A second home in the city

The following blog entry is either news report from the future or a vague stab at satrical humour, only time will tell.

‘It used to be such a community’ remarked Crispin Huntington-Thorp ‘People knew each other, that’s gone now.’

Crispin lives in a very changed London, since the great recession of the late noughties people living in the cities have had their way of life slowly eroded. Things weren’t always like this, it used to be that well paid people in the towns would have second homes in the countryside but due to the financial crisis the situation has been reversed.

Now poor city bankers who just want to scrape a living and preserve their way of life are increasingly being forced to sell their houses to people from Cornwall and other rural areas to avoid bankruptcy. Humble traders and commodity brokers are being pushed out of family houses that have been in the family for perhaps up to a generation to make way for housing for cattle and land for food.

‘It’s disgusting how they are changing this area,’ continues Crispin ‘someone should do something before it’s too late. Second homes are destroying the character of Kensington.’

It’s a very different Kensington these days, The Chelsea Tractor has been replaced by a real Tractor and cows can often be seen being driven down the high street on the way to their milking sheds. Even the smell is different with the horrific fumes of freshly cut hay and clovers drifting across whole areas of South West London.

Some parts of the capital have suffered more than others, typically the areas where people were likely to have a second home in the countryside – the sort of people who overreached to have that bolt hole in Dorset are the ones paying the price now.

People like Amanda Chumley-Warner. ‘Once they get into an area they ruin it. First to go are the expensive delis, Farming people don’t want them and so they can’t stay in business. It’s impossible to get Parma ham on the Fulham Road now. If I want essentials like Avocado Oil I have to go for miles to get them. There used to be a little knickknack shop on every street corner where I could spend money on little expensive things when ever I wanted and that’s gone too. Farming people just want to by wellies and animal feed, most of their food is reasonably priced and locally sourced it’s disgusting.’

It’s not just the shops that are suffering as waves of new people come into the area who don’t want to buy Mongolian Carpets or Cath Kidston Yurts. The local wine bars are suffering as well. One owner, who declined to be named, said the following.

‘It used to be that you could expect to shift a few bottles of stupidly pricey red to the regulars when they would come in, but that’s gone now. All the wine bars are suffering. The local people can’t afford to come here anymore. Restaurants are in trouble too, the influx of rural types who don’t want our sort of food is forcing some people out of business. It’s all ploughman’s lunches and disgustingly simple food with fresh ingredients now, who wants to eat that?’

The outlook for the next generation is bleak too. Local children can’t afford to get on the property ladder because of the raised prices and all the houses being used to store grain and cattle. The young adults of London now all talk of moving out to the countryside to make some money, they don’t want to leave the city but, for them the only way of getting a living is to move to a rural area.

‘Whole areas of London are now ghost towns during the week.’ Said Sebastian, a bright fifteen year old ‘It’s those second home bastards, they don’t realise that their holiday home means that proper local people can’t get homes. Not that I want to stay in the city, there is no future for it. My family have lived in Notting Hill for generations working in PR and consultancy but there is no chance of that for me.’

‘People move to the city because they have this dream of an urban life with cars and smog and things but the moment they get here they change it. They idyllic view of living in somewhere like Maida Vale doesn’t match up to the reality – cars smell, but they don’t want that so they get them banned and it’s the locals that suffer. I hate everyone who has a second home in the city.’

Sebastian’s words echo down a Sloane Street that is forever changed, gone are the exciting clothes shops and fashion boutiques to be replaced by yet more places selling animal feed and post offices. The latter makes Sebastian spit with rage

‘Post offices? Why is it that every part of London has to have a post office? It’s disgusting, it seems almost every day another of our essential upmarket delicatessens is closed down to make way for yet another bloody Post office.’

With that Sebastian marches off towards Knightsbridge. We all have to wonder what sort of future people like him will have, and if the government will realise in time that this precious urban way of life needs to be preserved. Even the Cityside Alliance’s march didn’t make a difference, so what will?

For Sebastian’s sake I hope something is done soon.

The View from the vale

I've managed to find one of the cables I was looking for so I can plug my camera phone into my computer. This means I can share photos with ease now but I'd still like to know where that other pesky cable is hiding.

Anyway, here are some photos of my grandmother's house for those readers who enjoy looking at almost sickeningly twee places. This photo was taken from the front garden which is mostly used for games of croquet and playing 'What's the time Mr Wolf?'.

The house has good gardens for playing all sorts of games that involve chasing cousins around or hide and seek and there is a pond on the other side of the house where whole generations of newts have been closely examined by family members over the years.


