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Hendon is a place on Earth

This, then, is how we were brought up, my older brother, Anthony, my younger sister, Tamara, and me. A Hendon childhood, buying records in Hounsom’s on Watford Way and stationery in Batty’s nearby; playing tennis and mini golf in Shirehall Park; going camping with the 7th Hendon Scout group; holidaying in British seaside towns and in cottages on windy moors; learning about British kings and queens; having Mum read us stories about Paddington and Winnie-the-Pooh.

My parents had a full social life but also a simple one — once a week or so, a couple of friends round for dinner or cake. The company they most enjoyed was each other’s. An evening in eating (inexplicably) boiled eggs in tinned curry sauce with rice; a morning trip setting off in the car to the coffee bar attached to the local supermarket. Suburban life.

Life after having survived the Holocaust, the Gulag, the Bloodlands.

I have a memory (doubtless edited, as memories always are) of Danny the Fink insisting that the British suburbs are indeed that heaven. Not that real heaven of unparalleled joy etc, but the apotheosis of the human experience at least. Simply because they are that petit bourgeois life where nothing very much – other than love, life, family, children – ever really happens.

3 thoughts on “Hendon is a place on Earth”

  1. Simply because they are that petit bourgeois life where nothing very much – other than love, life, family, children – ever really happens.

    What if they’re the suburbs from a Pet Shop Boys song tho.

  2. 30 odd years ago, I used to work at the Police College in Colindale. Even then the area was a bit of a dump, but the girlfriend and I managed to find a nice Italian restaurant. We were the only Goyim in the place !

  3. having survived the Holocaust, the Gulag, the Bloodlands.

    Only to see suburbia deliberately destroyed by Tony Blair, Jack Straw and 13 years of left-wing conservativism.

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