Open the door. Look down: see the ginger cat with sky-blue blue collar who makes a bed of the planter by the front step. She flees, hissing, down the garden path – follow her but watch your hair; the thorny arms of the rose bush are overgrown and reach overhead in a long arch. The postman caught his forehead on one last week and gave me a telling off, which I was determined not to feel guilty about because A) it’s not my fault that plants grow and B) he should watch where he’s going.
You reach the pavement – turn right. It’s quiet here. Pass by the bins where I have previously deposited vapes when trying to quit; I put them in the neighbour’s bin because on previous attempts to quit, using my own bin, I had after several hours found myself mad with nicotine-lust and taken them out again, which of course feels terrible both emotionally and physically.
Take a right: you have to, there’s no other way to turn. Follow the street past the barbershop that I am convinced is money laundering front, then pass the blue student house and follow the slow curve left. You will see a house with a large dog outside it behind a fence, and a row of scuffed Lime bikes that are always lying down rather than standing because unseen youths in the nighttime like to kick them over like dominos. There is usually an explosion of plastic scraps and old food along the path somewhere on this route as well. I dislike the mess when I’m walking to work, it always makes me sigh – but it’s nobody’s fault. The foxes get everywhere.
Now there’s a traffic light. Press it and it changes instantly to green, very handy. Up the road to the left there is usually a collection of old Caribbean people drinking and smoking in the street outside the lawless off license, which is invariably full of chaos; I only go there when I’m in dire straits – hungover and desperately needing pasta sauce. So don’t turn left at the lights – turn right, and walk past the Jet petrol station with the large extended migrant family who wear dark hoodies and wellington boots and wash cars there all day, every day, even in the finger-snapping cold of January. The floor is always wet and you have to hop over puddles on the forecourt. Three different Indian men work alternately in the garage; I know they’re Indian because they do the Indian head wobble when I say thank you. They don’t speak amazing English but they call me bossman, which is endearing.
Past the garage there is a low wall where an old man with a grey beard always sits. He’s there when I go out to work, he’s there when I come back. I have never said hello to him because he looks a little intense and I’m worried he might say something mad. But I’m planning on smiling at him next time I pass – inspired by the light spread by the smiling girl last week. Maybe it’ll cheer him up.
Over the road from the old man’s wall there’s a Black church, and on Sundays hundreds of people congregate outside in beautiful pastel suits and floral dresses. Children run around and grandparents pull up and climb delicately out of cars with walking sticks. It always makes me feel very safe and calm.
Next there’s the underpass – two in a row. I don’t like going under the underpass because it drips, and the pigeon guana on the floor tells you which tiles to avoid. It’s a long stretch of nothing and I always feel impatient to get to the next interesting sight. Bagel shops and a nail salon once you emerge, on the right hand side of the road, and on the left – where we are going – there’s a gate leading down an alleyway that only opens after 5pm. It’s a shortcut. Let’s pretend it’s 5pm and go down there now.
More puddles and a little step – and if you look closely at the drainpipe on the left hand wall, you’ll see a little black and white sticker with a QR code that says ‘Ah! Si seulement j’etais bilingue!’ This is my sticker: I put it there in spring, when I was trying my hand at guerrilla marketing for my teaching business. I put around 200 stickers advertising my teaching website around Brixton and Clapham. I never got one email.
The elevated railways around London are built on giant stone arches like Roman viaducts. Within these arches you’ll find little shops and businesses; I presume the rent is cheaper than elsewhere because every few minutes a train thunders overhead and rumbles the walls – and then there’s the damp to contend with, and the musky smell. There’s a bar in this alley, and a mysterious gospel church – I’ve never been in, but a few times a week I walk past and hear joyful singing. You sometimes see people slipping out of a little metal door wearing spectacular white dresses and headbands.
At the end of the alley is Blocfit, my climbing gym and safe haven. It occupies two arches. I know most of the staff and the owner, Dave: when I come in he says ‘Hey Dan’, which is only a small thing but makes a huge difference to my day. They have sofas and they serve coffees and they recently bought a beer tap, and upstairs there’s two giant chalky climbing areas and a sauna, and downstairs there’s a gym that I spend several hours in every week. Out the back there’s a seating area with tables and chairs and some 30 bonsai trees that live outside and drink rainwater. The people in the gym dress in baggy clothes and have shaggy hair and wiry frames and tattoos, and they sip espressos in between climbs and talk about interesting things.
