Au Revoir, Cricklewood

We’re home after a two-week Christmas jaunt to the UK. The house is still freezing (it will take a few hours for the stove and the wood burner to properly drive out the cold from a fortnight’s non-occupation), and it is now becoming apparent  just how much work we have on our plates for the next couple of months, but I must say I am very pleased to be back.

As I think I’ve mentioned before, I have little inclination to engage in the sort of UK (or “yUK”) bashing that that appeals to some people, but that does not prevent me from feeling a little, well, foreign whenever I visit the Old Country.

This is not, as someone suggested, an affectation on my part.

I’ve not lived in Britain for almost seven years now, and change happens. And when it is very familiar things that change it is all the more stark and noticeable. It can be as simple as altering to packaging on some familiar product or the updating of the format of a TV show. Small stuff that a resident might hardly notice after a few days, but which stand out like a sore thumb to someone who’s been away for a while but still thinks that they really ought to know what is going on.

Some things, happily, still haven’t altered too much. Cricklewood, at least, is constant. Thus far.

For those who are unfamiliar with the geography and socio-economic structure of North West London, the community of Cricklewood lies on the banks of the A5 road that runs (though frankly you’d be mad to try and drive it these days as it would probably take about a week) from London to Holyhead in Wales.

It sits within Zone 2 of the London public transport system, and sprawls over three London boroughs:  Brent, Barnet and Camden, which means that the good folk of Cricklewood have to cope with three separate systems of often contradictory parking restrictions, refuse collection procedures and education policies. They do this by ignoring them as far as is reasonably possible.

Demographically, Cricklewood is the kind of melting pot that drives the leader writers of the Daily Mail into a Right-Wing foaming frenzy because it is one of those very rare places in England where “White British” would be a minority response on the census form. The community is an eclectic mixture of British, Irish, Afro-Caribbean, Asian, Jewish and Lord knows who else.

It is a fun place to live – I know: it was my home from 1996 until 2003. The Goodies came from Cricklewood and the Stylophone was made there. It is the only part of London in which I would consider living again.

Admittedly it can also be a little frisky. More crime is committed between 4am and 4.15am on a wet Tuesday morning in Cricklewood than is committed in the whole of the Vendée in a year. I made that up, but I’d be willing to bet no-one can prove otherwise. Thanks to an outbreak of rare bureaucratic humour of some considerable imagination, crime in Cricklewood is reported solely in Camden’s figures, a jolly wheeze that gives that borough a far higher level of offences than casual observation of its otherwise more salubrious neighbourhoods might suggest.

To the North, Cricklewood is bordered by Dollis Hill, Brent Cross and the Hell that is forever Neasden; to the West by Willesden Green; to the East by Child’s Hill and Golders Green. But to the South? That is more complicated, and I fear that Cricklewood may one day succumb to the fate that has befallen Kilburn and become gentrified.

Once upon a time Kilburn was an ordinary working-class neighbourhood with a large Irish population. In fact, so large a proportion of the population were Irish that the area was known as “County Kilburn.” It had good pubs.

But now Kilburn really exists only as the Kilburn High Road. In an effort to enhance property values, the borders of more upmarket neighbouring areas have been “stretched” to include bits of Kilburn – Maida Vale, West Hampstead and even St John’s Wood have all been extended in this way.

To the North, however, at the top of Shoot Up Hill (not named for the frequent drive-by shootings enjoyed by the area, but, instead, something to do with stagecoaches), lay Cricklewood, and extending into that into Kilburn would not exactly have the same effect.

Happily, just off to the left of this road (as one looks up the hill) is a small area of large, detached houses known as the Brondesbury Estate. With a little imagination, a new district of Kilburn was born – one with desirable connotations – called “Brondesbury” and Kilburn as a distinct entity was doomed.

So successful was the assimilation by this contrived area that some residents even advanced the idea of renaming Kilburn underground station as Brondesbury. They pointed out that there was already a Brondesbury overground station a few yards away and that there was therefore merit in combining the two under one name. Happily, London Transport weren’t buying any of it.

The problem for Cricklewood is that Brondesbury seems to have started moving North. So, rather optimistically, and so far only into that part of Cricklewood that is also in Camden, has West Hampstead.

The credit crisis and the knock-on effect in the housing market has put paid to the advance for the time being, but with property prices looking ever more buoyant, I fear the worst.

So, should anyone want to see Cricklewood in its “unspoiled” state I’d visit pretty soon if I were you.

Better still, visit the South Vendée first: it will provide interesting contrast.