Compton Street, by far the most interesting booze shop in London. I always imagined this guy was Gerry himself, but looking it up I find his name is Michael Cyprianou, yes another Greek Cypriot who arrived in London in the 1960s, and became a legend. What a generation!

And outside as well - apart from the colour of the shutters, nothing
it's amazing how little has changed in 12 years
(still from the film, The Morning Song, LFS and Giusi Vittorini)

The film gets each of these characters to speak about themselves, and they each have three appearances.  First talking about their work, then what they like (or don't like) about it, and then their dreams, or what makes them happiest. It's an absolute delight, this short film, and you can see it - along with more of this director's work - on  her YouTube channel.


Peter is shown inside his store. It looks very neat and much less crowded than his current lock up, and he refers to it as his "Pandora's Box".

He also says it's the "best job of his life…" (Remember this is back in 2003).

I like his answer to the final question: "If you like your work, and you have a good drink, and a nice woman for sex, then life is kind…"

I need to know more about this video. I'll be going back to talk to Peter again next week - but if anyone has any memories of his shop, or of similar characters in the area, please leave a comment here.

Meantime, something to look forward to: your man,  Daniel Ruis Tizon, the real voice of South West London, the one who is Available each week on Resonance FM, is getting Andy the Barber of Landor Road onto his show soon. If both Daniel and Andy are on their usual form, then it will be an unmissable bit of radio. Hyperlocal subject matter, yeah right on, Landor Road is as hyperlocal as anyone could want, but it should be listened to wherever you happen to find yourself in this strange old solar system we all seem to inhabit. It'll sound just as good in San Salvador as in Stockwell.

Clapham's last real junk shop given two months to clear out

Closing down sale of the last century: Peter and his son outside their Prescott Place shop, which looks set to disappear for good by November 

Walking east down Clapham High Street, it's very easy to miss a hidden survivor of an old but almost extinct London institution - the pavement junk-shop.

Next time you walk this sticky main drag, keep to the north side pavement, and when you get to Prescott Place (just after Snappy Snaps) look to the left and you'll see a scene that looks more like a bit of Brick Lane in the 1980s rather than Clapham in 2015.

The narrow street, which has one of Clapham's best known gay bars, the Two Brewers, on one corner, is also home to Peter Chrysostomou's second-hand store. When it's open, all manner of stuff - pictures, furniture, coats, old radios, books, potted plants, hatstands, boots, you name it …are spilling out of his store-rooms across a non-existent pavement and onto the double-yellow lines. The interior looks too crammed with stuff to enter.

Eager bargain hunters know this is a great place for nosing out old frames, china, glass, an ancient camera...you name it….Clapham's very own one-man flea-market. Surely this little bit of old London will be treasured by the new generations of style-conscious hipster-yuppies?

Not a bit of it. Peter has been served notice of eviction, and has just had one possibly final stay of execution, two months after the expiry of his lease.

He's now facing demands he clears out the premises by November 15. So the big sign advertising his  long-running "Closing down sale" is finally, sadly, going to be true.

On one of the shelves outside there are two picture frames, each containing what looks like a page of text torn out of magazines. The articles are both about the house in Clapham High Street that once belonged to the widow of Captain James Cook,  Elizabeth.  I am not sure if these are there for information or for sale, and try to catch the owner's eye. But he's shutting up for the day and framed pages are put away before I can read any of the detail.

So I decide to come back another day, and I ask him about the "Closing down sale" and how much longer he'll be there. He immediately seems suspicious: "Why? Who are you? A taxman?"

 I assure him I'm just a drifting unemployed refugee from the modern world, a low-grade scavenger of stories,  and then he opens up a lot and starts listing the various authorities by whom he's being chased. "Police, Fire Brigade, council, all the people in uniform…"

They are, he says, all out to get him and this time there seems to be no hope of avoiding the ultimate killer blow, eviction. "I've been in Clapham 50 years" he says. "But this will be the end of it."

I have no idea about the rights and wrongs of Peter's case. He's understandably stressed and distressed and feels hemmed in by people who just want to make him and his shop disappear.

All I know is that the sort of place Peter runs is now a seriously endangered species in London. It's a truly scarce commodity that should be valued. You walk past all these dreary chain stores, or even worse the endless estate agents occasionally punctuated by silly overpriced food stores or gift shops, then you see down this dark narrow street a glimpse of a pre-(Falklands)-war world of bartering, thrift, bargaining, men in big coats arguing over a bit of furniture, it's all straight out of an Ealing comedy or something earlier.

