Friday 13 March 2015

Moving to Croydon...

Moving to Croydon…

The Ikea Towers, viewed from Wandle Park 

‘A change is as good as a rest’ was one of my dad’s favourite sayings. He forget to mention however, that there is sometimes a big difference between the two experiences. A rest suggests a period of recovery from the stresses and strains of modern everyday life. A change, on the other hand, can involve a different way of approaching life, and might include challenges and actions that are both demanding and stressful. Yet some of these challenges can also be enervating, fun and exciting, providing the opportunity to look at and experience the world with a fresh pair of eyes. Our move from a 3 bedroom quiet semi in a sleepy part of a dormitory town outside London to a flat on a main road,  in a part of south London, that has some justifications for claiming itself to be a city within a city, is certainly proving itself to be quite a change.

It is interesting to consider the associations that are contained within the two different addresses. Our old address of 10 Hanbury Path, Sheerwater, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5RB sounds to me quite middle class, a secluded hideaway in leafy, suburban Surrey. Our new address though gives little away. I now reside at 200C St James Road, Croydon. I live in a flat in a place, that is a part of London but in some sense (at least via its address) seems a bit unwilling to commit to it. It has become apparent to me, having lived here for a mere 3 days, that the people of Croydon can have very different senses of identity. The friendly young lad at the Co-op supermarket, where I purchased the items for my first Croydon breakfast, was insistent that Croydon was really a part of Surrey, though he did admit that many other Croydon residents would consider it a part of London, as indeed it officially is. Yet perusing a more than a week’s old local newspaper, that they were still selling at the supermarket, I read of how some of Croydon’s ambitious movers and shakers were keen to get Croydon recognized as a city. I must confess that the idea of cities within cities was a novel one to me, and yet London has now become so fast, that perhaps such an idea is not as ridiculous as it first sounds.

Yet names can sometimes mislead. My old address was in what the current Woking Council wished (for its own ulterior purposes) to describe as a ‘very deprived’ part of the borough. Yet you should not always fully believe what a Council tells you. When it was first built in the early 1950s, the Sheerwater Housing Estate was considered a fine example of what a modern housing estate should be. The houses had decent sized rooms and gardens, and many of the pine trees, planted in the 19th century to help drain the land, still stood as  guardians to a development, where people took a certain pride in the appearance of their properties. Although in the intervening 60 odd years, the estate has experienced some of the negative changes that seem to go hand in hand with the modern world, many of its current residents are still decent, hard-working people, striving like most of us to improve their lives. Many were therefore shocked and dismayed when the Council, using the excuse that it was such ‘a deprived area’, joined forces with a developer to come up with a proposal that involved knocking down many of the houses on the estate and building all over the recreation ground. Although not directly affected by the proposal, (my wife and I’s house not being within the dreaded red zone), the sheer injustice of a proposal that intended destroying perfectly good homes, in order to provide the developer with a profit and assist the Council to fulfil its housing obligations spurred me into playing a small role in the opposition to such a greedy, ill thought out proposal. The only good thing that can be said about the whole episode, which is still being debated, is that the community of Sheerwater has come together in almost wholesale opposition to the current proposal, and that it has shown itself to be a place, which still takes pride in itself and which deserves far more respect and appreciation than the Council and Developer have so far given it.

Strangely enough, having lived in Sheerwater, Woking for more than 21 years, it has been the prospect of facing much of its demolition, that has made me feel much more attached to the place. I remember an elderly lady, named Sue, who’s allotment I had done a bit of work on, standing up at a public meeting and explaining to both Councillors and Developers that she was quite happy in her small house and garden and had no desire to be transferred into a 4th floor flat with some communal garden. Being able to potter in her own garden and chat over the fence to the neighbours was one of life’s little pleasures, that neither Council nor Developer could fully seem to appreciate. I remember also the two leaders of the Sheerwater Homes Alliance, Ian and Sue, who have recently spent all their spare time publicizing what was really going on, organizing meetings and fighting not just to save their own homes but those of many others, and who, one feels would make far better Councillors than the ones currently in post.

As a lover of nature though, I can’t help but raise a wry smile when I think of the many tree blessed estate of Sheerwater, and compare it to the busy main road, on which I now reside. I seem to have moved from a place, struggling valiantly to keep the developer and bulldozers at bay to one that is clearly a continuous building site. Numerous cranes rear their stately metal heads over the surrounding buildings, and before one tower block has been completed, another is half constructed and yet another is about to be begun. I am relieved however that the funds have finally been found to finish the large tower block, situated about half a mile from where I live on St James Road. When we first began visiting Croydon about 3 years ago, it was a half-built monstrosity, seemingly abandoned to remain a hideous eyesore, a veritable stain, like the fairly recent riots, on Croydon’s declining reputation. Now that it is finally finished, its coloured glass seems to convey a certain brash confidence, yet already it risks being overshadowed by its taller, more colourful twin brother, which is being built nearby.

                                                       The Unfinished Brother


The view from our front room though is far more prosaic. From our large sash window, I can see a Newsagents, some kind of delivery company, a doctor’s surgery, a motorbike shop, a small general store, which is also an off license, and a chemists. There are two stories of flats above the shops, so that I could conceivably wave to a number of my neighbours across the road. On our busy street, there is a more or less constant flow of vehicles and a continuous trickle of pedestrians. Such a view encourages a degree of voyeurism, and my wife and I have become avid people watchers, watching and even recognizing after less than a week some of the people that wait around the bus stop. This is located in front of the motorbikes, being displayed for sale, as if to encourage the bus passengers to indulge in a more exciting , glamorous form of transport.

One of the ways we assess these strangers is by how likely they are to visit our imaginary Tea Rooms. How temped do we think they’d be by the prospect of recuperating for a while from the stresses and strains of modern life, by a visit to a cosy quiet sanctuary, where the most difficult decision would be whether to have a cake or scone with their tea? Perhaps it is a sign of our business naivety but we have reached the conclusion that more than 50% of our pedestrianised passers by would be tempted by the comfort and refuge of our wonderful Tea Rooms. It’s just a shame that we’ll probably never have the opportunity to test out such a conclusion.

                                          Bus stop and motorbikes       


It is now 5 days since I arrived to live in Croydon, and I have explored a reasonable amount of the central area on foot, discovered the whereabouts of East and West Croydon stations, found the fruit and veg market on Surrey Street and a good, helpful chemists in Addiscombe. I have revelled in the variety of buildings and people that I’ve come across, and been pleasantly surprised by the friendliness of most of the people I’ve met.  As I sit in a civilized café near the Job Centre, where I perhaps rashly told a nice lady, that I was going to set up my own business, rather than claim Jobseekers Allowance, I again have time to sit and watch the passers by. Their backdrop is a grey fence, on top of which is advertised a new housing development, named Ruskin Square, a development that is clearly still in its infancy, as I can see no sign of buildings above the fence. Croydon seems to be a growing and dynamic place and I only hope that I can find my niche within it. I have given up my job as a self-employed gardener, and come to Croydon in search of fame and fortune. Such rash and reckless behaviour may merely be the sign of a mid-life crisis, but I can only hope that my discovery of Croydon will coincide with a discovery of something worthwhile within myself.


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