Uncategorized

ILTEOTS

Exploring our new neighbourhood on Saturday afternoon, I was reminded of a classic Simpsons moment. It’s a literal visual gag of the kind at which the show’s writers excel, in an episode where Bart runs away–you see him walking along the street and gradually getting further and further away from home. Eventually he crosses some railway tracks, and by the time he has reached the other side of the tracks (the wrong side, presumably), his surroundings have changed completely, as an apparently respectable neighbourhood becomes a rundown slum. I’ve always found this kind of juxtaposition of wealth and poverty, when you see it literally played out on the streets of London, as Ralph McTell might have it, to be one of the capital’s consistently shocking but fascinating traits, and it was illustrated perfectly by our quick wander around the neighbourhood at the weekend.

We had always previously gone left at the end of our street, towards the quiet gentrification of Upper Street, with its abundance of cafes, bars, and shops selling entirely non-practical goods (it’s the kind of street that can support 3 branches of Starbucks under a mile apart). On Saturday, we decided to turn right instead, towards the Caledonian Road, and, ultimately, if we’d really felt like walking all that way, Kings Cross. As you’ve probably already guessed, the difference is somewhat startling.

A few streets, or a world away, from the Georgian terraces of Islington, depending on your perspective, we wandered along the road for a little while, wondering how one street could support so many corner shops, in much the same way as we might wonder about Upper Street’s coffee shops. We also strolled up to HM Pentonville Prison to wonder about some of our more disreputable neighbours. [In his excellent Monopoly board-themed London history, Do Not Pass Go, Tim Moore describes a visit to the prison he makes by way of covering the “Go to Jail” square on the board. Apparently it’s very much “a local nick for local people”, holding as it does mostly local men in their 40s or 50s, most of whom are there on theft or drugs offences.] You can’t really see much from the outside, though, just the not-as-high-as-I’d-have-thought, suprisingly graffiti-covered but otherwise white concrete walls, and the grim, grey, Victorian buildings that rise above them inside. Historical curiosity aside, however, I think that’s probably as close as I’d like to get.