Six years ago, I moved from Gospel Oak to Penzance, which was yesterday named one of the best places to live in the South-West. I wasn’t in Penzance to celebrate yesterday — not that the Cornish would celebrate, they know their home is special — but in Gospel Oak, staring up at my old home, a flat above an old pub with soaring windows, wondering if they have ripped down the Winnie the Pooh wallpaper.
London or not is usually presented as a binary choice: bucolic with sheep or the dazzling charisma of an ancient, blackened city. When I get off the train at Paddington, and take a taxi through Little Venice, the nostalgia is unbearable, particularly — and I have no idea why — if it is raining, and if it is night. I felt a stirring staring up at the windows but that is ageing for you: lives so unlived that they are fictional. Has anyone felt such longing for Gospel Oak? Does it even deserve it?
