[Ben Reeve Lewis is feeling the heat …...]
I’m writing this on what promises to be the hottest day of the year. I was sweating this morning just ironing my shirt.
But the TV company responsible for Nightmare Tenants, Slum Landlords have some last minute continuity filming to do and although I finished 3 or 4 weeks ago they are back and I have to go out to re-shoot some footage wearing my stab vest and clothes I was wearing in freezing March so it looks consistent with the scenes its being cut into. (something to do with the microphone not working properly I believe)
So if you see me walking down the street in one shot looking warm and comfortable and then cut to me turning a corner suddenly melting like the polar caps, that will be the edit.
I’m not in this weeks or next weeks episode you may have noticed (legal problems with some of the story lines causing last minute panicking in the editing suite) but back with a bang for episodes 4, 5 and 6. Hawaiian shirts shamelessly on display.
The city that ate itself
Heat exhaustion aside, I have always held to Samuel Johnsons dictum that ‘If a man is tired of London, he is tired of life’ but Frazzy and I have been chatting lately and we have both come to the conclusion that we are getting the weird sensation that we do not recognise the city of our birth. I don’t mean the look of it, that’s inevitable over time but just the groove of it.
My thoughts on this were crystallised by a rather brilliant piece in last weeks Observer, titled ‘London, the city that ate itself’ by Rowan Moore
The theme is on the gentrification of the capital and particularly the housing situation there.
Rowan saying with pinpoint accuracy:
“The city is suffering from a form of entropy whereby anything distinctive is converted into property value”
That’s the missing groove I’m talking about. London’s people of all races, religions and creeds being squeezed out by money men and investors and quirky community based enterprises like Brixton that have grown up organically and served generations of locals getting buried under chrome and steel.
A parasitic monster?
If as Rowan Moore says:
“In the rest of Britain, a common view of London is that it is a parasitic monster – Those Scots who want independence are less concerned about being part of the same country as Middlesbrough or Ipswich than they are about London.”
Then it isn’t the fault of ordinary Londoners who don’t cultivate this view. We are proud to be London people but no more so than Glaswegians or Brightonians, it’s the endless swagger and arrogance of people of Boris’s ilk that sends this message out to the rest of the UK.
Each day provides me with more impetus to move out. I stopped going to football matches (Charlton in case you’re interested) after the Taylor report destroyed the terracing and made match days for the corporates, instead of the plasterer or welder arriving dust covered straight from work to cheer their team on.
I’m getting that same sense of de ja vu about the city of my birth.
A day in the life
At the tail end of last week I got a call from the Guardian’s Patrick Butler who wanted to check some facts on a story he was writing.
I get a lot of this, being a general rent-a-gob on housing but what shocked me was that Patrick was shocked that Newham council had found 26 people in a three bed house and thought it unusual enough to write about
To be honest 26 people would hardly warrant a comment in my office.
My current record is 47 people in a house suitable for 9. Needless to say we prosecuted the landlord for overcrowding and running an unlicensed HMO but I gave Patrick a heads up on the numerous others I see on a daily basis.
30 men in a 3 bed house, with 3 double beds per room, 22 people two weeks ago in a 2 bed flat, 17 people in a three bed , a fella just yesterday which you will probably see in Nightmare Tenants Slum Landlrods, whose landing space he was renting was so small he couldnt even lay his single mattress out flat and had to lean his head-end against the wall.
That’s the problem with spending your day with your nose in the dirt, it becomes normal.
Everyone in our team has that enforcement officer disease whereby you can be standing in a property that even rats would ask for their money back on and find yourself saying “Weeeeeell…………..I’ve seen worse”. Trouble is we mean it too.
Foxtons again and the Thomas a Beckett
You may remember me reporting last week on the Elephant & Castle pub squatted to prevent it from being turned into another branch of Foxtons. Well the group succeeded in getting the council to declare it an “Asset to the community” under the Localism Act, meaning Foxtons will need to get planning permission to convert it.
Expect many objections, entertaining sit-ins and protests over the coming months.
What further heartened me was to see that a second pub has also been added to the mix. The old Thomas a Beckett in the Old Kent Road, a place of legend for South East Londoners. Always associated with boxing and where many greats trained regularly, Henry Cooper and I think even Mohammed Ali once laced his gloves up there.
Admittedly the bar area was a sticky carpeted dive full of gangsters and ‘Erberts of all stripes but then so are most south east London pubs. Its the way we like them
You can take your Pitcher n Piano’s and shove ‘em……or more pointedly, turn them into a branch of Foxtons.
What made me smile this week
I went to see the film ‘Slow West’ a new arthouse western road movie but with a real quirky sense of humour. If you like the Coen Brothers or have read ‘The Sisters Brothers’ then you’ll like this.
Especially the scene about the man crushed by a tree.
See ya next week