I went to Cricklewood yesterday, to collect some parcels. I had never been there before (though the Gentleman Friend avers that I have), though it it only a 20 minute walk from where we are in Hampstead. It is a very different world indeed, with African grocers and halal butchers, a bingo hall, a working man’s club, a Romanian hairdresser called Romania, and no banks or cafés (though plenty of caffs). Such parts of London really accentuate to me how even a city with a good bit of physical integration has such different geographies. When I lived in Bloomsbury and worked at one of its colleges, it was notable how rare it was that people living in nearby council estates walked through the campus or visited the excellent and often inexpensive farmer’s market, while the Bangladeshi greengrocers were not frequented by those who who drank their coffee on Lamb’s Conduit Street.
In the evening we watched the England football match, in the last-16 phase. The Gentleman Friend, an enthusiastic football fan, shouted and leapt around the room with all the game’s ups and downs and wailed at the penalty shootout. Thanks to a particularly vicious and inadequately penalised foul by the Columbians, I was able to support England as well. In any case, England won, ending its long-running streak of failure in penalty shootouts, and up and down the land you could hear bellows echoing through quiet residential streets.