Oh come on, please, isn't it time to take those jubilee flags down?

There's a street in Clapham - let's call it The Chase, as that's what it's called - which looks like it has fallen into the hands of extreme royalists. 

At every opportunity -  jubilee, royal wedding, or whatever - these loyal residents organise a street party. Judging from the leaflets circulated for the 2022 event, it was primarily for better-off residents only. Apparently it was a ticketed event, £20 per pop.

For non-royalist residents, this has all become an embarrassment - especially as the organisers like to put plaques on their walls to commemorate the events. One is reminiscent of the revered London Blue Plaque - which somehow devalues those genuine and well-deserved plaques up at the north end of this same street. 

In the past, however, the evidence of these orgies of adoration for the old firm of Windsor would quickly disappear.

This year they went all out for the four-day jubilee, and then some. As usual, huge Union Jacks were strung up across the full width of the road at roof-height - as though this were The Mall, and not just another overpriced south London rat-run. 

Actually the better comparison is Oxford Street, and an even better one, King's Road. All three streets are awash with money and short on taste; their sponsored displays are equally tacky.

Well, OK, for four days you could keep your head down and think republican thoughts as you walked past: or better still take a different route.

But, as if that absurdly prolonged "holiday" were not enough, the massive flags are still there, two  weeks after end of the celebrations. Some of the biggest houses still display tattered bunting and more flags - always union jacks, no other nations getting a look-in.

Worse still, much of bunting was sponsored by an estate agent. The cheapskates! Is not this the height of

Can you believe it? In one of the richest streets in
the rich postcode SW4, they stooped to using
sponsored bunting for the Jubilee party...

vulgarity? But at least it means only one in three of the triangles is a  Union Jack, the rest being PR for the company.

But honestly, how tacky can you get? As one former royal from the 1980s might have quipped, it was all terribly "naff". 

Did I miss something? I thought this street was in the London Borough of Lambeth, and not in some ancient royal borough, all of its own. 

The jubilee week did at least provide an experiment in socio-political prejudices, or demographic stereotypicality. 

Walking around the area, it was interesting to see where the most flags and bunting were. The Chase was the brashest show noticed on a trek from Lavender Hill to Ferndale Road. There were several smaller street parties, though oddly nothing at all in Macaulay road, which is if anything even wealthier than The Chase, in places. Seems the super-duper-rich are more discreet, or more probably celebrating their own wealth somewhere a long way away.

Turret Grove came closest to matching the scale of this street, though its use of multicoloured bunting, pride rainbows and flags of about ten nationalities, seemed far friendlier and more imaginative.  The UK flag seems less grim alongside Spanish, Italian, Jamaican, Scottish, Welsh, German, French, and other national colours. But when it's nothing but the red, white and blue, those of us who associate the flag with the bad old days of the National Front, the BNP, football thuggery, and toxic unionism in Northern Ireland, or toxic Britishness in the colonies, can only shudder. Echoes of Empire are to the fore. 

What for a while was good about Britishness was its post-war reluctance to make too much of a show. Maybe that was also a symbol of war fatigue, or perhaps imperial smugness - you know, we're top dogs so we don't need to wave our flags around. Of course that's all long since gone, and the far right are now more likely to cluster around the St George's flag, it seems. 

Well, the flags remain flapping as I write. Really, do we have to have these constant reminders of the sadly very disunited kingdom we now inhabit, in these sad, shambolic post-Brexit years of widening wealth gap and deepening misery?

* Update July 9 2022: Happy to report the flags came down about a week ago, so they had their full month of loyalist display. Quite surprised to see how many flags are still flying around London - notably in the above mentioned King's Road, Chelsea, where they seem almost a permanent fixture. Maybe they think they hark back to the early stage of 1960s "swinging London", when the flag had a year or two as a mod style icon.

Has anyone ever been fined for breaking the 20mph speed limit in Lambeth?

If you're cruising down this street at 55mph in your
Audi - as you do, don't deny it - would you even notice
this little roundel hiding in the shadows?

