Six months ago I wrote an article in this magazine in which I complained that rising property prices in Shepherd’s Bush had forced me and my wife to move to Acton. I pointed out that the only decent café within walking distance of our new house had closed down, citing this as evidence that there weren’t enough middle-class people in the area to sustain a single decent coffee shop. Acton, I concluded, was the cesspool of west London.
This turned out to be a colossal error of judgment — and not just because the editor of the local newsletter reprinted the article in full and sent it to all our new neighbours. Far from being an urban wasteland teeming with knife-wielding hoodies, Acton is a suburban Shangri-La — the Monte Carlo of Metroland.
Take the Husseins, who live next door but one. The other day I counted six cars in their driveway, including a Rolls-Royce, a Bentley and a Porsche. They all belonged to them, too, a fact that was revealed by the cars’ consecutive vanity plates: HUSS 1, HUSS 2, etc. They don’t even live in the grandest house in the street. That honour belongs to Jana Bennett, the BBC’s ‘Director of Vision’. (According to the BBC website, ‘She has overall creative and leadership responsibility for BBC One, BBC Two, the digital channels BBC Three and BBC Four, as well as overseeing content on the UKTV channels and BBC America.’)
My wife and I foolishly imagined that we would be big fish in a small pond in Acton and entertained fantasies of inviting the locals round to the back door for a glass of cider at Christmas. In fact, we are probably the poorest people on our road.
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