It's also real, and as such will inevitably die. But does it have to die so soon? In this new age of Mr Cameron's austerity, there are an awful lot of us who need to pick up some stuff dirt cheap, and I haven't seen many decent saucepans at the 99p Shop recently.

Peter has a son who tells me his shop used to be on the High Street, in what is now a Trinity Hospice Charity shop. This is double-edged blow for me. It reminds me that I am here as part of an attempt to update an earlier entry on the best charity shops in the SW quarter. It also reminds me I once worked for these Trinity Hospice shops. And it reminds me that charity shops - much as I love them - have severely cannibalised the second-hand retail trade. Charities have insuperable financial advantages over all their independent retail rivals. They pay no tax or VAT, they get low or zero rents, they get their stock for free and they don't pay most of their staff.

Like I said,  I love charity shops (and my nearest and dearest will say I love them too much). But it's clear they more or less wiped out that whole tribe of junkshop entrepreneurs. Some of course have joined the charity bandwagon (because there is money to be made there still - the ragging, the occasional gem that be picked up for 50p  and flogged on to antiques geezers for 50 times the price.

But, overall, this massive retail shift has squeezed out the mid-range antiques shops, nearly all the low-price second-hand book shops, and many others. Old clothes shops now have to be "retro" or "vintage" to compete.

So, back to Peter. I am hoping to talk to him at more length soon. But if anyone has any reminiscences of this shop, or knew it in any way, or knew similar shops in their area that are still operating, please for pity's sake let me know!

Charity shop pecking order for the hopeless bibliomane

If you love books, have a certain amount of spare time, live in or near a major city or conurbation, or anywhere else in the uk if you're sufficiently mobile - there's plenty of fun to be had setting off on charity shop book-hunts.

I don't have to go far to indulge this slightly greedy hobby. I have nine charity shops within a 15 minute walk from where I live, and roughly five times that number within a 15 minute cycle ride.

And every one of these shops has, on at least one occasion, thrown up a treasure.

But, after many years of raiding these treasure troves, I have now, by a sort of alluvial process, come to this   totally arbitrary "pecking order" of the shops I am most likely to visit if time is scarce, or if my mood is low and I need my spirits lifted.

So here we go - my 2014 (Spring) top dozen or so charity shops in South/South West London…

Coming in at number one, week after week, is the wonderful Save the Children Shop on Clapham High Street, near the overgorund rail station. A good selection of books, well priced (typically £1.50 for good paperbacks); similar CDs, records and clothes. It's a large, airy, sunny shop – and what really makes it a winner  for me is the in-store music - it's often reggae or ska, it is always loud and upbeat. You just want to dance and dance and buy  and then buy some more.

In second place - after a few recent fruitful visits - is the Oxfam Shop in Gloucester Road. I am almost surprised to say this as I had almost gone off Oxfam. For a long time it seemed to have a policy of pricing all books at £2.99, CDs likewise, and the stories were become too uniform. The specialist bookshops were never as good as they should have been - even the one in Portobello Road has gone downhill (but be aware that things change very fast in this world). The Balham one's a bit barren and the Herne Hill one is fine but pricey and the staff a wee bit snooty. I also felt they were just too much like unfair competition to bona-fide secondhand bookshops.

But this Oxfam in this very posh street is a gem, quite different in feel from most others, with a good balance between clothes, books, music and bric-a-brac. The prices are a bit looser, as well.

Best recent buy: catalogue for the Monet in 20th Century Exhibition, perfect condition, £4
One I wish I had bought and didn't: Brand new Banana Republic cord jacket for £22.

Sharing 3rd place (sorry) - I have to declare an interest here - my alma mater, the Trinity Hospice chain. Visit any of their 20 or so shops as often as you can - bargains can usually be found, though you do have to make repeat visits as they often hold sales and turnover is high. Lovely staff in some of the shops. Best of the bunch: the Bute Street shop, SW7 - of course! Even if I didn't have personal connections there, I would love this shop for its eclecticism, intimacy and its distinct Gallic flavour. Great for cheap French novels. As with Oxfam, Trinity's specialist book and media shop in Kensington

Church Street is not as good as it used to be; books more expensive here than in the general shops.

At number 4 are the FARA shops in Northcote Road,  Pimlico and Gloucester Road. Stuff in these shops is always so well displayed, and until recently you could be sure of an interesting and fast-changing stock of books, though sadly there has been a bit of a downturn very recently. The Northcote Road branch , in particular, has lost some its charm - the staff no longer seem so friendly either.  But the Gloucester Road  shop is  great fun, I love the basement of books, magazines, records , menswear and curios. A similar retro feel exists in FARA's Pimlico SHop.

