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Published: January 12th 2013
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Everyone starts somewhere. I started in Finchley. Therefore people will think that Finchley is important to me, whether it really is or whether it really isn't...
Ian, born in Finchley. Therefore... important.
Because of this I will always be in danger of ending up trapped in an online encyclopedia and hyperlinked to Margaret Thatcher - because Finchley was her political constituency, and on that upsetting evening in 1979 she stood on the balcony on the front of Finchley town hall.
I arrived in Finchley a lot earlier than when Thatcher was tarnishing it with Saint Francis' prayer.
I entered Finchley exactly nine months after the celebrations for my sister's third birthday. And my mum paid the price.
Head out early I apparently took a good look at the corridor and at what was to come before the midwife had us in the delivery suite. The final approach was fairly swift - through the cervix with not much hanging around (though the 270 days or so mucking about curled up in the foetal position with me thumb in my gob in the transit area was prettty, pretty dull). There was minimal stressed out arm waggling at arrivals.
No queues.
Thrown into the world I was. Heaved out in a Sartrean tumble into Finchley, condemned to a North London freedom. Then bundled up into a stranger's arms and whipped away to the ward.
Within ten minutes I had discovered my first claim to fame. I was born in the same room, straight after Richard Baker's (the BBC news reader) son. This made watching news roundups in the next 18 years more personal and a tad more relevant.
Next day, June 9th, it was farewell gurgling to Richard Baker Jnr and I was "off home" in a Morris Minor to the police flats at Clandon Gardens, Finchley, Barnet, U.K. Europe, World, Solar Sytem, Galaxy, Universe.
The official United Kingdom kiddie counters decided 'Finchley' wasn't sufficiently grand for my birth certificate and their census records. And seeing they didn't allow the complete Europe, World, Solar System, Galaxy, Universe on their forms, they just upped Finchley a level, to 'Barnet'.
Barnet's what is in my passport and Barnet's what I've penned onto hundreds of forms ever since. Barnet, UK. June 1964. It's the only geography they want to know.
I can't remember much about Barnet and 1964 without "help" from my family. Dribbling on and drooling over Barnet was about as much as I could manage. Therefore when I write / talk about my Barnet I have to refer to the memories and tales handed down by others. With the same reasoned trust I use when watching re-runs of the 1969 lunar landings I know that they are probably true. I know, as does any other sane human being, that Neil's steps onto the moon weren't plodded onto a fake surface in a studio round the back of Cape Canaveral. Rome wasn't built in a day. My world wasn't created in seven.
If 'Barnet UK' had instead been somewhere weird and tribal, far and distant, like for example, 'Barnet Australia', then my given to me memories of and attachment to Finchley could be all so different. If I had been born in 'Barnet, Somewhere Outback and Parched' I could muck about and tell you some ethnic non sense and touchy feely tripe. I could tap into the deep, rich, mysterious, Finchley / Barnet 'dreamspaces' of days gone by. At the very least I could pretend - and keep the tribal elders onside. And I would have a decent reason for getting a tattoo and shoving an alligator bone through my nose.
While sitting inked on and boned up under a twisted Australian outback tree I would 'see' (with my ethnic Barnet eye) that the space bordering the flank of the mighty North Circular Road wasn't built up with police flats. Finchley borns, and only us Finchley borns, would see an icecap where others would think there was a housing estate. Because a million years ago there once was. Only us bonded-through-birth-with-the-dust-of-North-London would know that in the back gardens of those sold off philanthropic homes lived Glug the mysterious Glacier God.
If I was a Finchelyian a la Deepest Mongolia I could join with other Finchleyians and sing of my group legends; those related to the delivery grounds of Wallolloollooobedoo; the epidural places where our ancestral foremothers rode and screamed on the Crystal Swan Birthing Chair.
If my records said 'Finchley / Barnet, Country Somewhere Far Eastern' I might be allowed to witter with subtitles on a National Geographic "TV Special" about emerging as a poppy seed. How I, like my brothers, was gobbed out from the gaping mouth of the Golden Gemini Dragon, the pink one on the left of the pair, the one who defends the Divine Emperor's gateway to the hell that is Yong, up in the barren expanses of the snowy north west.
I could go on, after the irritating advertising break, about how my seed was dropped into the moist soils of the Pingowan Forest. My seed was widdled on by a passing brown bear and I flourished and I grew into an opium tree. Then, having a low hanging branch pruned with a silver axe forged in the furnaces of Zwog, by the lad next door, I morphed into the Great Green Monkey Demon of Ping.
Sorry. No chance of any of that. Not with being born after Richard Baker Jnr. in Finchley / Barnet UK in 1964 there isn't.
This is what usually happens after the probing conversation starter at smarmy dinner parties,
"Well hello Ian and how very nice to meet you. Ian, where are you from?"
Emerging in Barnet, UK means that all you get from me is
"Well, Barbara, I'm from Finchley. Finchley in Barnet."
...and then that embarrassing pause. It's not long before someone else chips in to help out Babs with,
"Finchley Babs. It’s near IKEA. You know. They do a lovely Swedish meatball." In summary, my Finchley, in my Barnet, in my UK, where the IKEA is, doesn't have any mythical spatial fluff going for it. So should you visit there’s no need to swot up on religious rituals and feign respect for cutesie local customs that you know are stupid, archaic, freedom inhibiting and in some instances abusive because they necessitate lopping off female body parts and believing in fate.
Yes. No. Perhaps. Finchley, Barnet, U.K, has sensible, rational, registrars with fountain pens filling in the gaps left on the birth certificates. The certificates are sent away to data processing to South Wales offices (I think). The odd clerk then bashes the place and time information into a computer. After four to six weeks of "processes" and a monetary contribution I get my passport back; printed with the essential “Barnet UK June 1964” details. Next to a healthy splash of my DNA spit.
Okay. That's the 'where and when froms' out of the way.
Now. Life's bigger and more stimulating questions,
"Where are we going?"
"How much time have we got?"
"Who's got the spending money ?"
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