Some little omens have emerged to indicate that the great gentrification project might have stalled –
the whoozy rat pottering a few inches away from my footfall, skirting the bases of a series of permanently locked shutters before finding a crag to vanish into.
The butchers, wholesalers and cheap cookware shops keep on keeping on while the bougie boutiques replace each other to little fanfare.
I’m grateful for the better coffee but not so much for the hikes in rent.
Nobody who frequented Champagne and Fromage had to fight for their place here and nobody fought for it to remain.
None of them caught a truncheon to the temple in their mission to make this area feel nicer.
I remember the Fridays and Saturdays in the early 00s when I was too skint for a single pint, so I marched about for a couple of hours, as I once did in the suburbs,
to soak up all the noise and vibes I could before I skulked back to my flat to see if a poem would hatch,
so that the locals could endure my open-mic edgelordism like they endured everything else.
I never headed out with the intent of making friends, but am grateful that a few were found regardless.
Bowie was never a part of what drew me here, and even now, as much as I love his music,
his presence feels as thin as a layer of spray paint on a wall that locals have scrawled on for decades,
but, on this day between his birthday and deathday, it feels like the perfect time to pause before his perspex shielded boat race,
to stand stock still in the pouring rain,
before I shuffle on from Marks and Sparks to Poundland.
11/01/26
🌿