Sinful Sunday: One Year

It’s a year to the day since we moved to Croydon and bought this house. Clearly a lot has happened since then! Even beyond its direct victims and their friends/families, I don’t think any of us will emerge from the Covid pandemic completely unscarred (for every person beset by loneliness, there’ll be another trapped with people they hate; for every job loss, there’s a role changed beyond recognition by home working, etc etc), but I have no problem admitting that we’ve been luckier than most, and our living situation is a big part of that.

We have space here, space we never had in Brixton, and we also have a garden. Especially as parents of a very active toddler, both those things have been hugely beneficial where our mental health is concerned. To our surprise, we’ve also been helped massively on that front by Croydon itself.

Ah yes, unlovely Croydon. Much like unlovely Swindon, which I also came to feel a deep affection towards (in a way) during my two years there, our new home is an easy punchline for jokes about, well, shit places to live. And the resemblances don’t end there. In both cases, brutalist architecture, a moribund town centre, and a parochialism among sections of the population that’s easy to mock, are more than offset by qualities that the casual visitor may miss.

In Croydon’s case, what I’ve appreciated more than anything in our 12 months here (especially during the various lockdowns) is how much access we have to space. Parks, woods, downs, you name it – the London Borough of Croydon has them all! And unlike their more central counterparts, many of those big outdoor areas feel distinctly suburban or even rural, rather than urban. No surrounding streets with tall townhouses or blocks of flats. No office workers juggling mobile phones and Pret sandwiches as they power-walk through their lunch breaks. No pollution that – on certain days – you can actually taste.

Even better, if you really want to get out into the country (or at least to somewhere even more tenuously part of ‘London’ than Croydon), it’s a 20-minute drive rather than a 60-minute one; an impulsive weekend afternoon outing, rather than something you feel the need to plan in advance. Liv and I both grew up in small towns and villages, and have always imagined that one day we’d return to somewhere a little quieter than Islington or Clapham, so right now this feels like almost the perfect halfway house. London, but not really. Countryside-adjacent, but with Oyster travel and chicken shops on every other street.

Since starting my new job, the desire to make the most of those big outdoor spaces has grown even stronger, despite the crappy weather. With no delineation between work environment and home environment, and a garden that’s (temporarily) lost its bucolic summer appeal, those parks, woods and downs feel like they hold the key to staying at least somewhat sane throughout this all.

Back in Brixton, the answer to that restlessness would’ve been another turn around Clapham Common or Brockwell Park; maybe a drive over to Battersea Park or a Tube down to Tooting Commons. Here the options are almost limitless, and – as much as I love those roomy Zone Two parks – far more interesting. On Thursday I blocked out two hours in my work diary and took a long lunch break. I drove for 15 minutes to a car park in the south-east of the borough, and walked to the Addington Hills Viewing Platform, a truly spectacular spot even on a cloudy day, from which you can see all the way up to Canary Wharf and the City, a good 12 miles away.

After eating my M&S sandwich (you can take the boy out of the City…), I descended into the woods, and wandered back and forth along the criss-crossing trails that connect the Hills themselves. It was damp, but mild – almost spring-like – and in the whole 45 minutes I was out there, I saw no more than a dozen people.

At one point, I looked around and saw only trees, mostly bare but beautiful in the weak sunshine that occasionally leaked through the clouds and fell between them. On impulse, I found a low branch and hung my phone off it. My raincoat went on the ground next to the same tree, along with my jumper and t-shirt. Belt hanging loose, I hit the timer on my camera and backed away a few paces.

For once, the smile in the resulting photo wasn’t forced, or even artfully arranged. I dropped my jeans and ankles to my boxers, and looked past the camera to the woods around me. Thought about how lucky we’ve been in both a macro and micro sense. Lucky to buy when we did – and where. Lucky to stay healthy – and mostly happy. Lucky that we have each other as a family – and an environment that for all its drawbacks and dangers (hello Friday night stabbings!), has by complete accident turned out to be exactly what we needed.

What a fucking year.