Does anyone make a cheap, reliable hand-held speed camera? During 2019, that grim year now blessedly over, speeding vehicles became one of the worst of hundreds of other daily annoyances that further depressed all quality-of-life measures in the stinking rich slums of south-west London. Yes, we need something to fight back with, us beleagured pedestrians.

If such devices exist, they should be bought in bulk by local authorities and handed out at libraries, doctors surgeries etc so that people can give lunatic drivers a little scare as they blast down residential roads at two or three times the speed limit.

So tell me, has anyone ever been banned, imprisoned or even fined for going at 24mph in a 20 mph limit  area?

Tell me, honestly, have you ever seen anyone driving at less than 25mph in a 20mph limit area? Really? I cycle at more than 20mph in some parts of London and clever signs start flashing at me furiously, kill your speed! But not round here.

In this wide,  almost straight street with no speed bumps, we're used to rat-runners paying no heed of the pathetic 20mph limit signs, and having no thought for pedestrians (who include kids going to and coming out of the local primary school).

Lambeth introduced the 20mph limit all over the borough a few years ago. Seems putting up a few inadequate signs was a cheap solution to residents' demands for traffic calming measures, rather than adding bumps or chicanery, speed cameras, planting trees etc, as requested at various "your voice counts" meetings with the planners.

This flimsy little 20mph limit sign looks more like one of those
horrible pennants used by property developers to guide people
to their "marketing suites"

I regularly have to get out of the way of cars and even big trucks going three times that speed....and perhaps more.  Trouble is the road is also used as a sort of drag strip for drivers who like to prove their manhood by shattering everyone else's peace. Not just boy racers but plump 40-year-old city types giving their silly McLarens, Mercs and Maseratis a bit of an airing.

Then there are the speeding delivery vans. Don't get me on this subject, which is at least 300 of the other 364 things wrong with the past year. These huge boxes on wheels, whether scruffy old white Transits or shiny new DHL vans, are one of many reasons we should all stop using Amazon, Ocado, and all other delivery services, unless we really can't use our poor fat little legs to make it to a London's quite good variety of retail outlets.

There are 20 mph speed limit cameras on Wandsworth Road and Acre Lane and probably loads of other places in the borough. I've seen those two flashing four or five times in the space of five minutes. Are these drivers getting speeding tickets and fines? I've never even seen police doing spot checks on these streets. Presumably they couldn't spare the personnel.

Other things which made 2019 shit and will probably make 2020 even shitter:

• Linked to the above - the ever-increasing girth and ghastliness of SUVs.  Who on earth believes a fat black Range Rover is something to aspire to?
• Linked to the above - the ear-splitting loudness of car horns, the sort people pay extra for in order to add to the fuck-off factor of their vehicle. A possible legislative solution to this dreadful form of auditory pollution was suggested on this blog many years ago.
• Linked to the above - small motorbikes that make more noise than even big trucks and buses. And luxury cars that have clearly had their exhaust systems expensively tweaked in order to emit a much louder roar when the driver revs it at lights.
• Linked to the above: why is Lambeth still allowing so many of its super-rich residents to pave over their front gardens, or worse still, to dig out underground cinemas or swimming pools or whatever else it is they need, thereby wrecking their neighbour's lives for months with endless flotillas of four-axle dumper trucks, skip deliveries, and even those revolting portaloos for the poor workers half-blocking pavements?
• Linked to the above: more and more trucks, vans and even car-sized pick-up trucks displaying "Cyclists Beware" signs on their rear panels. Honestly, if you can't see what's behind you or alongside you on the nearside of your vehicle, from your driving position, should that vehicle be legal in this congested city?
• Linked to above: often the silliest most trivial things annoy most. Last year it was the proliferation of those multi-LED indicator lights on the back of the newest SUVs and other flash-harry vehicles - the sort that seem to lick their way around the back of the car. Like the flicking tongues of some venemous reptile.
• Linked to the above - over-use of phrases such as "linked to the above"; proliferation of old farts using blogs to evacuate their spleen into the idiot wind of the internet, which merely blows it all back into their own twisted faces?
• Case rested.

