31 Postcodes - Poem 7

 

Plastic park

It promised excitement

but we arrived in darkness

at a sad, smelly flat,

painted in all the colours.

My brother slept on the floor.

I did not learn to drive

but took buses to the Strand,

“The Best Disco in Town”.

The top deck wore Pringle,

it was draughty, enlightening.

Their swearing was different,

softer, meaner.

Our dog nearly drowned 

in a Crystal Palace pond,

frozen dinosaurs watching

in the tough city snow.

RF 2021

Video/audio for this one here.

By 1983 my brother had left school, already been made redundant once and there were very few jobs going where we lived in Teesside so my Mum decided it was time to move south. She wanted to move for herself too – she grew up in Edinburgh and lived mainly in the south of England after that so she never felt at home in the north (of England). I was 16 so London sounded very exciting (though of course I had no idea about all the different areas, how huge the whole place is, that there isn’t just one centre but lots and lots of different centres and all of them bigger than anything I was used to). The move was challenging financially but my Mum worked hard to find solutions in everything she did and eventually 3 of us (and dog) headed off to a rented ground floor flat in a big terrace south of Crystal Palace (elegant looking building but pretty scruffy inside – in an area called Anerley). My Mum had lived in the south of London before (around the time of her first marriage) so she knew it a little but for me, at first, it was a bit like moving to a new country (the accents, the fashions, the traffic, the crowds). It was a significant trip up to central London by either train or bus but I went there a lot (for the school where I was doing my A levels, for clubs, for just looking at London and saying things like ‘wow – they have Burger King’*). It made for early morning commutes and late night phone calls from payphones at train stations like Penge East (still only 2p a call then, though the phones often didn’t work and prayer might have been more effective, I tried it once or twice). 

One of my much older sisters lived with us in this flat for a while and we shared a room which was kind of fun for me (mainly it had been brothers who were around the house with me and Mum). A school friend (also new to London, arrived on her own from deepest Wiltshire) used to come and stay as she was living with a not very hospitable family somewhere else south of the river. We had other visitors too (when you live in London you get more visitors than when you live in Middlesbrough, generally speaking). A New Zealand uncle came to stay and asked us lightly where the local naturist reserve was (that was the kind of request that could make my Mum laugh for months). My Mum loved having visitors, the more tales to tell the better.

The predominant fashion in that part of South London at the time was what they called ‘casual’ (Pringle knitwear, gold jewellery, flicked hair). By contrast at my school in West London (French Lycée) the fashions were (vaguely) Benetton or (for the really rich) fancy leather jackets (even with matching leather trousers, all very Duran Duran). Besides all this there were a few scruffy heavy metal fans kicking around the edges (so obviously I headed for them). Going to the Lycée for the last two years of school seemed like a good idea (my Mum’s) because languages were my thing but in reality turning up with a Middlesbrough accent, schoolbook French and a heavy metal wardrobe didn’t make for the smoothest transition. Luckily for me, in the last two years at the school there is (or certainly was in the ’80s) an ‘English Section’ for all the 16 year olds who want to do A levels instead of the Baccalaureate and most of the (small) heavy metal crowd were in this section as well as other various teens from all kinds of backgrounds who were just sick of doing everything in French. There was also a small hardcore of crazily rich new arrivals (mostly female) who were there because for a school it was pretty cool (even I could see that) though this was a long time before anyone said cool britannia even as a joke. It was a weird experience but there were some nice teens and some great teachers. I had the loveliest gay Spanish teacher who had fled fascist Spain, two fantastic gay English teachers, a grumpy lesbian for German. As a non-native speaker I was put in the lowest of the low French class with a bizarre French teacher who was more cartoon cat than human (to us). Still, it was all pretty exciting for someone with something like straw in their hair. Everywhere within half a mile sold croissants.

Our flat in south London seemed miles away from all this – mainly because it was (hardly anyone at this school lived south of the Thames). We were in this flat for a year and then off we moved again (not too far this time).

*This was exciting because (a) I was 16 and (b) in Teesside there were no chain fast food restaurants at this time. I'd barely seen a pizza by this point.

This poem is part of the annual Fun A Day Dundee project where participants try to do something creative every day for the month of January. You don't have to be in Dundee to take part and there are other Fun A Day projects around the world. People post as much of their work online as they want to (largely on Instagram but it can be elsewhere too). This year I am posting a whole poem a day (one poem for each of the 31 addresses I have lived at, covering the period 1967-2021). Videos/photos of the poems show the places remembered in the poems but were mostly taken from recent Google Street View. The videos are on my Instagram, maybe elsewhere too. Use the hashtag #fadd2021 on social media to see other people's online contributions.