Saturday, May 08, 2004

Brixton, Mon

Brixton, Mon

I haven’t been on a travel for some time, but having moved not more than a mile from my previous flat in, Balham, I feel like I’ve moved to a different country. Locationally I am pretty close to central London, but culturally, I have moved to a little urban island in a sea of concrete, bus lanes and grotty high street shops.

Ok, so things about Brixton.

The sun, remarkably, shone the other day, and my flat (it is beautiful) has a balcony on the top floor. The landlord (whose room has the balcony) is in Singapore for an indefinite period of time. So my other flatmate and I took advantage of a) the sun b) Damien’s sojourn in the far east and hung out on the balcony (perfect for English-style balcony-tanning: no building opposite is tall enough to look in, and the division between us and our neighbours (who I doubt we’ll ever meet, on either side) is so high and solid they’d have to get a ladder to look over) and as loud as we had our own summer vibes playing, equally as loud were the cars on the road: Saturdays with sun seem to be the time the boys with cars get on the road and trash their sound systems. There’s also a self car wash directly opposite (just beneath the awfully hideous council block that is my view. Locally known as the Barrier Block due it’s immense function as a 6 story windowless barrier against light, happiness and the possibility of growing up in any kind of socially adjusted manner) where guys caress their cars, take off their shirts and compete for loudness and a good wax finish. The guys were playing lovely, sunny reggae and, and let’s face it, there is no better music for a sunny afternoon. But it does result in this mad soundscape, as you lie there in the sun: too lazy to get up and turn your own music off, you have this 360° blue-skied, hot ‘n’ sunny soundscape of Summer Urban Living. A far cry from quiet, leafy Balham.

My flat has the front door actually ON Coldharbour Lane. No defence at all. No little picket fence, no steps, nothing. Just a glass door (I know! Who has glass front doors!) opening directly onto the main drag of Brixton. We have no ground floor area, just an entrance that leads straight up the stairs to my floor. The flat has three levels. My level is my huge gigantic room and the huge gigantic kitchen (Carla, your bitchen would die of apocalyptic jealousy if it saw my current kitchen and bathroom arrangements). Above me is Myriem’s (huge gigantic) room and the (huge gigantic) bathroom, with free-standing bath in the middle of the stone-floored room (DELICIOUS to bath in). Above her is Damien’s slightly smaller huge room (some space is taken up by his balcony, en suite bathroom and walk-in cupboard). There is no lounge, but we all have giant rooms, and the kitchen is really the social space: it is big enough for table and chairs and all. And the best cooker I have ever ever seen or used, let alone lived with!

Anyway, so back to the front door being on the road. So people like to buzz the buzzer for whatever reason, and I had one scary confrontation with a completely unreasonable person and his bicycle, and occasionally you need to ask a homeless person to move out your doorway so you can get in, but I’d just started feeling safe when someone decided to put a concrete block through the front door at 1.30AM. Lucky there is plywood behind the glass bit, so they would have cut themselves to shreds to try push it in any further so they gave up. So now we have a new front door and are getting an alarm. Feels a bit like home… But I won’t be scared off that easy – the cool stuff way out-weighs the un-cool stuff.

Brixton is a very black area: Jamaicans and Africans and people from all over the world. The accents are really exciting. There are several markets here, mostly selling fish, meat or vegetables. The quality is excellent and the prices fabulously low. You can buy pigs feet and tails, various cuts of goat and many vegetables I don’t know how to cook. And it’s the only place in London I’ve ever seen a proper sized avocado - although something that would have been one of several dozen on Loren’s grandma’s tree costs £2.50 for one here. But it tastes GGOOOOODDDD. The supermarket avo’s here are generally picked way before they reach maturity and then go rotten in a day if you leave it a fraction too long. The market stalls also have a noticeable South American streak, although I never see any South Americans around. You don’t notice that many whites around on the streets either, but when you go into one of the many trendy cafes around, the contingent is there. All pubs have variations on the Jerk Chicken theme on the menu and the take-outs sell curry goat and plantain.

