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.