And Another Thing | 6 December 2008

Plus ça change in the bustling hurly-burly of Westbourne Grove

The chill winds are already blowing down Westbourne Grove as the recession takes hold. They would, wouldn’t they? The Grove is a peculiarly fragile and sensitive street, and has been ever since it was set up in the 1850s. At one time it was known as Bankruptcy Alley. The turnover in the shops and restaurants is allegro con brio. When we first came to live in our delightful little street, Newton Road, a quarter-century ago, the Grove was a pretty bedraggled place, only slowly emerging from the near-slummy grime which lasted from the Great Slump, through the war and into the Rachman era, the Monster operating not far from here.

In those days there were three greasy- spoon caffs in the Grove or nearby streets. I liked such places. There, in mid-morning, you might spot elderly literary editors, moth-eaten opera critics and unemployed sports journalists emerging from their hangovers. Or would-be writers of musical comedies mopping up the runny egg from their ‘full Monties’. You don’t see that now: too many Eastern dumps, packed with dark bearded men, arguing, plotting and scowling. Afghans? Persians? Azerbaijanis? Don’t know, or care. All the same to me: scary. In the Seventies there were still a lot of cheap shops selling bric-a-brac, cracked Chinese jars, flyblown phylacteries, Burmese gongs, Congo witch-doctors’ masks and joss-stick holders from Colombo, sorry, Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte. You never saw anyone go into these musty dens, which had small back rooms, smoke-filled, in which the real business, if any, was done. Furtive men lounged in doorways. Old women pushed battered prams of firewood. There were a lot of what I call jigsaw-puzzle dogs, ownerless, homeless, Cruftless.

There was a convent of nuns, too, Sœurs de Bon Secours, I think — what were called, when I was a boy, Bone-Suckers.