Two London blights for the price of one photo: the crazy congestion caused by delivery vans thanks to Amazon, etc; and the

continuing madness of paving over front gardens...removing green patches, adding to flood risk.

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!

Open House London weekend celebrates 25 fantastic years: hurray! But what's with this Clapham Old Town walk?

Here we go, into the radical redesign of Clapham Old Town on the new cycle-friendly pathways....sort of.

If you're into London's Open House weekend, then your annual treat is getting very close, and this year's free booklet is packed with even more potential pleasures than ever before.

What's more, this year's weekend - on the 16th - 17th September -  is the 25th anniversary of Open House London, which took a brilliant, simple idea and made it happen: why not open up interesting buildings - however grand or however modest - to the public, just for one weekend in the year?

This year's catalogue includes a great Top 25 of the most popular buildings it has featured over the years - the perfect trigger for debates. It also includes several topical essays on the big issues facing the city now, notably affordable housing, transport and traffic congestion, and accessible open spaces.

As a creature of bad habit I turn immediately to my local borough - Lambeth - and find amidst a well-stocked selection of local treats, this slightly curious entry in the Walks & Tours section:

"Clapham Old Town and Venn Street: This guided walk...looks at a radically redesigned public realm which re-balanced the street environment in favour of the pedestrian and cyclist..."

This refers to the recent tarting up of the old Polygon area which was commented on by this blog back in 2014.

So here you are at the end of Bromells Road. Cars have to turn
left across the pavement. No signs to say what bikes should do,
even though a bike path starts just across the road...

Well, the patch of artfully sown wild flowers at the northern tip of the Polygon (or is it "piazza" now?) is gorgeous. The new public space around the Polygon and Rose & Crown pub is certainly neat and tidy but to be honest it's a bit sterile. Especially now that the old public toilets have disappeared behind hoardings.

There are a few of those metal chairs scattered around, single seaters which look like they were designed to give bankers who have just been told their bonuses are frozen, somewhere to sit and contemplate their futures.

There's a very celebrated upmarket restaurant, a trio of pubs (if you include The Sun and The Prince of Wales across the road)  and...well,  a couple of cafes, also over the road...but not much else.

As for it being more cycle friendly: well, how, exactly?

After a couple of years of trying to get to grips with the remodelled and supposedly bike-friendly traffic flows,  they still seem at best puzzling, often confusing, and in some places downright dangerous to both cyclists and pedestrians.

Here it is - so off you go, heading north against the traffic 

Firstly, far from "reining in" motorists, they have given those coming from the north two separate routes up to the Common and the High Street. They can either be good and follow the B303 past Orlando Road and stop at the junction with the one-way system around Clapham Common.

But if they're in a hurry, or just typical motorists, there's nothing to stop them going the old way, up past The Sun pub and the local Sainsburys and a load of new flats, then pushing their way back onto the one-way system via The Pavement. It's a new rat run beloved of big white vans and equally big black SUVs.

Originally under the new scheme, as I remember, this road was gated at the northern end, and should have been for resident and delivery access only.

A few yards on you get to this bit, but no explanation why
you might want to turn right across the road...nothing!

Most of the pedestrians coming from Orlando Road, The Omnibus Arts Centre and the homes and many businesses on North Side want to get to the tube station. So they continue to cross the road at the point, directly outside the old Library (now The Omnibus) where there used to be a very well-used pedestrian crossing.

Mysteriously they have now moved that crossing just 20 or 30 yards further east, past the Starbucks, and just far enough to make it seem an annoying diversion if you're in a hurry.

The trouble is, this road is now two-way and there is also a bus-stand a few yards to the west. There are almost always a couple of 249 double-decker buses waiting there, which completely block the view, making it impossible to see approaching traffic until it is literally upon you. This is so dangerous for all pedestrians.

