Dunoon Gardens (1)

I’ve lived around here for twelve years now and I spent a lot of that time walking the streets, a little lost inside my head.  I thought I knew every road in the area, at least by vague recollection, but I’d never heard of Dunoon Gardens before.

Which is because it kind of doesn’t exist.

Dunoon Gardens is a small run of Victorian purpose built maisonettes about halfway along Devonshire Road.  For about a dozen front doors, spanning across a side road, Devonshire Road is suspended and Dunoon Gardens exists in its place, like some sort of deposition.  On the opposite side of the road Devonshire still reigns, but for that short run a cuckoo has made its nest. 

This, as the agent was keen to point out several times, makes it exclusive.

The flat was beautiful.  It was immaculate with sash windows, original fire places, heavy wooden floorboards, meticulous coving along the ceilings.  It was very pretty, but had it had a fairly major drawback:  Space. 

The second bedroom was tiny, unsuitable for much more than a temporary home for a small child or a junk room.   The kitchen was equally weenie.  The work surfaces’ area was comparable to what I had in my studio flat.  Cooking for the two of us or entertaining people with dinner is what we do.  I’d dreamt of a big kitchen, of space to store random exotic ingredients, to not be caught out by pretentious recipes in the Guardian’s Saturday supplement.  I didn’t want to fuss around myself in a corridor to the garden getting frustrated and slapdash. 

The flat made me guilty.  Complain about lack of space felt utterly self-centred, for what did I want space for?  Just to write.  I don’t need a dedicated study – I could share with a spare bedroom or, as I currently do, occupy a corner of a kitchen-diner.  The latter works since in theory I’ll be writing, cooking or eating so I’m unlikely to be disturbed.  But still, it’s just so indulgent.  My writing, while important to me, brings in no money.  It has no real purpose – other than, arguably, stopping my mind eating itself.  Why does it warrant a space, a life, of its own?  Why is it more important that any of my girlfriend’s interests?  And yet the flat riled me because it didn’t offer anywhere obvious.

Outside, it was hard to be certain because of the dark, but the garden seemed very small too.  High fences added to the claustrophobia.  There was little room for bike storage let alone inquisitive cats.

1992:  Martin walked through the door of his flat and let the door close on the world he’d left behind.  Home, it was where he came at the end of the day to forget about everything else.

‘Hello,’ he called out.  Years ago he used to bundle through the door, all cheers and smiles knowing he’d be greeted with enthusiasm, affection even.  From the kitchen Janey grunted what he took to be an acknowledgement, but could even have been muted belittlement.  Five seconds back home and he was in trouble.

In the kitchen Janey was busy rescuing dinner.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ he said.

‘Do you need to be so loud when you come in?  I’ve only just got him off to sleep.’

‘Sorry, I just like you to know it’s me.’

‘Who else would it be?  Coming through the door with a bloody key?’

Martin didn’t have the strength to argue.  It was gone seven o’clock and he felt drained by the two bus journeys and a ten minute walk to travel barely four miles; sometimes he thought he may as well live on the moon.  ‘Meeting over ran. Sorry.  We just...  There never seems to be enough time.’

‘Jesus, Martin,’ Janey began to serve the food.  ‘You don’t work for the UN.  You’re not trying to establish world peace.  It’s just the local council.  In refuse management.’  She handed him his plate.  Sausages and mash again.  Greasy, thin sort of meat wrapped in a rubbery sleeve.  Lumpy potatoes and too much of them. Broccoli that was breaking apart, boiled to long, dissolving in the congealed salty gravy, dried and mixed with lukewarm water. 

They walked from the kitchen to the front room and turned the television on.  They sat on the sofa and ate while watching A Question of Sport.  Martin balanced his plate on the curve of his belly to stop the gravy sloping onto his shirt.  The programme was meaningless.  Happy chirpy washed out people answered trivial questions in a jocular buddy fashion.  It wasn’t even funny, more like mildly amusing.  They made the sort of inane comments people trapped on a six hour coach journey made to pass the time.  Life was nice like that, Martin thought.

