london belongs to me

Local Newspaper Headlines : Listed Flats Melt in Heatwave;Forgive me, says Teenage Pizza Killer; Burning Pensioner Saves Own Life with Glass of Orange Juice

From the top of a bus the streets around Archway seem like an archetypal grimezone: too much traffic, filthy shopfronts packed too tightly. On the ground it's a paradise for someone whose major vices are greasy caffs and charity (thrift to US readers) shops.

Note: even the world of charity shops is riven by a minor-key parallel to multinational corporate takeover, with the large chains (those who deal with universal, big-name causes -" cancer, famine, etc.) becoming gentrified, working up flash new logos, creating specialist sections for 'collectors' books and records (destroying the -" illusory but energising -" potential for turning up surprise fortune-making bargains) and hiking prices. The real deal is found at one-off shops that collect for local churches and hospices, where prices remain within the reach of misers like myself. A superb example in Archway, collecting for the church, even offers tea at 35p a cup. Its' catering to both major seedy vices under one roof surely means that it qualifies as an anti-mall. The shift in values by major operators changes the function of the charity shop; where once it served two constituencies, being a valuable resource for poor or cheapskate consumers as well as for the eventual recipients of the proceeds, now it loses much of its valuable recycling function and joins both the ranks of lifestyle-consumer-snobbism and lifestyle-charity-snobbism. Both of these factors contribute, along with Tesco's steamrollering of the entire British high street, to the underclass's reliance on dirt-cheap new clothes from supermarkets, ripping off the penny-waged chinese seamstresses who make the garments, and themselves since they continually have to replace this planned-obsolescence substandard rubbish.

Caffs around Archway are exemplary in ambiance and food quality, all run by middle-eastern immigrants, more 'al-salaamu alaykum' than 'alright me old china'. Each is invariably a quarter-full with family, whether kids running around, brothers plotting the next investment property, or an old tortoise-like relative insisting on helping clear the tables ('no, it's OK george, really...yes, thankyou george'). Strange arabic twists in the menu ('Knickerbouker Glory' !!) amongst the usual combinations (and some unusual : 'gammon, mash and cabbage'?).

It's notable that caffs run by the english are far more likely (with honourable exceptions among proud longterm proprietors) to be criminally inattentive to food quality whereas your italians, cypriots, turkish, etc manage to take pride in the most humble dish. Thus 'English Cuisine' seems to be, if not the invention of immigrants, or at least only kept alive by them (dismissing of course the all-too-middle-class-english nouveau school of fryup with organic fennel and venison sausages etc.). It's something along inverse lines to the way in which 'Indian' food emerged in the British Isles as an invention substantially unrecognizable to anyone from the subcontinent

A care-in-the-community case stumbles in, plonks herself down and declares too loudly to no-one: "it smells fishy in 'ere dunnit?".

Although Classic Cafes eulogises the Gaggia and the social transformations effected by its arrival in London, we prefer the more traditional machines, mysterious tea engines with crazy stainless-steel piping (an engineering collaboration between Heath Robinson and Solla-Sellew-era Dr Seuss?), gentle frothing and spitting sounds and periodic steam eruptions: they have something of the army barracks and the hospital ward about them -" probably as close as the English get to comfort.