Love, Loss and Hampstead

I’m feeling an aching nostalgia for something I haven’t lost yet. It’s a weird thing indeed, but after some eleven years in our nest, perched on a branch off Heath Street, the time to move is creeping up on us. Our place isn’t tiny, but the family is growing up fast and we are literally bursting out of it like an overfilled popcorn machine spewing corn and butter everywhere. It’s a constant and infernal mess, and as hard as I try, I just can’t keep a lid on it.

My husband was born and grew up here, and I moved here in my teens from the middle of nowhere in Sussex. We met at the Old White Bear pub in the heady days of lock-ins and dancing on the bar. Our kids went to the same state primary school as their dad, a fabulously diverse and tight-knit place that nurtures strong community spirit. Also, my father had the temerity to die here last year. I don’t think I could feel more connected to a place.

When I first came to London there hadn’t been much of a choice as to where we'd move to as accommodation came with Dad’s job. At that time my folks had only the vaguest idea about the many areas and tribes in this vast capital, they’d heard the names, but didn’t really understand the difference between Kensington and Camden. It was only later that they realised we’d really fallen on our feet. The choice had been to either move to Hampstead or a place in Primrose Hill – another fantastic location we again realised later. My family took a walk on said Hill and on the Heath, and we all knew at once that it had to be Hampstead. It was the wild beauty of the Heath that won us over. Bill Oddie had something to do with it too – Dad was a lover of the dawn chorus, recording it in the countryside and listening back to it to unwind and he’d heard Bill did walks at sparrows fart o’clock. The flyer read ‘Please meet in the car park at 4:30am’. Who in their right mind would want to do this? It has to be said, Hampstead attracts the weird and the wonderful.

I haven’t always lived here, over the years I’ve spread the net mighty far, as far as, ooh, Belsize Park, Dartmouth Park and St Pancras. These places are also villages in their own right, comprised of tight communities and yet remaining at a civilised arm’s length. But its Hampstead that’s the magnet, and once I’ve waded away from it, it isn’t long before I get pulled back in again. There’s something intangibly attractive about the place which I think has remained the same over centuries. Maybe it’s the proximity to the Heath, maybe it’s the light. As I look up from the screen I can see the familiar clouds and Constable skies that have been captured forever in those many paintings, even through today’s chocking air pollution. It’s very pretty here, and another attraction is the general acceptance of the different, the tolerance of the opinionated, as well as the charm of the many ‘off-the-wallers’ that might elsewhere be considered odd.

Being from the generation that benefited from free education, we worked hard, played hard and made some wise (lucky) property investments. So in 2006 we just about afforded to return permanently to our home town. It wasn’t long before I was reminded of the first world problem I’d face having to answer the frequently asked question:

“So, where do you live?”

I used to always hesitate for a second before answering , being reluctant to just blurt out the name. Experience has proven that the answer will cause an inevitable raised eyebrow, visible or invisible. And there is usually another hesitation before the answer comes:

“Hampstead”.

Beat

“Oh.” Beat. “How lovely.”

And there it is, the perennial response laden heavy with judgement. And the sound of a label reading ‘I’m a dick’ being surreptitiously slapped on my back, like in an eighties high-school movie. Actually the label used to read ‘Lovey’ but shifted with the times and now reads ‘Snob’ or ‘Loaded’ or both. This marks the start of my herculean effort to prove just how ordinary I am. So I’ll slip into the conversation the fact that I was a full-time carer for five years, how I work only part-time now, am married to a freelancer, crippled with a mortgage, and no, I don’t buy at the local Farmer’s market. I really, REALLY can’t afford to, I can get a week’s worth of fruit and veg at Tescos for the price of a handful of ugly looking tomatoes and a freaking sickly combo of juiced beetroot and kale. I recently stopped caring about all of this. I really couldn’t give a flying wotsit what others think, life’s too short. This attitude is very Hampstead.

It was decades ago that the super wealthy cottoned onto the charm of Hampstead. Over the years the area once associated with artists, poets, beatniks and bohemians has become populated with bankers and the rich and famous. For a long while the great and the good rubbed shoulders with the quirky and the ordinary, and this was, and still is great, albeit to a lesser extent. Nowadays properties that were once divided into a number of flats housing several families, have been re-converted back to single units with basements added, as clearly these huge houses just aren’t big enough for the requisite cinema, or gym or pool even.

The blatant social cleansing happening here is abhorrent, namely the eviction of Camden Council residents from properties such as Oriel Court, soon to be honed into luxury flats; the eviction of nurses from the social housing in New End, again for luxury apartments; and the closing of the student halls at Hyelm on Heath Street to be replaced by a block of residences for the over 65s, but only for those that (yes you’ve guessed it) can afford the luxury price tag, so I won’t be ending my days there. 

I don’t like the word ‘luxury’ right now. This lesser mortal has been priced out of the market and cannot afford the ‘luxury’ of a little extra breadth for the family, and one more measly work room that would enable us to remain in the place we call home. Also the place we love is being eroded away by the loss of the diverse mix of people that contributes to making Hampstead a great place to live. I don’t  mind the wealthy ‘newcomers’, don’t get me wrong, but there should be room for all.  Besides it’s always fun to have something to laugh at, like the crazily expensive handbags or ludicrous muscle-cars being paraded in the high street – where the heck is he going to park that thing? In her huge handbag? Oh, of course, in his newly excavated underground car park – how stupid of me.

Of course I know I’m extremely privileged, and I also remind myself that the only constant in life is change, so you have to learn to be good at adapting. I also think that due to the awful events of this summer in London, the mood is one of keeping strong and bonded. Our personal predicament means diddly squat in the scheme of things. We’ll just have to move.

Loss makes you love harder. It’s a simple fact. So I’m walking around the village with the aforementioned feelings of nostalgia, sucking it all in and holding on like I’ve rediscovered a lost lover. I love the guy with the magaphone in Tescos who shouts that the sugar content in the doughnuts will addict and kill our kids.  I love the smell of joss sticks whafting down the high street at 8am from the newsagent at the tube. He burns them next to the Hampstead Village Voice display, it’s like a little shrine! I love the guy on the platform at Hampstead Heath station who dresses like Mick Fleetwood circa ‘Rumours’. I totally love the fact that although there is a film entitled ‘Hampstead’ being shown at the Everyman right now, I don’t know a single village resident who has bothered to go and see it. Only in this blessed place!