We went out to our local curry house on Saturday night. It is an excellent, modern curry house.
As we approached we noticed four cars parked on the pavement, including one parked across the shopfront of the restaurant. Standing by the car was an ugly looking boy of about seventeen, whose whole body language was intended to intimidate, and who glared at me as if I had murdered his granny.
We walked in and at the first table inside the door was "Piece of Shit". I first encountered "PoS" a couple of months ago. Jimmy and I were having a quick drink in the Hand when we noticed a rumpus in the street. It seemed at first like an argument, but it turned into a fight, with this man "PoS" hitting a woman. Some other bloke got involved, and the police were called. They carted PoS off.
The woman is a prostitute and PoS is a client of hers - they now live together. His daughter is also a prostitute, who was badly beaten up by a pimp. Jimmy has known PoS vaguely for years. When you are in the service industry you can't really choose your customers. PoS greeted Jimmy, and with a nod in the direction of the pallid prostitute, said "See, I keep her controlled all the time."
He was uncomfortable at being put on the table next to PoS but our attention was distracted by the booming of heavy bass coming from one of the cars parked outside the barbers next door. I feel sorry for the man who runs the restaurant; he can be a bit full of himself, but he runs a good establishment, and is trying to make a living.
As we often do, we asked him to recommend a wine. He suggested one - a Cotes du Rhone. He explained that the bottle was chipped, but we could have it at cost price. It had been stolen when he was broken into, but he had managed to get quite a lot back from the shopkeepers that bought it from the thieves (he also managed to find out who the thieves were and even got the Burglary Squad satisfactorily interested). He is at his wits end with the illegal parking. I told him that I found it very intimidating - sure, we know the place is good, but I'm not sure I would have been comfortable going in if I was new to the area, or passing by, or whatever. I certainly have no wish to stand at the bus stop in the evening.
Jimmy and I have spent a good part of the weekend discussing the future. He wants out of the cafe, and, like me, he wants out of London. He has never felt it so intensely as coming back last weekend. The dirt and the grime is soul destroying - the easy availability of drugs and the way their poison spreads to everybody, the prevalent passive-aggression and intimidation from young men who don't know the meaning of work. His ambition is to run a pub and serve good food; if the pub will accommodate, too, all the better. That's something I have always fancied doing, but have never thought that I would be able to do it alone. So many of our conversations over the past three years have been critiquing other establishments, and discussing how we would run them.
This isn't something that is going to happen quickly. Firstly, he has to sell the cafe - he's tried before, but the potential buyers are deterred by the scum fighting in the street. We have to research the market carefully and organise finances. If a business is going cheap - why? If it's good, or has potential, it will cost. We have to decide on location. It's easy to say 'somewhere nice', but what qualifies as nice? I thought his mind was working on the South East, although he says not. We have to get my house up to saleable/lettable standard.
I would, of course, give up my present job; I expect in the early days I would work, perhaps part time, perhaps on an agency basis. I deliberately moved to Streatham and then to Brixton, to ensure that I would not have a long commute. For eighteen months I was based in Southend with regular commuting to Croydon and occasional to London. I can never again put myself at the mercy of a railway company. As Thursday night demonstrated, if worst comes to worst, I walk home. I could never live in suburbia (I did for eighteen years and still hate the place I grew up).
As I stated before, London no longer holds the appeal it did. There is too much human excrement swilling around in the cesspool. I don't think there's much difference with other cities. I've done small towns and they hold no appeal.
Jag has an interesting response to my original post, and I think has made some good points, none of which I particularly disagree with. Certainly, the Daily Mail-type bigotry is more commonplace in "the provinces", but the Sun-type bigotry is prevalent around here. I'm certainly not advocating for anybody else to up sticks and go. It will be right, just as not returning to Sale when I graduated was right.
One of the great advantages of Brixton is, give or take the odd riot, there is very little random fighting, even at chucking out time. In fact, I have never seen the type of post-pub fight that characterises most town and city centres every Friday and Saturday.
The dream is to be able up to build up the type of business where we have had had such excellent service and to get listed on The Great Inns of Britain.
To achieve this takes more than dreaming. It takes hard work - may mean me scrubbing toilets - and it's a big risk. Who knows whether it will happen. It probably means delaying the wedding. But we are certain that neither of us can go on as we are.