As for cyclists, well it seems like the cycle route has been sketched-in by some town planner at the end of  a long liquid lunch; clearly they all forgot that this bit of the scheme was never fully planned.

Not that anyone expects joined-up thinking from a council that has recently shut down one of the finest, best-loved and most-used libraries in London.  (In case you missed the stories, I mean the Carnegie Library in Herne Hill).

But a joined-up cycle route through this complex junction of roads would be good. The route as it stands is, frankly, bonkers.

If you do cross the road, you end up on this scary contra-
flow bike lane where you are glared at by drivers of big
black shiny SUVs (and OK, other vehicles too...)

If you're coming from the Brixton direction, or from Clapham Common tube station, and aiming for Lavender Hill or Wandsworth Road - well, you have to think hard about where to go. Most cyclists just follow the roads. The pavements around the tube station offer no bike routes (although quite a few cyclists use them, to the annoyance of crowds of commuters and school-kids milling around here at the busy times).

There are no signs to encourage cyclists to use, for example, Venn Street - which looks pedestrianised, but is it?

So the bike lane seems to start quite arbitrarily on the edge of the Common, 100 yards further north, opposite the junction with Bromells Road. This is a one way street with no bike lane. Cars and bikes have to cross the wide pavement to rejoin the road (which, confusingly, is called The Pavement at this point).

Cyclists can then cross the road and get onto a little bit of bike lane going north; but a few yards further on it sends them back across the road and onto a contra-flow bike lane which is frankly scary.

If you follow the cycle path past the above-mentioned wild flower patch, it sends you back west towards the Common - and to re-cross the main traffic flow, this time on a zebra crossing - so

As you can see, parked cars and oncoming traffic both
habitually impinge on the so-called cycle lane.

that you've negotiated four of the five sides of the Polygon to get back to a point a few yards from where you were 5 minutes ago.

There's a tiny bit of pavement here which has one of those joint use cyclist/pedestrian symbols in one paving slab - but who notices that? And the path is not wide enough for this dual use.

Like you, I hate seeing cyclists charging around recklessly on footpaths - but around here, it's sometimes almost understandable.

Lambeth Council is still open to changing these arrangements, apparently, so let's hope this Open House Weekend walk makes the crazy layout of these bike lanes clearer to all.

Plenty of really great stuff in the Open House programme, though. In Lambeth, the residents of the threatened Cressingham Gardens Estate have organised a tour, as have the residents of the Central Hill estate in Crystal Palace. Both these estates were built in the 60s and 70s; a Lambeth architect, Ted Hollamby, was involved in both; they are both largely judged to be successful in meeting the need for low-rise, high-density, housing - important in the 70s, absolutely vital now.

In neighbouring Southwark, there's a chance to learn  more about the Dawson Heights Estate, a place that has always caught my imagination. From the distance, say in Brockwell Park,  it has the look of some re-imagined version of a medieval hill-town. Somewhere, in other words, where I always wanted to live!

There's so much to see, and only one short weekend to see it all in! Until 2018.

Meanwhile, September's also the month of the Lambeth Heritage Festival. Plenty of fascinating things are promised: must try to digest all this info, and get along to at least some of these events. Thanks!

The day Theresa May stole Clapham's big radio moment

Clapham High Street - here and now, but not on the BBC Radio London Robert Elms show last week thanks to Mrs May's election announcement...but where, oh where, was the wonderful Maxwell Hutchinson?

Was listening to Radio London Tuesday morning.

As, to be honest, I often do....working at home, you know, self-employed teacher....freelance writer and editor...you know, well I will get back to jobseeking when I've had one more coffee. And listened to the wonderful and Reverend Professor Maxwell Hutchinson on the Robert Elms radio show on BBC Radio London - a local radio station that is often more interesting and intelligent than many of the national channels.

