East Finchley is perhaps one of the least pretentious parts of North London, despite Its close proximity to Highgate, Hampstead, Muswell Hill and Hampstead Garden Suburb.
East Finchley has hidden pubs that serve the local working men living in the small terraced houses or estates of tenements. The bars have loud Juke Boxes and singers on a Saturday night. There are places where you can stand on a Saturday night, and watch as old men come out of the Constitutional Club, or the Legion, their talk of good old days, their shoulders leaning against picket fences, or Victorian brickwork. It could be a view taken any time this century.
Streetgeezer was part of this scenery, parked outside the ridiculously named Chateau Vino. Local faces passed him by with no recognition or surprise that he should be sitting alone in a car reading The Standard. Occasionally a regular passenger or a controller on his break going into the "offie" would raise a hand but nothing as elaborate as conversation would occur. When the call finally came it was to pick up from the Convent in East End Road.
Two nuns boarded and knowing that the High Road was solid with traffic he decided to take them to Hampstead using a route slightly different from the one that a less experienced driver would have used. The nuns were expecting to go up the Bishop's Avenue and, like everyone else, gasp at the obvious displays of Mammon; the mansions and palatial surroundings owned by the overtly and obscenely rich. Instead he drove up Winnington Road which runs parallel to the Bishop's and is possibly even grander, being less tacky. As he squeezed through the narrow gap at the Spaniard's Inn between the old toll house, now a listed obstruction, and the eighteenth century coaching inn with its Dick Turpin associations, he could hear soft Irish mutterings from the passenger seats. He braced himself, knowing they were about to say something. 'You do know that we want to go to Fitzjohns Avenue in Hampstead?'
'Indeed I do, and that is exactly where we are heading, as we speak.'
'I'm sorry to say this but I think you are wrong. You see to get to Hampstead you have to go up Bishop's Avenue.' He pointed out that they had just gone through that famous Hampstead landmark: The Spaniard's Inn, and that he was only employing a slightly different route, however they persisted. Streetgeezer recognised in himself the early symptoms of involuntary profanity. To settle the bubbling froth of irreverence and impiety welling up inside, he offered to show them the map.
The sight of Whitestone Pond, which they should have passed every time they entered Hampstead, whether via the Bishop's or not, still left them unconvinced.
It was not until he pulled up outside their address, that they finally recognised their surroundings. 'God bless you son!' They apologised and gave him an unworldly tip of 20p.
'FUCK, SHIT, I NEARLY SWORE AT TWO NUNS!' he remonstrated to himself as he prepared to call in empty. The controller asked him to park up in Hampstead.
'Roger.' He replied.
Streetgeezer drove up Fitzjohn's Ave looking for a parking space. He stopped on the double yellow outside the food hall on Heath Street, hoping to amuse himself with some celebrity spotting: A Michael Foot or a Chris Evans perhaps.
In Hampstead, the rich and famous make themselves conspicuous in the pubs and cafe bars, drinking with the bright young things of North London. Girls in tight, revealing T-shirts, with short skirts and endless legs, hold onto their deeply tanned dream boys. They talk of summers in Portugal or Greece and college again in October.
Thinking themselves arty, they drink in The Flask in Flask Walk, or The King of Bohemia or the "Gay" William the Fourth.
It has become the Mecca for writers; once inspired by less glamorous surroundings, and having justly achieved success, they come to Hampstead to write books about people who write books in Hampstead. It is where art comes to die.
He watched a local landmark pass him by. Trailing cigarette ash, the miserable countenance of Britain's funniest man, Mr Peter Cook shambolically traipsed past in comfortable footwear, crumpled clothing and with a disorientated gaze.
Streetgeezer was far from such sad decline. The onset of Spring Fever had made him almost rampant. So virulent was his strain of virus that he practically had to sponge away his exuberance from the seat he vacated. He entered the food hall with the express intention of buying something healthy to eat.
He finished his second Dime bar and answered the call to pick up Hilary from an address in Frognal. She entered the car accompanied by a four-year old child and asked to go to an address in Crouch End. Streetgeezer recognised both the destination and the voice, having encountered Hilary numerous times and knew her to be a "Muswell" reduced through recession to Hornsey. So archetypal was Hilary that he frequently cited her as a yardstick of Muswellness. He always thought fondly of her as "Muswell Hilary". He once overheard her and her husband, a known photographer, discussing what they would wear for a Fellini party to which they had been invited. The husband had suggested he might stuff two large balloons up his jumper and be Anita Eckberg in "La Dolce Vita". Streetgeezer had found it necessary to bite his tongue and suppress the urge to suggest they turn up in an old Fiat and announce themselves as "Something out of La Strada".
They started up Frognal past the disused Mount Vernon Hospital and into Lower Terrace. She asked how his music - or was it his writing, was going?
'I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth, but it could be that I have been told my autobiography is self-indulgent.' He joked and became himself part of the joke.
