North Londoner takes a trip to south London

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Prelude - The Decision

Like most places on the planet, south London has always felt like a long way away. When people tell me they are from south London it normally crosses my mind to ask where exactly, but realising I will probably not know where the place is, or even worse, I will not have heard of the place, I don't bother. You see, I'm from north London and based on my life, I can confirm that the stereotype is true, there is a big north/south London divide and people from the north just don't go south of the river.

It's not entirely true. I did go the Wimbledon tennis finals with my mum a few times as a kid. Getting up at 4am to get the first trains from Barnet Station in order to give ourselves a fighting chance of making it early enough into the queue in order to buy a ticket for the outside courts. Anyway, the bubble of the Wimbledon tennis championships aside, I really have had no experience of going to south London. I mean why would I? I grew up in proper north London. I lived in Finchley during my primary school years, I went to secondary school in Southgate. I lived in High Barnet, Friern Barnet, all my friends were from north London, I could go to Camden to be cool and buy ripped jeans, I went for walks in Hampstead Heath, played football in Regents Park, went clubbing in Soho, barely had to move to go to a decent restaurant and I had a huge choice of cinemas to go to not more than 3 miles from my house. I went to museums occasionally. The natural history museum was a favourite of mine, I've been to Madame Tussauds, the national portrait museum, the science museum and all in north London of course. I mean really, why the heck would I want to go to south London? And I didn't.

And I still haven't. But it never bothered me that I haven't. Growing up, I was always led to believe south London was awash with drugs, dangerous ethnically diverse gangsters, poverty and crime. Not worth sitting on the tube for over an hour for, that's for sure. Well, maybe for the drugs. Anyway, my life has pretty much trundled along without any need or desire to go to south London until recently.

Aged 42, living in Kilburn, north west London, I can say I have travelled the world a fair bit. I've been to Asia, I've spent lots of time in south America, particularly in Brazil and I've been to a large amount of the countries in Europe. But the more I've travelled, the more I've realised that I do not even know my own country well enough. There are so many beautiful places I have not seen right here on my doorstep, the Lake district for example, the Scottish Highlands, Snowdonia, Cornwall and so on. But a couple of years ago, in a remote village in Brazil, telling a stranger that I was from London, it really hit me. How can I say I'm from London when I have seen so little of the city I'm from? The crazy idea formed right there in my mind - one day I would go south, to south London!

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Comments

[Dalia]

Love this blog Ands...
I had the same thought this year and got the train to Deptford deciding to walk from Deptford to Brixton(2 hrs). Do it and check out Peckham. Visit Dulwich en route. Also, go to Battersea park and Putney in the south west xxx