That man - the very Rev Prof Max - is quite a wonder. He's a great entertainer and educator on his many and various special subjects - architecture and the built environment, music, the Church and all manner of ecclesiastical matters....and much more. I think he is a world authority on Frankincense. And myrhh.

He's been doing this for ages, alongside running a successful architectural practice and being president of the RIBA, as well as a lay deacon. A couple of years back he had a bad, serious stroke. He was off air for months. But Mr Elms and his very loyal, very solid band of listeners, kept the idea of Max alive. By his own account, Mr Elms and his many listeners helped to keep Max alive. And Max came back and again turns up on the show every week, often on location as a sort of Kolly Kibber character - find Max in your Manor!

This week, the Rev Professor was supposed to be in my manor. I did not know this til 10am Tuesday when I tuned in my dodgy transistor to 94.9fm.

Poor old Robert Elms was having to deal with people from Clapham; he could hardly conceal his distaste for the place. He cheered up when someone pointed out Clapham Junction was in Battersea and it was only through snobbery they changed the name to Clapham.

A crescent moon over the bell-tower of Clapham's Holy Trinity
church: maybe Maxwell Hutchinson was somewhere around
this historic building, marooned like a ship on Clapham
Common.

You could sort of tell from the way he enunciated "Clapham" (and even slipped in a naughty "Cla'am" which was bound to annoy some SW4 listeners) that he did not have his usual enthusiasm for this Manor: too posh by 'alf, too silly, was what he  perhaps was half-secretly thinking. ALso it has the disadvatage of being south of the river, and just south of Chelsea.

I sort of agree with Mr Elms ...but I also agree with the caller who said Clapham had always been up-and-coming. But it never actually arrived. Which is (in my view) its saving grace. The High Street is still pleasingly scruffy. It's quite a horrible place but it is also mixed enough to remind you that the Henrys and Banker-wankers and so on are only the most recent and actually quite thin layer of this suburb's social geology.

There is still enough social housing in Clapham to ensure that the Henry&Henrietta brigade never completely colonise. Nor any other group of transients, my own lot of of 80s chancers included.

Then Mr Elms was talking to some chap who represented Clapham Common, a preservation society. He was in fact in Spain as he spoke. He did a so-so job, hardly exciting much interest in the long and outrageous history of this odd open space. Instead he kept telling us there were lots of fun runs. 'Fun run' is surely oxymoronic. He mentioned also 'Australian rules' football and dog-walkers. Yes, alas he was right - that is now what the Common is about. Sport, fitness, dogs and their owners. And in summer, young people eating huge picnics and drinking lots of champagne or prosecco from Sainsburys then leaving all the rubbish on the grass afterwards.

What about the 1985 (?) AntiApartheid free concert? Dr John? Alternative Miss World? Sunsplash? Archaos? Desmond Dekker at the Bandstand? Remember that, do you? etc?

Look, you know I am  a big critic of what has happened around here, and I wouldn't trust myself to defend it now, to be honest, even though it has served me well over three decades - but when we're on a global radio show, we need to stick together, right?

Well, I was waiting with some trepidation to find out what would be said.

Or maybe he was here, Old Clapham Library on the North Side of the
Common. This building was eventually saved and became what is now
the Omnibus, a well-used arts centre which is currently showing
Jim Grover's excellent photos of Clapham High Street life,
low, high and higher.

I was waiting for the chance to ring and tell Mr Elms about the Bread and Roses pub, almost the last place in Clapham I still feel very positive about. A trade union pub with music, free music, theatre and more! The Studio Voltaire contemporary art organisation also seems like a very good thing, deserving of much more praise than it gets. I'd have tried to mention that as well.

But I was also waiting for Jim Grover, the photographer of 48 hours on Clapham High Street, who was due to appear on the show to talk about his book and photo-exhibition at the Omnibus Arts centre.

And above all - I was waiting to find out where in Clapham the Rev Prof had chosen - and even more trepidation as to who he might meet. I began to fantasise. Maybe he will be outside the Holy Trinity Church on the Common - home of the Clapham Sect, one of the key places where the abolition of the slave trade gained momentum.

