Peckham Notebook

For the past 18 months, it turns out, I have slept in a former royal place of worship. This has been less picturesque than it sounds. The old chapel on my corner of Rye Lane, Peckham, south London — named the Hanover Chapel because two of George III’s sons supported its minister, W.B. Collyer — was demolished to make room for tram tracks early in the last century. I live in the building that replaced it, a three-storey affair containing four flats, a pawnbroker and a branch of a sandwich chain. We are a mixed bunch up here above the pawnbroker. On the day I moved in, one of the other tenants ended a domestic dispute by opening a window and warning shoppers in the busy street below that she might have to jump. By the time I saw anything, she was walking safely downstairs to police and an ambulance, her partner having apparently already left in another official vehicle. I’m afraid I then took advantage a little: when reporting niggles with a new place to the managing agents, it helps immeasurably if you are able to add: ‘… and of course the police have broken down the front door.’

The disputatious couple, however, were not my most alarming new neighbours. That honour belonged to the animals. It was the cockroaches I saw first: one on a wall, then dozens, everywhere. Having taken a few deep breaths, I trolled the pound shops of Rye Lane for sealed plastic containers — into which I bundled all my food — and glue traps. All this made me feel very much better. I began to build a quite respectable collection of trapped cockroaches. But then, after a week or so, I ventured into the kitchen at night and found the traps being knocked over by a mouse.