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Resort to books
Jun. 20th, 2009 06:50 pmWomen buy clothes in a vain attempt to cheer themselves up; I buy books. Despite having many dozens of books to be read (I have recently come into possession of a large collection of non-fiction), I still enjoy a trip to the bookshop, particularly when the visit is unplanned and I am feeling down, to pick up some three-for-twos or, even better, remainderds. It's much more reqarding than buying a book for £3.73 in Tesco. That is something of a soulless experience. For the full pleasure you have to buy books that are among books, not books that are between the mobile phones and the X-box games and opposite the five-pairs-of-socks-for-a-fiver.
And so it was this afternoon when I went into Lewisham to collect my shoes from the menders. Yes, I buy shoes sufficiently expensive to merit and to benefit from repeated replacements of soles and heels.
Lewisham is a profoundly depressing place. Just looking at its occupants sends you into a tizzy of despair at the future of humanity. An underclass breeding a future underclass. Women in their late 20s who are already so far past their best that you fear for the prospects of their accompanying 13-year-old daughters if they fail to get pregnant before they are 17. Mother and daughter have hair harshly scraped back and tied into a ponytail, exaggerating the hollowed-out eyes and cheeks. Lives that never had and never will have hope. Black and white adolescent males hanging around with no more ambition than to make it through the next week. I really see no hope there, no hope at all.
Indeed, the only reason I can think of that justifies me staying here is that in a society where more than 50% of income is provided by benefits, you do at least have a good social welfare infrastructure in place. When I'm old and decrepit, at least I'm likely to have a social worker to come to empty my commode.
Anyhoo, I bought a hardback copy of the recent Kingsley Amis biography for six quid (£25 list). That I already have the Larkin letters (bought several years ago for only a pound, I recall), and Martin Amis's Experience, both of which amble round the same subject, and both of which are as yet unread, is irrelevant. Just buying that book, just holding it, gave me pleasure.
I quickly came across an entertaining tale. Amis, it appears, was born in in Norbury. I have worked in Norbury, in an AR Dennis's in the early 1990s. For those of you unaware of the subtleties of South London, Norbury is an anonymous place on the A23 just to the south of Streatham. The betting shop was anonymous; it's manager was anonymous, enjoying "routine". Norbury was, and is, a place where not much happens.
Amis, I was pleased to see, was equally scathing. "It was less distinguished even than neighbouring Streatham", he wrote, while the eponymous lead of Stanley and the Women commented that half the places south of the river (including Norbury, but not, I hasten to note, Lewisham, which can trace its roots back to near Domesday times) "were never proper places at all, just collections of assorted buildings filling up gaps and named after railway stations and bus garages".
Norbury, needless to say, not only has both, but, even sadder to say, is usually only known to people, even in South London, for its station and bus garage (the latter now closed).
According to Amis the place had no name at all until a station was plonked there. The houses were either South Streatham (a name that would have further complicated the already rambling Streatham collection of stations) or Far North Croydon (Thornton Heath was another place that only really came into existence because buses terminated there and a station was built). However, there was Norbury Hall and Norbury Farm, both created before Norbury Station, so Stanley was not quite accurate. Wikipedia posits that Norbury is a contraction of North Burgh, that being the place's description as a sub-manor of Croydon.
It matters not. Like so much of the A23, it's a non-place.
However, I am reminded Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a hero of these non-places south of the river. I've never quite established why this should be the case, but many of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries refer to places on the A23-to-be that would have been the equivalent of "Here There Be Whales" to most Londoners. Kennington was, even in my youth, rather down-at-heel. The Brixton Road of A Study In Scartlet led to nice houses in Brixton -- then a well-to-do suburb, but why should he bring in Norbury (see The Yellow Face)? My theory is that Doyle liked to look at maps. And station names that have no other reference would be deeply fascinating to him. I only have this as a hunch because I do this. "St John's" always held a fascination for me (as did "Maze Hill") because, as far as I could see, trains didn't stop there and they weren't representative of anything on the map.
These days St John's is established estate agentese (as is Maze Hill), but the stations could just as easily have been called West Lewisham and East Greenwich respectively.
__________________
And so it was this afternoon when I went into Lewisham to collect my shoes from the menders. Yes, I buy shoes sufficiently expensive to merit and to benefit from repeated replacements of soles and heels.
Lewisham is a profoundly depressing place. Just looking at its occupants sends you into a tizzy of despair at the future of humanity. An underclass breeding a future underclass. Women in their late 20s who are already so far past their best that you fear for the prospects of their accompanying 13-year-old daughters if they fail to get pregnant before they are 17. Mother and daughter have hair harshly scraped back and tied into a ponytail, exaggerating the hollowed-out eyes and cheeks. Lives that never had and never will have hope. Black and white adolescent males hanging around with no more ambition than to make it through the next week. I really see no hope there, no hope at all.
Indeed, the only reason I can think of that justifies me staying here is that in a society where more than 50% of income is provided by benefits, you do at least have a good social welfare infrastructure in place. When I'm old and decrepit, at least I'm likely to have a social worker to come to empty my commode.
Anyhoo, I bought a hardback copy of the recent Kingsley Amis biography for six quid (£25 list). That I already have the Larkin letters (bought several years ago for only a pound, I recall), and Martin Amis's Experience, both of which amble round the same subject, and both of which are as yet unread, is irrelevant. Just buying that book, just holding it, gave me pleasure.
I quickly came across an entertaining tale. Amis, it appears, was born in in Norbury. I have worked in Norbury, in an AR Dennis's in the early 1990s. For those of you unaware of the subtleties of South London, Norbury is an anonymous place on the A23 just to the south of Streatham. The betting shop was anonymous; it's manager was anonymous, enjoying "routine". Norbury was, and is, a place where not much happens.
Amis, I was pleased to see, was equally scathing. "It was less distinguished even than neighbouring Streatham", he wrote, while the eponymous lead of Stanley and the Women commented that half the places south of the river (including Norbury, but not, I hasten to note, Lewisham, which can trace its roots back to near Domesday times) "were never proper places at all, just collections of assorted buildings filling up gaps and named after railway stations and bus garages".
Norbury, needless to say, not only has both, but, even sadder to say, is usually only known to people, even in South London, for its station and bus garage (the latter now closed).
According to Amis the place had no name at all until a station was plonked there. The houses were either South Streatham (a name that would have further complicated the already rambling Streatham collection of stations) or Far North Croydon (Thornton Heath was another place that only really came into existence because buses terminated there and a station was built). However, there was Norbury Hall and Norbury Farm, both created before Norbury Station, so Stanley was not quite accurate. Wikipedia posits that Norbury is a contraction of North Burgh, that being the place's description as a sub-manor of Croydon.
It matters not. Like so much of the A23, it's a non-place.
However, I am reminded Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a hero of these non-places south of the river. I've never quite established why this should be the case, but many of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries refer to places on the A23-to-be that would have been the equivalent of "Here There Be Whales" to most Londoners. Kennington was, even in my youth, rather down-at-heel. The Brixton Road of A Study In Scartlet led to nice houses in Brixton -- then a well-to-do suburb, but why should he bring in Norbury (see The Yellow Face)? My theory is that Doyle liked to look at maps. And station names that have no other reference would be deeply fascinating to him. I only have this as a hunch because I do this. "St John's" always held a fascination for me (as did "Maze Hill") because, as far as I could see, trains didn't stop there and they weren't representative of anything on the map.
These days St John's is established estate agentese (as is Maze Hill), but the stations could just as easily have been called West Lewisham and East Greenwich respectively.
__________________