I think that would be the obvious place for Maxwell Hutchinson to set up shop - a church (albeit not that interesting, architecturally) - with some powerful history, and right by the popular paddling pool and temperance statue to boot.

Or maybe he was at the the new Library. Flashy noughties public-private rip-off architecture. No café any more!

This would have been a good place for the Prof Maxwell Hutchinson to hang out
with his Radio London crew: outside the new Clapham Library, half way down
 the High Street. Andrew Logan's mirrored artworks spelling out "Library"
are popular with all age groups and are arguably more interesting than
the building they stand in front of. 

Or perhaps in one of the leafy upper-crust streets or squares...or in Venn Street, a pleasant enough place. Or maybe he was at the Old Library, now the Omnibus Arts Centre - that would have made sense, especially as those High Street photos are on exhibition there right now.

So yes, I was waiting....and then Theresa May said she wanted a general election, and that was that! The rest of the show was devoted to political analysis and speculation, inevitably and properly, of course.

Ah well, maybe it was for the best.

Clapham is such an odd place now. I don't think it fits Robert Elm's idea of the sort of place real "one of us" Londoners live. Maybe it was once. It does not seem that sort of a place any more, even though, in reality, it of course is.

Clapham. Marginal but not edgy. Common, yes, very common. But not cheap, and certainly not very cheerful. Unless you have a city bonus to spend.

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.

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.

Clapham Library's getting its café - lovely, but where's everyone going to sit?

Just what you always longed for: a bookish café inside
Clapham public library. Well, at least it's not
a...

After a few years of trying, Clapham Library has finally found a taker for the café concession it always wanted in the street-facing ground floor seating area.

It seems the company ukcoffeestop, who run the popular Hill Coffee Stop in Richmond-upon-Thames, will be taking over this strange space, with an opening expected in a week or two.

Well, almost everyone likes coffee, it seems. But taking a look at the Richmond branch's price list, it's clear we're in Costa/Starbucks territory, that is, around £2.40 for a cappuccino or latte.

Having got used to excellent  1€ cafe cortados in Valencia, I can't say I'd be partaking of that. I'm sure it'll be better than the stuff they serve up in the big three coffee chains, but really, the prices…well, they are Clapham prices but perhaps not Clapham Library user prices. Let's hope they adjust them downwards for this new location.

Anyway, the builders are in right now, so roughly 20-30 study spaces are temporarily unavailable in a library which is often packed to the gills with revising school and college students.

And this also at a time when the council is telling people that they don't need the 10  properly staffed libraries they have been used to, and telling them to go to the town centre libraries - including this one.

Well, if this library gets overcrowded in the run up to the big exam season, as it has for as long as I can remember, let's hope the cafe staff don't get sniffy if kids want to sit at their tables without buying anything. I mean, this is a Public Library!

Clapham's North Street Mews community under threat from property developers

The unassuming entrance to the North Street Mews in Clapham - a hive of businesses, artist studios and workshops
that is now facing  redevelopment, rent hikes, and thus in reality, destruction.

Dreamily rhapsodizing about art spaces over in SE16, I turn back to email to see that one of the last communities of small businesses, artists' studios and workshop spaces in SW4 is threatened by the malaise that has become the main theme of this blog - "gentrification",  or "social cleansing".

We're talking about North Street Mews - a hidden hive of useful creative activities right by the Wandsworth Road - North Street crossroads (that's the junction that's being chewed up by gigantic cement mixer trucks, all day long).

The 21 tenants have been told property developer HighLaw Ltd intends to "upgrade" this valuable slice of property, so close to the charms of Clapham Old Town (please please don't use that v-word here) and the even greater future charms of the glorious, jaw-dropping Nine Elms development!

You can read the North Street Mews tenants' concerns here, and sign the petition if you feel the same way I did.

The North Street Mews people say that  "All 21 units have been fully occupied for the last 20 years, allowing careers to be made, families to be supported and a strong community to be built."

