- It isn't really 'London'
- It's full of people like Del Boy
- It's a heaving mass of people ready to stab you and steal your money
- They tend to enjoy a good riot down that way.
I've been known to say variations of all these things, although only ever in jest and as provocative rhetoric. I don't believe any of them. I actually quite like South London, in the same way I like East London, West London, Central London... you get the gist.
Some facts about South London that you may not have been aware of:
- Like your art and festivals? Well, there's quite a few festivals and art events that take place over the year.
- If you're into your art why not check out the Camberwell Arts Festival between 17th and 21st June 2012.
- Or if a good street party is more your thing, then there's the Bermondsey Street Festival on 22 September 2012. Let's see, what else is there...
- Waterloo Carnival on 15th July 2012 (the theme is superheroes. Awesome)
- The Affordable Art Fair at Battersea (this one was in March I'm afraid)
- The Greenwich + Docklands International Festival from 21st to 30th June 2012.
- There's lots of interesting history for each of the boroughs (if you're curious, then check out this page).
- Southbank, one of my favourite parts of London, is in the south of London.
- Apparently some famous people were born there.
Okay, time for full disclosure: the title of this post was given to me by a friend after we agreed we would each come up with a title on which the other had to write this month. I've drawn the short straw. This is a title perfectly crafted to either provoke me or to try and force me to sing the praises of South London, although he says it was to try and get me to do a little research on the area. I'm a lover of North London. He's a lover of South London. It's not hard to connect the dots. We're not the only ones that have had this debate either; check out this article from Time Out that pits North London and South London against each other to see how just how deep the prejudices and xenophobia goes (it starts off with a rant against North London, so make sure you read page 2 for the mirrored attack).
However, my education in History wasn't for nothing, and today it finally pays for itself. I know that you can write whatever you want under any title; you simply need to define your terms.
So these are my terms:
1) I'm not about to play the game and write a polemic against South London.
2) I'm not about to pretend that I love South London.
3) I am going to interpret the title as being indicative of how attached we get to the area that we call home, and how it comes to define us, to become a facet of our identity.
Let me try and unpick why I so stubbornly defend the charms of North London, even though South London may well be better than (or at least just as good as) north or east or west, and even though I may well end up living away from the northern part of the city.
I grew up in North London. My childhood and teenage years were spent in North London, with the odd foray into the centre. I wasn't aware of west, east nor south until I got older and started to explore the capital a little more. When I think of London, I think of the City and central. But when I think of home it's the north that forms the backdrop of that thought. Edgware (which, for the record, the journalist in the Time Out article refers to as 'proper' London), Mill Hill, Camden, Hampstead, Golders Green, Hendon, Finchley — these are the places that make up my emotional London. They're not my favourite places. Not by a long shot. My favourite area changes by day depending on what I'm doing, who I'm with, the weather. But North London will always be home, no matter where I'm living. Coming back from university in Manchester I always knew I was 'home' when we hit the sign to Edgware on the M1, or when I was on the Northern Line heading towards Edgware from Euston, blissfully surrounded by everyday chatter in a London accent.
We all know that the 'north versus south' debate isn't one confined to a particular city. There's all sorts of prejudices associated with these two polar compass points, with those prejudices varying depending on the context. My two best friends from university are from Warrington, near Manchester. There's a running joke between the three of us that I'm a southern softie from 'Lahndahn'. Apparently I once expressed surprise at how clever they both are because I thought everyone from up north was of sub-intelligence (I don't remember ever saying this and, if I did, I know myself well enough to know that I would have been playing with stereotypes for satirical effect. At least I hope I was). We joke about it through our language; after eight years it still throws me when they talk about having "tea" at 8:30 in the evening (that's "dinner" for us southern softies. What kind of an idiot calls dinner "tea" anyway?). My boss at work is a northerner, and mocks my accent when I say words like "bath", and I mock him back.
Physical locations define us through the experiences we had there, through the language we adopt there. My nursery, primary school, secondary school and sixth form were all melting pots of different ethnic, religious and national backgrounds. I didn't realise how very 'London' that was until I went to Manchester and met people from different areas of the UK where there was less of a mix of people, or started spending time in other cities where the population was typically Anglo-Saxon. I always feel slightly out of place in these areas. Not because I'm a hybrid of British, Israeli, Iranian, Polish, Russian and Austrian (they won't mind me saying this, but the two uni friends thought I was Indian when we first met because Warrington typically doesn't have mongrels like me). No, I feel out of place because I'm so used to being surrounded by people from all over the world, because I grew up thinking that that was the norm.
What's ironic is that we live in a time when technology has shrunk our world and globalisation and environmental issues have made us all global citizens (at least, in theory). Our food, our clothes, our gadgets, news, neighbours, everything is sourced from all over the world. What does my emotional allegiance to North London over South London, to London over the rest of Britain, really mean if I adopt the view that I'm a citizen of the world that just happens to have been born in a particular place? If my parents had had their way, I could have just as easily been born in Israel. And wouldn't this wider view of who we are eliminate all the false loyalties we have to postcodes, to travel zones, to cities, to countries, to continents? Wouldn't the world be happier and more peaceful if we recognised the fundamental biological similarities we all have rather than the differences that result from the accidents of the location of our birth or where we've chosen to live?
But it's funny, we become defined by the geography over which we lay our experiences. I was recently introduced to the concept of psychogeography from someone at work, which was defined by Guy Debord as:
...the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals.It includes the idea that a physical location becomes steeped in the events that took place there. As an example, if you go into a church you're not just experiencing the bricks and mortar of the building. Rather, you're also experiencing years of religious fervour, of prayers, of hope, of devotion. This is why we go on pilgrimages, why we visit childhood homes long after we've moved on, why we have favourite cities, favourite places to go on holiday. We associate the physical location with our feelings about that place; we want to remember or feel closer to an intangible history by visiting a tangible location. It's probably why I recently had to talk myself out of spending £3,000 I don't have on a print by artist Stephen Walter called London Subterranea that is essentially a map of London annotated with its history.
Yes, we could rationally say that our attachment to geographical location is something that prevents us from achieving a greater unity as human beings, or even from just recognising that an area really is or isn't better than we feel it is. But humans aren't purely rational beings. We attach our emotions, our experiences — these intangible facets that are the parts that make up our sum — to tangible things: to locations, to books, to jewellery, to music.
So yes, South London may well be better than North London. I may well end up living there one day, particularly considering the ridiculous property prices in the north. But North London is me. I am North London. And no attempt from a South Londoner (who's actually from Bath) will make me think otherwise. How do you like them apples.
London Subterranea, by Stephen Walter
Image source: Tag Fine Arts Gallery