The very first time you ever get out at Brixton station, a culture shock slams you straight in the forehead. Within seconds you’ve re-assessed exactly how important your business is here, you’ve clocked the location of your mobile phone (and probably moved it inside a swathe of winter coat), hidden your wallet and are clutching onto the strap of your bag. By the time you’ve walked to the corner you’ve had at least 2 offers of drugs and one person has wondered “wha’ YOU lookin’ at, ‘ey?” cos you caught their eye by accident. Shortly after you look up and see the road name: Electric Avenue, and realise THIS IS THE ROAD EDDY GRANT WAS SINGING ABOUT!!!!!! And you start having a proper look around. And I doubt if it’s changed all that much since he was writing about it (at least I like to think it hasn’t!). Probably more cops around, but the same myriad of butchers and veg sellers - you can’t buy kiwi’s on this market, but you can get yams, giant avocados and a vegan Rastafarian “sip” (soup), as well as loads of fish I don’t know yet, cuts of red meat I hope never to get to know, and chicken (heads & feet included) at prices that mean you’ll never buy meat at a supermarket again. The Halaal butchers all seem to sell pork and play hip-hop and try chat you up as you walk past, but they give you a bargain for a nice smile. Life is out on the streets and it is NOISY! Music is largely reggae/dub and hip-hop, R‘n’B and a fair dose of Gospel, blaring from the incense seller’s stall. Never yet heard Robbie Williams or Westlife on these streets!

And then there’s the weird candle shop. Inside they have all kinds of potions and incenses and candles: some have African religious overtones, but again the South American vibe is there, with all this really superstitious Catholic stuff: so from candles with bible extracts printed on them that are supposed to ward off evil spirits or attract money, to ‘Africa Power’ giant incense sticks and powder incense with which to catch a husband or curse an enemy, there’s a little something for everyone in here. I get my supply of lemon incense (with no weird overtones of spirits either coming or going) to try combat the William Hill fog from downstairs…

We live above a William Hill bookies and their ventilation doesn’t work too well as I smell fag smoke every morning when I wake up, and invest heavily in incense to try disguise it. People sit there all day and lose their money and smoke fag after fag and are pretty much dead already, the sad bastards. But I get to smell the result, and if I’m sleeping lightly, I sometimes wake up with the racing commentary from downstairs. Not a favourite aspect of this house, but one I’m starting to find half charming, as I am all the weirdnesses of Life on Coldharbour Lane…

There’s someone living in a car two corners down. It is completely not able to move, really bashed up, and I see someone in there quite often, reading a paper or just sitting there. And it doesn’t smell great round it. Poor guy. And if you walk to the station early evening (opposite direction to the lived-in car), everyone’s on the streets and spilling out from the pub on the corner and you run a bit of a gaunlet of avoiding catching eyes, cos if you DO catch an eye by mistake (or on purpose if they’re cute, of course) they’ve ALWAYS got something to say! In fact, everyone’s always got something to say to you as you walk down the street. I was walking round in west London the other day, and it was just so QUIET!!! No interaction at all between people who haven’t been properly introduced. Not so on Coldharbour Lane, my lovely lady!

Two days later.

The Front Door Incident happened on Thursday night. When we called the police on Friday, they said, “is any one hurt?”

“No”

“Nothing we can do, fill in the crime report on our website at www. blahblah and we’ll email you a case number for insurance.”

So today Myriem called them to have a bit of a moan about them telling us to use a fucking WEBSITE to report a near break-in, and they finally came around this evening. We were graced with an experienced policeman and a green rookie policewoman.

After describing what happened, the first thing he said to me was (in his Sarf Lundin, I-been-a-copper-in-Brixton-for-ten-and-a-half-‘ears, luv accent), “I know this sounds ‘arsh, luv, but as far as we’re concerned, luv, this investigation is already closed, luv. Simple criminal damage, luv. I daan’t fink they were trying to ge’ in, luv, there’s just so many…. (conspiring look)… assholes…. round here. They saw a bi’ o’ brick, saw some glass and smashed it. That’s what they do, luv.” Pause for effect. Deep indrawn breath, slight, slow shake of the head. “You made a decision to live on the street with the highest crime rate in London [now that IS news to me. I knew it was rough, but the Most Crime-Ridden Street in LONDON! Didn’t think it was THAT bad...], that was your decision, and I don’t say that means you’re not entitled to a good police service, but we deal with so much of this and we’ll record it, but there’s really not a lot we can do, luv.” So that told me where to shove my hopes that they were going to hunt DOWN the perpertrators and MAKE THEM PAY using the CCTV evidence from the camera directly opposite our front door.

