DO THEY KNOW WHAT IS IS?

Anne McElvoy, of Islington, says you must not

believe everything you read about stripped pine tables and right-on dinner parties

EVERY night, at eight sharp, we sit down at our stripped-pine table, devour a plate of seared tuna, and give praise to Cherie Blair and the Human Rights Act. Then we plan our next holiday in a villa outside San Gimigniano, breaking only for a brief chat about natural childbirth and the pressing need for electoral reform, before we retire to bed with a Nick Hornby novel each.

I know that this is how it must be because I am centre-leftish, live in Islington and am thus an abject figure of untram- melled scorn. Fine, I can take it. But what has my kitchen table done to annoy?

With monotonous regularity, journalists nominate the 'stripped-pine table of Isling- ton' as the item of furniture owned by peo- ple with whom they don't agree. Even the judicious Stephen Glover was at it two weeks ago in these pages: 'We may be sure,' writes Mr Glover, deliberating on Rebekah Wade and the paedophiles, 'that around the stripped-pine tables of Isling- ton . . . her campaign has engendered nothing but consternation and contempt.'

If you live in Islington, the world has a window not just on your kitchen, but on your soul. The funny thing is that stripped pine is pas du tout Nl. It went out with glam rock, and we're very particular about our interiors, since you ask. Sisal flooring we have a weakness for, ant chairs ditto. Stripped pine: Just Say No.

All right, so our own kitchen table is, well, you know . . . but in mitigation, m'lud, it is a very modestly dressed pine, stained to a honey-brown, decorated with a few decades of wine-spillages and infant spoon-bashing. It would not dream of being seen stripped. It is the sort of deco- rous nuclear-family object that I thought Conservatives were supposed to approve of — for was it not William Hague who invented kitchen-table conservatism? What sort of object did he have in mind, if not a pine one?

The only word in Rightspeak more insulting than Islington is Tuscany; use them together for added invective impact, like Ruth Dudley Edwards in the Daily Telegraph: 'It's only because of the thought-police and health-fascists that the drinking norm is what pertains in Isling- ton/Tuscany circles.' She forgot to mention the 'nanny state', which is usually our fault too. Keith Waterhouse concludes of the Blairs' family holiday, 'There is something so very Islington about Tuscany.'

Ah, there we have it: the reason why Islingtonphobia has taken off recently is that the Blabs lived there: Richmond Cres- cent, to be precise. The Granita restaurant on Upper Street is where Tony Blair gave Gordon Brown dinner to make up for shaft- ing him for the leadership. They ate polen- ta, tuna and wilted greens. At least that is what I keep reading, because these are invariably described as the subsistence diet of the Ni hunter-gatherers.

Boris Johnson's columns have had a downer on searing and wilting for some time now. It's what 'achingly trendy' peo- ple eat. Islingtonians are by definition achingly trendy, when we are not being bien-pensant, thought-fascistic, health- policing, bleeding-heart, champagne socialists, or stripping our pine.

But hang on: if it's such an appalling, cloy- ing place, how come so many Conservatives choose to live there? Boris resides at the Highbuty end, Charles and Caroline Moore graced Thornhill Square for years, before the country got them, Ferdinand Mount and Paul Dacre (editor of the Mail) live there, and Peter and Gail Lilley have only just moved out of Canonbury Road.

The only bad thing about living in Isling- ton is that you get it in the neck from both ends. The Right hate the idea of it even while they seem to enjoy living there. The Left disdain it as too prosperous and enjoy- able for its own good. The Observer's waspish Nik Cohen fronted his documentary on New Labour's sinful elites by driving round Islington to damn the inhabitants: `Lovely people, all of them', but also con- ceited, inward-looking, rich (bad, bad thing, that) and with a tendency to drone on about their nannies. Wicked Islington!

It is time to fight back. The 'Glad to be Is' campaign starts here. It is a nice place to live because it's halfway normal. It has pretty squares and comfortable houses. The standard of council-housing building is reasonably high, unlike the inhuman atroci- ties of neighbouring Camden.

Islington's political past as a byword for lunacy produced a generation of people, such as Mr Blair, who realised that the town-hall delusions of the hard Left were the reason why people kept voting Conser- vative. In fact, you should all be bloody grateful to Islington for bringing Labour to its senses and saving you from the drear prospect of endless Tory rule.

The big social nights out here are the benefit evenings at the Almeida, the finest small theatre anywhere. The schools are so bad and the rubbish collections so patchy that people have something to moan about at their garden-square parties. In short, it has an air of sloppy ease with itself and its modest good fortune wholly lacking in rar- efied Chelsea, rubber-necking Notting Hill or etiolated Hampstead.

Remember that picture of Cherie, before the election, looking exhausted and clutching four straining Sainsbury's bags? Very Islington. Be you ever so high, you can go out looking a perfect sight and no one minds. Once, having ventured to Upper Street in an ancient gardening coat, nasty flat shoes and an unmade-up face, with an East German friend wearing jeans that predated the Cuban missile cri- sis, I decided to live dangerously and take off for the King's Road.

My dears, it's another world. They don't just dress for dinner, they dress for shop- ping for dinner. In Waitrose, I encountered Camilla, another friend. Her hair was in a chignon. She was wearing a white fur-col- lared jacket. In the supermarket. On a Sat- urday morning. The Islington look didn't go down well. It was in danger of bringing down the house prices. My German friend and I fled back to Is as fast as our humilia- tion could carry us.

1 know why the old Left dislike Islington — it is a bit to do with envy and inverted snobbery, and a lot to do with hating Mr Blair. The mystery is why the Tories affect to hate it so much. I could caricature them in their dreary, chilly dining-rooms, painted in glum colours from Farrow and Ball, fur- nished in dodgy chintz and Colefax and Fowler florals. But that would be rude and we are not like that in Nl. We're lovely, lovely people; the low-iodine, natural crys- tallised organic sea-salt of the earth.

Anne McElvoy is associate editor of the Independent.