After he’d choked down the last mouthful, he said:  ‘Can I go and take a look at him?’

‘No,’ Janey didn’t break her gaze from the television.  It was the Good Life now.  A show repeated from fifteen years previously when the world hadn’t been any better no matter how much fluff they stuck on it.  ‘He’s been a nightmare all day.  Let him sleep.’

‘I’ll just pop my head round,’ he stood up.  ‘I won’t make a sound.’

‘No.’

He sat back down again.

They spent the rest of the evening watching television.  Janey got up to wash up.  Martin got up to get a can of Skol.  He drank it even when it didn’t taste nice because it was cheap.  Janey didn’t like watching the news – ‘if I want to know what’s going on, I’ll look out the window, thanks very much’ – so after a while they went to bed.  Martin lay there in the darkness and willed sleep to come.  His dreams, at least, were in colour even if nothing else was.     

My girlfriend liked it, though.  She was seduced by its prettiness and ceded to my vague, ill-defined objections, perhaps recognising that I wouldn’t bring myself to verbally lament a room for a desk of my own.  It also carried what felt like a hefty price tag too.  We’d have to buy into its exclusivity, to become a member of a select club of residents rebelling against the rest of the world.  Or Forest Hill at any rate. 

Still, we didn’t make an offer and I was relieved because there was more at work in my head han just a concern about space.

I have an irrational dislike of Devonshire Road.  I always have and Dunoon Gardens may pretend to not be part of it they are, really.  It forms a link between Honor Oak Park and Forest Hill full of scuttling traffic bouncing over sharp humps in the road; a deceptively long, mish-mash of a street that frequently feels bleaker than its neighbours. 

Honor Oak Park, the nearest station, is in zone three while Brockley and St John’s are the last stops in zone two on different lines.  It’s a psychological thing, but the further in you are the more public transport choices you have.  Out there, it’s one route or the bus.  Engineering works could leave you stuck at home for a weekend, scratching at the pristine walls.  Catford is just about reachable by foot, but the unpleasantness of the South Circular means that you’d have to be absolutely desperate to try.  The chances are you’d sulk it out at home, getting rankled at each other.  This isn’t just theory; I’ve lived around the corner before.  I liked that flat on Whatman Road, but I did feel out on a limb, at the edges of the city despite the ten miles plus of suburbia still to go before you hit the M25.

The Evening Standard loves Honor Oak Park – to the extent that it makes you suspicious about whether a member of the editorial team lives there.  It’s been talking it up at the new East Dulwich for years, full of yummy mummies and gastro pubs, delis and boutiques, except it isn’t really.  The parade of shops is too short to match Lordship Lane and they keep changing.  Except the Estate Agents, the newsagents and Gogi’s wines the whole parade has changed in the eight years since I last lived there.  In many ways that’s not surprising, but a high level of churn implies business optimism rather than a sustainable model.  Good pubs, in particular, are in short supply.  The Honor Oak Tavern over towards Blythe Hill is a great pub, if a long walk from Devonshire Road and the other two leave a lot to be desired.  When I lived there the Tavern had yet to be rescued from boarded up windows guaranteed fight hell and so I used to frequent the General Napier even though it too was terrible just mildly less threatening.  Its main positives were that I could see it out the back window from my flat and the single quirk of being a meeting point for a VW Camper van club meant occasionally bizarre conversations by beardy types, before beards were cool, could be overheard.  The Scottish landlord, whose face was a mix of burst blood vessels and too short a fuse, so I heard, disappeared one night with the meagre takings and was never heard of again.  It’s that sort of place.  Even those supposed to be charge bugger off the moment they get a better idea.

Besides, I mean, yummy mummies?  Spare me.  I didn’t say any of this at the time though, which turned out to be a bit of a mistake.