21 NOVEMBER 1987, Page 54

Home life

Street foolish

Alice Thomas Ellis

Imay have remarked before that I seldom venture out of Camden Town. I now realise that this is because it is hardly possible to venture out of Camden Town. One could take the tube to the wider world, I suppose, but I'm not going to try. Beryl had to go on the Victoria line the other morning because she couldn't get a cab and she said it was hell. One day, again due to the absence of cabs, ,she had to come home on a Hoppa and she didn't like that either. There are too many other people going back and forth by these means. Some of them are robbers and some are mad and they're all in too great a hurry to mind whether they walk on your feet or push you off the platform or under the bus.

Last week I was invited to lunch at the Gay Hussar, not a million miles away from here. That'll make a pleasant change, I thought, accepting with alacrity. While we're at it, I said to myself, we may as well deliver some books to a venue in central London where they were required. I in- formed Janet of this plan and said she could drive me, thus saving cab fares. It was pissing down with rain and she said dubiously that the roads would be con- gested, but if we set off in good time we should make it eventually. Some hours later we realised that I might, with my luck, arrive at the Gay Hussar in time for tea, or possibly just hit the cocktail hour.

'I think a replica Mary Rose was a damn silly idea.' Then as the skies grew ever darker and we sat amidst the stationary cars, lorries and buses we decided to sod the whole thing and go home.

When we were stuck just outside Trafal- gar Square, Janet whiled away the time by describing some of the landmarks. I've never liked London so I've never learned much about it. I've been to Trafalgar Square before and to Buckingham Palace, and I've looked at the Houses of Parlia- ment and I knew Downing Street was out there somewhere — and Scotland Yard — but I couldn't have taken you to any of these famous sites or told you where they were in relation to each other. I still couldn't, but I am now at least aware that the top of Big Ben is visible from wherever we were — the end of the Strand, I think.

This extraordinary ignorance of the city one lives in is surely unusual. Parisians can direct the stranger to the Deux Magots with no trouble at all, Florentines know their Florence and when I lived in Liver- pool I could have quartered the place blindfold. London is perhaps too big, and poorly signposted. I used to know Chelsea quite well but I recently got off the 31 bus on to which I had climbed in a fit of bravado, found myself at the World's End and walked round in a huge circle before arriving at my intended destination — about two minutes' walk from the World's End if one had only been concentrating and the street signs had been clearer.

Some of this lack of interest in one's surroundings is due to the hopeless feeling that faceless and ruthless powers are in control — local councils for the most part — ripping up the paving stones at random, closing down the little shops and authoris- ing the erection of nightmarish mega- stores. There was a criminal lunatic around at one time who proposed to drive a motorway smack through the Old Piano Factory but happily he ran out of funds. I seem to remember he had a beard, and this intended motorway was his most pas- sionately favourite thing in life.

The disappearance of the few landmarks one does recognise under building sites, tower blocks and roads makes it even more difficult to find one's way home. I went into a pub by one door the other evening, came out by a different one and thought I'd fallen into something by Kafka. The ABC building has disappeared, Camden Road is unrecognisable and I could have been in Outer Mongolia for all I knew. Plotting a course by the stars and guided by the smell of rotting vegetable matter, I made my way to the familiar market and so to bed.

They intend to abolish the street market, and if they do I'll be utterly lost. Janet suggests putting curtains in the car and installing a coffee machine and some book- shelves since she spends so much time just sitting in it. Then it won't matter if we get lost. Our address will be Stationary Vehi- cle, somewhere in the Strand, on the way to the Gay Hussar.