All the while the obviously green female rookie just smiled nicely but she had her moment at the end, when she proudly whipped out a notebook (just like in kids books! PC Plod had one) and wrote down our names etc. Honestly, even cycle couriers and waiters have palm tops, and the British Police actually turn up with a little black notebook! Bless!

Myriem and I nearly died with laughter after they’d gone. Him being so “ah, well, (indrawn whistle) you if want to live on Coldharbour Lane…”; her being so green and eager and the ludicrousness of the situation. But we got some advice on making the door more secure etc, and he convinced us they weren’t really trying to get in, just being assholes, so we’re cool.

But for all that, I am, like, sooooo enjoying living here. I actually hang out with my flatmates in an environment where we all moved in at the same time, and there’s no lounge that we have to fight about how we want to decorate it, and the place is so beautiful as it is – no crap furniture to hide with trendy drapes, no crap wallpaper, no pub carpets. Just wooden staircases, huge sash windows, lovely wooden shutters, newly pained white walls, cream carpets and (did I mention?) huge, airy rooms. Myriem is 27, very petite and pretty. She’s French, both her parents are Algerian. Her father actually comes from the Sahara part of Algeria! The bit with, you know, lots of sand. And his father wore white turbans and flowing robes! (We’ve just had the Atlas out.) And they are often up at the same times as me, so I actually see them. There has even been a three-person bathroom queue at 5 AM. Really good after creeping around late at night, trying not make any noise, for the last 2 years.

She is going out with my landlord, Damien, who is Nigerian/Togoan and who is supposed to be living here, except he got sent to Singapore for three months for work (he’s a hot IT guy, works for Barclays). So I’ve hardly actually got to know him yet. And then Myriem’s best friend from Lyon, Mehdi (Moroccan French), is staying here for two months just cos he felt like getting out of Lyon for a bit. He’s lovely and cooks like a dream and we get on fantastically. And Myriem’s friend Melissa, who’s Zambian, has been around quite a lot. She sings like an angel, smokes up a storm and can tell the story of a disastrous sexual encounter like no-one else. She had me on the floor, barely able to breathe.

Three weeks later

Well I’ve now met ALL myriem’s friends: we had a party for her birthday (no need to worry about neighbours round this neck of the woods!). The house works quite nicley for a party… Must do it again… And we have left-over booze that would supply another one. We made a truly delightful punch (Strawberries and mango! From now on, all punches should have strawberries in them!) which just swung everyone in the right direction together, and dancing commenced. The nationalities present were SUCH a mix: French, Syrian, Nigerian, Swiss, Irish, New Zealand, Danish, Grenada, Ghanaian, Zimbabean, Italian, South African and a late-joining Englishman, (who arrived just as the main exodus had happened and probably thinks I was lying about the swinging party) and the music tended distinctly, and somewhat exclusively, toward the urban, which does make for good dancing, and the Great International Ho-Down got underway – all these men sitting around watching all the girls ho-ing down. Very entertaining! White guys just can’t get away with sitting around perving like black guys can. Black guys get away with it cos they just cannot BE any other way…

Next day, post-party bank holiday was perfect. Myriem’s best friend, Sandra, stayed over and we spent the day hung-over cleaning & three in a bed with take-out food and chick flicks on DVD and eventually getting out on a stunning afternoon to Battersea Park to go rollerblading! What a cool day. And I’ve never roller bladed before and I was fucking ACE! It’s SO much fun! And I only fell over twice. And I went on pavements and roads (with Sandra playing coach, and dramatically stopping traffic with her Advanced Roller Blading Action and waving a bottle of water in the air) and everything.

And so, the Brixton Era begins, and I think that just MAYBE it’s going to be an eventful one. Summer is going to rock this year and now that I am vehicular (having recently acquired my first car in 9 years) {Ohmygoditissodamngoodtohavewheels!!!} summer is set to rock even harder.

Hope this finds you all well (and I haven’t heard anyone say ‘mon’ yet, by the way, very disappointing)

And the lived in car has been towed.