Got my own little jubilee going on this weekend. Not diamond, I haven’t been around long enough for that. Not even silver. No, it’s a 17-year jubilee for me. Which, I learn, is (marginally) associated with the gemstones amethysts and citrines, whatever they are, and even more marginally linked to gifts of furniture. So while for the Queen it may be all about diamonds, for me it’s more a question of a nice chest of drawers from Ikea.
Which is appropriate, sort of, because my furniture jubilee marks 17 years since we moved into our present, and future, home. Hackney in 1995 being very much still an utter dump, our new place was a great deal bigger than the flat we’d vacated in Islington, Hackney’s more desirable neighbour to the west. Thus our entire stock of belongings fitted into one room. Eee, them were the days. We was only moderately affluent but we was happy.
At our house-warming, four gate-crashers tried to steal what was then, still, just about, called a ghetto blaster. Junkie conmen would routinely knock on the door explaining they needed ten quid, mate, to get to the Homerton where their wife was in labour. Every autumn, someone would light the leaves in the park, igniting a long wall of flame like something out of Braveheart. The police asked if they could use our bedroom as an observation post from which to stake out a crack den over the way. We said they might be better off in the abandoned house next door.
The local shopping street, Broadway Market, council owned, was falling to bits. The council didn’t have the money or the inclination to do up the shops properly. Instead, they let them at peppercorn rents, the result being they were mostly used as lock-ups. London’s Burning and The Bill used to film regularly on the market because they didn’t have to dress the location much, if at all, for it to do service as a gutted slum or ghastly crime scene.
Then, the best possible thing happened. Hackney Council, on the verge of what was described at the time as “total administrative meltdown”, was forced to sell off a chunk of its property portfolio. Slowly, slowly, entrepreneurs moved in. Here a bar, there a deli, a coffee shop, a florist, a gallery, some of those little shops that women like that don’t appear to sell anything apart from greetings cards and cushions.
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Turned out, it wasn’t just my wife and I who wanted to buy something other than cheap cider and kebabs – there was a generalised and massive pent-up demand for ten types of olive at a fiver a tub. Then the Olympics bid was successful. A farmers’ market started. The lido reopened. The East London Line was refurbished. New-media money came in. A virtuous spiral. Happy times. Middle-class heaven.
Last Saturday, I opened The Times to see the headline, “Is This the Most Fashionable Street in Britain?” And yes, Broadway Market probably has been for several summers now. Friday night through to Sunday afternoon is essentially a fancy-dress parade, a pop-up catwalk. I’m not qualified to report on the women, although as most of them seem to be going for Girl in the Flake advert circa 1978 at the moment, no complaints there.
The chaps, meanwhile, are working an off-duty Battle of Britain fighter-pilot look, tweed suit and handlebar moustache. Or an antebellum Southern gentlemen “Boss” Hogg white three-piece suit with splendid Confederate beard. Or a Mallory and Irvine side parting, chunky pullover and vintage haversack plus doomed amused twinkle in their eye. Some Hackney veterans moan about the jeunesse dorée, just as they moan about the Olympics and Docklands and there not being as many murders as there used to be. Me, I love it.
As do the children. A year or two ago, they established the wig challenge, in which visitors have to wear a bright orange wig from their dressing-up box the length of the market. Their godfather Mikey, Cousin George and Cousin Steve have all done so. Result? Nobody batted an eye. Not long ago, Rachel and her friend, Rionach, each wore a diver’s mask and snorkel up and down the stalls for half an hour. A few approving nods, otherwise no reaction.
As for me, it used to be I could nip out at 11pm for a pint of milk in my pyjama bottoms and vest and I might come across five people, but they wouldn’t care because they’d be rolling drunk and wearing their pyjamas bottoms and vests, too. Now, I can do the same, and there are 500 people spilling out of the new bars, and they still don’t care because they’re also rolling drunk and wondering whether pyjama bottoms plus vest is a hot new trend.
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None of it bears any relation to 99 per cent of the rest of the country, but it’s cracking fun. Much like the life of the Queen, I should imagine.