Hackney is apparently the worst place in Britain to live, according to the wise minds who produce a property show on Channel 4. Obviously, people who make property shows are idiotic, especially when they employ a presenter only because her more famous sister is pregnant. Allsop? Female? You'll do.
And also obviously, the critieria, while supposedly consisting of crime statistics, “lifestyle,” environment and educational facilities are actually only “how many poor/black/blackandpoor people live there.”
Nonetheless, the show has caused uproar at Hackney Town Hall. Yesterday Hackney residents were urged to wear “I HEART Hackney” badges during “a day of civic pride.” The headline of the Hackney Gazette reads “Lay Off! We love Hackney!” And for once, I agree with the Hackney Gazette. But not because of property prices. Or because I love the Hackney Gazette for reporting stories about burglars who were disturbed mid-burgle and “shouted out in an East European accent.” (A Bulgarian grunt? a Serbian “oi!”?) Or because of our intrepid police force who presumably with some dexterity managed to figure out that Sean Adrian Manning, 29, had hidden cannabis between his buttocks (headline: “Drugs man's bum rap”). Or even because I live on a quiet tree-lined street 100 metres from a nice pub and only pay a reasonable amount of rent to do so.
But because this morning, after forcing myself out of my warm bed, I walked down the road and within 15 minutes of waking up, I was swimming in a brand new Olympic size outdoor heated swimming pool. Ten lanes, hardly any people, the sun shining, the steam rising off the heated water. For the four or so years I've lived here, the lido has always looked like this:
Now it looks like this:
Afterwards, a coffee on a bench under a plantation of huge and magnificent 350-year-old plane trees, on sunny London fields. You don't get that in Winchester.