Over the road from Blocfit is Tesco Extra, the shop I go to between big shops. There’s a man with big bushy hair who sits outside it about 50% of the time. I’ve never asked his name but I know him; when I have money to spare I ask if he wants anything to eat. He always asks for a scratch card. I always say he can have the scratch card but would he also like some food, and he always says no – as though the latter might lessen his chances of acquiring the former, even when I make it clear he can have both. I bought him a banana once as a surprise but he politely declined. When I don’t have money I feel awkward walking past him, but one time when I passed I said ‘I’ve got nothing today, I’m sorry’ and he said ‘Don’t worry mate, it’s alright’. Sometimes we just say hello to each other, but sometimes he looks like he doesn’t want to talk, which is understandable, so I leave him alone. I should ask his name, now that I think about it.
Head left – another underpass, more guano, more dripping railway water. Black barbershop on the left, afro cuts – green interior, people hang out there during the day. Bus stops, bins, parked cars – a long walk to Brixton lined with trees and houses that, when built, would have been for wealthy middle-class Victorians, and are now divided between many people and have curtains that hang lopsided. It’s still pretty in the summer.
Cross the road. Brixton soup kitchen on the left corner. Over the road, a big housing project. People congregate on the grass here sometimes; they light fires and drink and play loud music, but it’s not the sort of party any passersby would want to get involved in. Then there’s a long row of shops down Coldharbour Lane, and another car wash on the left. Morleys’ Chicken – £2.50 burgers; they know my order by heart when I go in now, which is embarrassing because I only ever call in at 2am after a boozy night somewhere.
A pizza place, a Vietnamese place, an Ethiopian place, a nail salon, a hairdressers, two cornershops. Keep going. Cross the road. Now you’re in Brixton proper and the colour explosion is about to begin. Pass Brixton House, a theatre, on your left. On the right, just after the hot yoga class and the English school, see Brixton Village: an H-shaped covered market with interconnected alleys. The word ‘bustling’ was invented for this. Festoons and bunting, flags of every nation – gig stickers, posters for bands and reggae parties and hip hop clubs with photographs of buxom women in carnival dress.
Pick either leg of the H, it doesn’t matter where you begin. What do you want to eat? Jamaican jerk chicken, Colombian arepas, Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Mexican, Persian, Brazilian, French, Italian, Ethiopian, Lebanese, Ghanaian, Nepalese momos, – seafood, burgers, tacos, wines and cheeses, dumplings, wraps, saki – or are you in the mood for art? Would you like to buy a painting, or a print? Maybe some leafy cheese plants, a wicket basket, a tea set, or a colourful African dress? Maybe you just want fresh fruit and vegetables – avocados the size of your heart, plantain, lychee, dragonfruit – and fresh fish too, eels and molluscs and red snapper – stuff you won’t find in the chain supermarkets, and above it all there’s music in every genre, record shops with reggae vinyls booming through chest-high speakers that rattle you as you pass. Walking through it all makes me think of Star Wars, of Blade Runner, of science fiction.
Top left of the H – that’s the way out. Little alleyway past a couple of vape shops, and you’re on Electric Avenue – the street from the song, a place of historic struggle and unrest. Expect to see addiction around here. Expect to see drunkenness and bent over people in corners fiddling with narcotic equipment. You get used to it. The zigzag of cultures is overwhelming in the beginning; it’s normal to feel on edge. Gentrification overlaps with poverty. An Argos. A board game bar. A burger stand. A nail salon. Billboards for the latest album, arena tours – phone booths with business cards for call girls in lingerie. Graffiti and the drip from the underpass – Lime bikes and electric bikes and petrol scooters, fishmongers calling, dubious stains on the pavement, Five Guys down an alleyway behind the old clock tower and commuter trains flying overhead. Phone shops, carpet stalls, people sitting on the floor, cigarette smoke, vape smoke, fresh fruit and vegetables.
Turn onto Brixton Road – the station’s just there. There’s an old bank I like, built grand and white one or two hundred years ago, sitting squat beneath the railway someone built on top of it – must have closed down long ago, entrance graffitied. You’ve got your chain shops here – dull budget brands no fun to name – nothing independent except the Ritzy Cinema up at Windrush Square – I went to a storytelling night there once but was too scared to perform.
Outside Brixton station is intense – the most intense part of the walk. A handful of unwell people can make a lot of noise, and a lot of mess. You’re forced to harden yourself to it; you’re not qualified to help. No police, sometimes paramedics. Incense on the breeze, and hot dogs, and the boom of reggae through a crunching speaking cranked to breaking. Live music beside the street lamps covered in Lost Mary stickers – guitar buskers, drummers, rappers, gospel singers – or else street preachers proclaiming the end, calling for salvation.
Go into the station – down the stairs – under the mural – weave the commuters and pass through the ticket gates. Down the escalators, into the warm tunnels, hop on a waiting train – Brixton is the end of the line, and there’s always a seat. Take the train north. Four stops and you’re at Buckingham Palace.