They add that the developers, HighLaw Ltd,  claim the space is "underused", "isolated" and in need of "enhancing" with expensive townhouses and 'hot-desk' commercial office space. 

And that the existing tenants have not received  any "offers or assurances...to be included in the future development or to be supported in relocation".

They developers also " refuse to acknowledge that they will in fact be kicking out 21 small businesses and their staff, leading to numerous potential job losses and adverse affects on their families", they add.

"The mews is an asset to the local community which will be lost in the prospect of a redevelopment that will serve the interests of profit, those wealthy enough to buy luxury houses, and large companies who can afford commercial desk space."

They say that the development "is not a done deal - yet!" –  but it's clear a planning application will be made shortly.

So -  urgent action is going to be needed. So many good places around here have already fallen victim to this same trend.  The North Street Mews are not far from the old "Tearooms des Artistes" on the Wandsworth Road, which closed a few years back and is now waiting for new owners. 

Maybe that place was no longer a viable business, but North Street Mews clearly is - and it needs to be allowed to flourish. They're picking these places off, one by one, but only because the rest of us let them get away with it.

Check out the North Street Mews Facebook page at: facebook.com/wearenorthstreetmews

There's also an Open Studios Day on 5/6th December from 12 - 6pm. 

Crazy re-paving scheme makes little sense in Clapham Old Town

Can anyone explain what has been gained by the latest  crazy paving "improvement" scheme around Clapham Old Town?

The Polygon seemed to work quite well as a one-way system. At least as a pedestrian or a cyclist you knew where the cars were coming from, and there was a conveniently-sited zebra crossing just outside the old library.

Now there's two way traffic on this road, the crossing has gone 50 metres north - not far, but still a pain if you're in a hurry or in any way disabled - and the third side of the polygon (the bit that goes past Sainsburys is still open to traffic going south  - sometimes - and bikes going both ways).

A cyclist having just crossed this busy road in Clapham Old Town, and
now being directed to cross it, again, might well ask: "wtf??"

In fact for cyclists the new layout seems particularly mad and maddening.
There's one of those classic London cycle lanes that comes to an abrupt stop when it has to cross the combined streams of traffic heading south on the Pavement road. Then the lane continues occupying apparently half the width of Old Town road.  But there is traffic coming straight at you! (See what one Lambeth cyclists' group has to say here).

As for the repaving, the plantings of sad trees in little yellow plots, silly street furniture,  and the taming of the far north-east corner patch of common grassland - well, it all looks just like that terribly bland "regeneration" stuff you see around every new luxury housing project.

Mooching around the vomit-coloured "public space" or "piazza" or whatever they want to call those strange bits between the old pub, the smart restaurant and the old public loos, I can't help but wondering who the hell this is all meant to please.

Two final ironies here: the bit of the road here that really desperately needs work - Rookery Road and North Side between Macaulay Road and the old library - the resurfacing has still not happened. And - well, maybe this is the cleverest thing so far here - they have installed a set of benches, or seats: but they are single seats. Not park benches where three or four people can sit together.

Single seats - for the modern Clapham resident, single-mindedly making the millions they need to live here. Think on it.

Too good not to re-blog - I love council houses too!

Seen on the Brixton Buzz blog, images from a small guerrilla art intervention in the
expensive heart of Clapham's house-price inflation zone.

The "I heart council houses" posters stuck over estate agents' boards are in the fine tradition started by feminist modifications of the texts of cosmetics ad hoardings back in the 1970s.

Looked out for them on way to work this morning - nothing visible until I got to the junction of Edgely Road and Larkhall Rise. Just a couple of them left there, a good hard shout for an alternative to the creation of yet another millionaire's row in this most unlikely of locations.

As I took photos, estate agents in their embarrassingly emblazoned minis and BMWs cruised around. As I left I saw one of these shiny vehicles screeched to a stop. A smart young man in a suit gets out and approaches the boards with an angry look.