When you go in the main door you will notice the stick basket. Inside are a collection of mallets, shooting sticks and various other paraphinala. Most of the walking sticks are fairly pockmarked as they have been used as they have been involved in more than a few pirate style battles and rescues of princesses.

There is an archaic pair of wooden tennis racquets for use in the tennis court. The courts are grass ones and are played on perhaps three or four times a year. They used to be played on even less because my grandfather decided that around the tennis courts would be an excellent place to put some bee hives so any balls going out of play would result in an army of angry bees joining in the fun. The hives are gone now , but tennis always plays second fiddle to bothering newts.

This is a picture from the small drawing room that leads off the kitchen. I always liked this room when I was small because it was where you went to draw pictures of dragons and play with glue while still being comfortingly close to the adults talking in the kitchen. The Piano was only for accomplished players, amateurs were made to play the less good piano that lived in the barn. The barn isn't actually used for any farming related things, it's for having parties in and running around whooping. It's also full of cobwebs and scary pictures so it's excellent for making yourself scared on halloween.

The bear brings back lots of fond memories for me, it is a ride on bear with a cable you can pull to cause it to make bear noises. This pre-dates computer chips, and it looks like it pre-dates the British Empire. it's so old so I have no idea what produces the strange 'Wrough' noise it makes, it's probably some special device made out of ivory and panda hearts.

For some reason all the books in this room are French. I'm not sure why you would put only French books in a room where young types are allowed to play around with scissors and pens but there you go.

Anyway I hope you have enjoyed this little tour down memory lane and into Dorset.

Oscar Wilde and the family shoot

Well that was quite a weekend. First on to the important business of my Grandmother. Despite having something rather wrong with her kidneys she seems okay at the moment. Like an episode of House she has some sort of virus that is making her kidneys rather unhappy but the exact nature of it is unknown.

When I visited her she was rather jolly this is because her three favourite things are available in hospital

1)Drugs. My grandmother loves taking drugs, in a 1960s housewife sort of way. When the doctors offered her sleeping pills she could barely contain her glee.

2)Eaves Dropping. The woman opposite my grandmother in hospital is having a to-do with her daughter. Listening to this drama unfolding was making my grandmother's eyes positively sparkle.

3)Nice Beds. It is traditional for my grandmother to receive guests while propped up in bed surrounded by the papers, radio 4 going on quietly in the background and ideally a dog and a cat lounging around like cushions. The latter two are not available in hospital but the bed adjusts so matriarchs can sit up and read about the situation in Kenya (which she pronounces Keeen-ya).

The nurses in the hospital were amazed that at the age of 88 my grandmother was hosting dinner parties and going for long walks with her dog so while the doctors still don't know exactly what is wrong with her she did seem in very good sorts.

This weekend was also the event of the family shoot. It's a mass gathering of the family more than a serious sporting event. Every bird that is shot (and they are very few - there are only about two shots of note in the family) will be turned into some sort of delicious meal. It (the bird) will have had a terribly nice life of scampering around the Dorset hills in specially grown crops designed for it to live in.

The shoot was the smallest it has been for a while, various parts of the family were off doing things in other countries but as always it was a joy to catch up with cousins, second cousins and various 3rd and 4rd cousins who have now been absorbed into the fold.

The day is split into three main parts, in the early morning the hills are covered in cousins as they beat, or shoot depending on their position in the family. After about four drives across various hills everyone has a mid-morning snack of hot soup (wild mushroom this time) and sausages. It's the thought of these hot snacks that keeps you going as you stumble through fields of kale or over hedgerows.

After the snack there is a final drive through woodland that is extremely tough going and like being in the Great Escape. You stumble over trees and things while gun-fire goes on around you and various surprised animals - including deer - scamper in your wake. After this long and exhausting 'walk with guns' everyone returns to the house for a lovely meal made up by various members of staff.

It was on the way back to this that my Great Uncle Rupert accused me of looking like a Wildian figure in my tweeds and tie, which in turn caused another distant uncle called Tom to remark that it was probably genetic as we were relatives of a Mr Oscar Wilde. I wasn't aware of this connection previously but it's a pleasant surprise.

The day was finished off by visiting my grandmother in hospital, after causing myself a cracker of a head injury as I managed to prang my head on the door of the Range Rover and made an awful lot of blood come out of it. Thankfully it was only a flesh wound so after a bit of bleeding and a sort of bandage I'm fine although it does appear that TCP is now my new fragrance.