Observations on the 'Hill

allypally.JPG
Originally uploaded by ambroseneville.

I've had a week in Winchester now, and Jack moves into my old room in Methuen Park today, so I thought I'd mark the occasion with a blog post about the 'Hill.

Muswell Hill
In short, the 'Hill was a swell place to live for the last 10 months, and certainly the nicest place in London that I got to live, and at by far the best price. There's something about that part of London that's generally very pleasant, with a sense of being self-contained and slightly villagey. During my time living there, we became quite attached to drinking at the Maid of Muswell (particularly during its short-lived spell of opening until Midnight), and at the Gatehouse in Highgate. Nice pubs make a hell of a difference to what you get out of your surrounding area, I always find.

Other things that I'll remember fondly include the pizza delivery service that Frank and I would use to get 18" beasts, delivered from somewhere in Tottenham (they had a two-mile delivery radius and every time we'd get a delivery, the receipt would show something like 1.98 miles, so we were just inside their catchment area. I suspect that this is a tradition that Frank and Jack will keep up. Boshed.

In terms of other culinary delights, I was pleased to see an Observer article a few weeks ago about Toff's by Maureen Lipman. Toff's is this great fish and chip restaurant in Muswell Hill that's run by a Greek family, led by the comic/menacing Costa. When we went there for my birthday, he was so insistent that Nohawk Dave's girlfriend, Sara, should eat fish, when she actually just wanted a pie, that it became quite embarassing. Still entertaining, though, and really very good fish, with unlimited top-ups of chips, which can't be a bad thing.

Other things I enjoyed about living in Muswell Hill were the views you could get over the rest of London. From Alexandra Palace (pictured), just around the corner from our house, or from the back window of Starbucks, you can get a really good vantage point, and make all sorts of visual connections between one area and another that central London's closed-in geography (and the fact that Londonders are all understandably pretty Underground-map-minded) wouldn't allow. The view from Ally Pally at night is particularly spectacular - you can see Canary Wharf and all sorts of other landmarks lit up.

Obviously I'll miss the old house as well. I feel privileged to have lived there, as their first tenant, and although living in an old building had its challenges (mice invasions, being full of someone else's possessions, fluctuating temperatures etc), in general I had an amazing time living there. David Liddell (the organist who comes to the house to play the organ-in-situ most days) became a good friend, and I feel that I owe him a lot, in terms of his hospitality, good nature, and patience at accommodating new people in a house that had a lot of history for him. David's guide dogs were always good fun too, having never been spent much time near large pets like that before. Campbell, the first dog, was very gentle and loveable, and Doge, the second dog while I was there, was a bit young and over-enthusiastic, which was always good for a laugh when he went for Frank's crotch.

I'm going to miss sharing a flat with Frank as well, and I guess I probably won't ever get to share living space with a close friend again, until the point at which Naomi and I get married and move in together. This might all sound a bit overly-nostalgic, but I thought I'd write it anyway, as these are the sorts of things that really matter to me. We had more than our fair share of stupid jokes in that house, and I'm really pleased that Jackie's going to be taking over the tenancy, which I hope will mean me revisiting fairly frequently.

In the next installment, I'll write about my "new" life, in Winchester.

"Normal is great"

Those of you in the UK may have seen the current slick ad campaign of the online bank More Than, which spotlights their insurance products.

Its tagline is "Normal is great", and I've had this in-mind this week as I've battled with an excruciating toothache. Well, two trips back to Cardiff later - no, I haven't registered with a London NHS dentist; we do live in the real world here, after all - I'm back to 'normal' and actually really happy as a result.

This reminds me of one of my favourite passages of Schopenhauer's 'On the Suffering of the World' where he describes suffering as being a noticeable, and therefore positive, event, which breaks with our 'normal' state of happiness. Suffering is the -1 to our natural state of 0, if you like, and this is why it's our lot in this world to remember the pangs of unhappiness more easily than a distant memory of happiness. I agree with this (and most other things I've read by him), but I must say in the short term after an uncomfortable event, the sense of relief and euphoria are wonderful.