'Oh we all have to fool ourselves into believing we are doing something other than just cabbing.' He continued, though he hated the term "just cabbing". He habitually argued with passengers and Inland Revenue alike that Minicabbing was a noble and honourable alternative to becoming a burden on the state and in no way the last refuge of the scoundrel.
The child at this point made some comment relating to the imminent purchase of confectionery to which Hilary calmly, and in an adult manner, urged the child not to interrupt when someone else is speaking. She overemphasised the case that it was important, even if the person being interrupted was also performing a paid service. The implication behind the statement was the liberal Muswell creed: 'I am a Muswell at heart and I believe all men are born equal in the eyes of the Guardian.' It also made plain to her son that we treat the less fortunate as we treat our own, or at least that is how it should appear. Such trendy liberalness usually annoyed the hell out of Streetgeezer, however the perfect pronunciation and her melodious tones, silky smooth like a jazz clarinet duetting with a softly bowed cello made it hard to avoid empathy.
They passed the Victorian observatory and approached Whitestone Pond, the highest point in North London (440 ft) where the bright sunlight failed to inflame the gently rippling waters. The Pond was empty. All three looked out across the bowl of dry concrete where horses were once taken to bathe.
'What a pity.' Hilary bemoaned the lack of ducks for Josh's amusement. Muswell tradition demanded the child be called Josh and had he been a girl he would have to have been Emma.
'Ah but lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.' Streetgeezer quoted, feeling he had touched just the right balance of pertinence and obscurity to show that he could be as pretentious as any Muswell.
'Oh do you read the sonnets?'
'No. I hate poets, I hate how they debase the language.'
'How do poets debase the language?' She enquired, falling right into his trap.
'One day a poet describes the sun as watery and the next it becomes an accepted meteorological term used by television weather men.' He then moved the argument on to speculate how he might turn this to his advantage.
'When Wordsworth wandered lonely as a cloud he gave an opportunity, not so far realised, to allow emotions to be quantified, and so in times of particular personal solitude I might compare myself to a Cumulo-Nimbus. In a more self-contained mood I might be just part of a mackerel sky.
Hilary was suitably impressed as they squeezed through the gap at the Spaniard's Inn. The expanding driver then expanded on the question of qualification asking. 'If a politician wishes to be positive he will use the phrase: "Not a scintilla of doubt". Well how many scintillas are there in a doubt and how many in something larger, such as a dilemma? How many shreds in a piece of evidence and how many iotas in a truth?' Hilary was suitably stunned as they approached Highgate where the rich and famous hide behind security systems, while the pubs are filled with thinking drinkers in chunky sweaters and blue jeans. The illogical march of progress had reverted the one-way system back to a two-way system and by taking Southwood Lane they crossed the Archway Road and entered the area known to advertisers and estate agents as "Leafy Muswell Hill".
In Muswell Hill the windows have no curtains, and as the expectant minicab driver treads the path through the unkempt front garden hoping for an "airport", he can usually spy the rows of books and the stripped pine habitat so preferred by "Guardian Man". With corduroy trousers and leather arm-patches he opens the door just long enough for you to catch a whiff of garlic and says, 'Be out in a min!'
He then takes ten "mins" to marshall his wife and children in a disorderly manner into the car. The pale skinned wife in dull flower patterned dress and shapeless cardigan liberally allows the kids to talk absolute rubbish, but by then the driver is thankful not to be taking them any further than the station. Owning a car in Muswell Hill is less of a status symbol then not owning a car and having an account with a cab company.
From Muswell Hill Road Streetgeezer turned left into Cranley Gardens where those with a fascination for the macabre ask: 'Isn't that where Nielson the serial killer lived?' Streetgeezer would reply, 'Yes, number twenty-five, it's almost as famous as Ten Rillington Place! And Hungerford!'
At the end of Cranley Gardens, the boundary conscious find themselves no longer with any true claim to being in Muswell Hill, N10, but definitely in N8, although it could be Crouch End or Hornsey. The former is associated with trendy restaurants, Dave Stewart's recording studio and stories of Bob Dylan moving in; the latter is the boasted residence of the Sun's Richard Littlejohn. Most people call it Crouch End but where Hilary lived was geographically Hornsey. Only a stone's throw from Hornsey High Street where, in Streetgeezer's expert opinion, Oscar's Kebab Restaurant sold the finest Kebabs in North London.
Hornsey, Harringay and Haringey derive their names from Saxon times and mean the enclosure of Herings or Haers people.
'Perhaps I am a bit hard on poets, it's not their fault that most people are so devoid of originality that they need to find hooks on which to hang their own thoughts.'
She told him where to pull up. He didn't want to look at her; he knew he'd only fall in love, but he was unable to take her cash without turning round. It was then he saw the smile, a wild smile, an enchantingly random row of glistening teeth, deliciously imperfect and untamed by orthodontics. The antithesis of the homogenised, indistinguishable American smile, the bland smile of the Baywatch babe. A smile not just "to die for" but to "vote Tory for". It almost ruined his day.