Number 5 and 6 - the Oxfam Shops in  the Kings Road, Chelsea, and Warwick Way,  Pimlico. The former was my number one charity shop for many years, from way back in 1990 when I worked nearby. Bang next to Vivienne Westwood's original shop, it was the place to find great clothes at crazy prices. It is still good, always has plenty of great books, but the prices are a bit above the average.

Number 7  - A wild card here - the MIND Shop in Wandsworth Road, SW8, near the overground station. A real old-school charity shop, cheap clothes, and a hugely eclectic range of books, CDs, DVDs, vinyl etc. Old school charity shop, and all the better for it.

Number 8 - the Cancer Research Shop, World's End end of the King's Road. Always nice staff here, and it used to be great for old LPs. Books are cheap, and clothes can be real bargains as well - better now than its neighbouring Oxfam and Trinity shops.

Number 9 Huge and cluttered, the Wandsworth OASIS (HIV charity) shops in Battersea PArk Road have massive selection of everything, books, CDs, DVDs, furniture, the lot. A bit murky, a bit dowdy, rather dim on the lighting front but always good for a long browse, with genuine bargains still very much available to those who persevere. Nice staff too.

Number 10 but sure to rise, I feel  - the big Barnado's Shop in Brixton. Cheap and cheerful which often gets interesting vinyl (see the fast changing display in one of its windows.)


You might notice I have not mentioned  British Heart Foundation shops, even though I have bought plenty of stuff in many of their outlets - Balham, Clapham Junction, etc. But I get annoyed with their highly standardised and over-cluttered shop layouts, their pricing (£2.50 for most paperback novels, too much!) and their policy of having in-store cash collectors.

Likewise Scope, Help the Aged and Octavia Hill shops - they are all OK but just not too good for books, generally. Although, as with any charity shop, you can always get lucky - so take note, and do not heed this advice! As soon a people follow a guide, the quality drops and the prices rise. So it will soon be time for us all to rove farther afield. I'm aware of and slightly daunted by all those cavernous charity shops in South East and North West London. Fresh fields.

SO what are your favourite charity shops? Not just in London, anywhere? Tell me, I want to visit them!

In orbital love

After many weeks dithering, took the new (and slightly bigger) version of the old little train from Wandsworth Road.

A bright Sunday lunchtime. Somehow elated after finding some bargain CDs at the local charity shops (Traffic, Pink Fairies, Bowie, Dylan, etc....) I shift from my default depressed mode to my default manic mode and almost run to the library to borrow something to read on what I expect to be a long train journey. I boorow a Flann O'Brien book and a biography of Man Ray.

The nearest station is now Clapham High Street, so that's where I head. People are up on the platform looking like normal travellers. In the past I remember  getting stoned right here on someone else's skunk fumes.  These were popular dealing and skinning up spots, in the very recent past.

Not any more. Perhaps. All has changed. Perhaps. It's now smartly branded "Overground" with the orange roundel and orange everything, and the trains are brand new - and quite disconcerting at first as all the seats are placed lengthways along the walls of the carriage, and you can see all the way up and down the train (unless it's going round a very tight corner).

But - it all seemed wonderfully efficient.

Seemed.

Am I beginning to thaw, to actually start loving the modern world, the post-modern, post Olympics, Boris Johnstonian London - the thing I sort of assumed I would hate, I must hate, I had no alternative but to hate?

Maybe. This is the old line but , once past Queen's Road Peckham you realise you're being transported into a shabby version of a brave new world, or at least a shabby old-new London.

Instead of humbly shuffling itself into London Bridge Station (having passed the Milwall football ground and that big waste-burning power station) it shoots off into the docklands, Surrey Quays, Canada Water, the fast-fading shine of that deeply depressing Canary Wharf business area - and then links back into the East London/North London Line.

It plunges into and out of cut-and-cover tunnels, flashes past some of the most fashionable spots in the the city (Hoxton, Dalson Jct etc) and rattles you through so many views of the Shard  and the Eye and Hawksmoor, and Brixton market, and and and and St Pauls and so on....you swear the whole thing was a London tourist board commercial.

So I suddenly find myself passing Wapping (christ, wish we'd had this  service when I was at TES) and then Whitechapel.

The marathon has been run but the streets are still full of beaming spectators with their souvenir bags, they're crowding up Brick Lane, I just want to find the old bike parts market further up towards Shoreditch.

By the time I get there the stalls are being dismantled, so I make do with 3.2kg of Cyprus potatoes for £1 and a couple of sacks of very ripe tomatoes and trundle on to Canonbury....

Yes, I am falling back in Love with London, and it's not just the weak sunshine that's repsonsible.