Twenty years ago today I urgently needed to find somewhere to live in London.
I'd just landed a new job here, indeed just signed the contract, and it seemed ludicrous to commute in every day from East Anglia when I could live far closer. This was the moment, this was the time to finally relocate to the greatest city on earth. But where to live?
I had a heck of a lot of London to choose from and was worried I might end up in the wrong bit. I came down a few times and explored, not the usual sights in the centre but several of the inner suburbs. I ventured down to Kennington and quickly decided against. I quite liked Camden but not enough to enquire further. I considered commuting in from Croxley but that felt like a copout. I even checked into the 16th floor accommodation office at the Barbican only to discover that their properties were entirely beyond my reach, and put that dream on the backburner forever.
Instead I decided to head east. I can't quite remember why but I suspect it was because I already lived that side of town, or maybe because the east had character and heritage, or most likely because it was cheap. This was 2001 when property wasn't quite so utterly unaffordable because turbo-gentrification had yet to happen. I was only looking to rent because I had to move fast and because there was no guarantee I'd still be around in a decade's time. I needed to find somewhere acceptable for two hundred and something pounds a week and then I could be a proper Londoner at last.
I put myself at the mercy of whatever Thursday 9th August had to offer. A week earlier and I might have been shown an entirely different selection of properties - a week later and they might all have gone. That day I met three estate agents who'd lined up six flats to show me, any of which I could have ended up living in. Twenty years later I've gone back to the five I turned down to see how different things might have been if I'd chosen to rent there instead.
My first estate agent escort was David, a cheery rotund bloke in a suit. He started by taking me to a property in Bow where the toilet was a disgrace, the kitchen windowless and the sofa was so retro-hideous it wouldn't have been out of place at Abigail's Party. Then he drove me to Hackney Road on the boundary between Hackney and Tower Hamlets where he showed me what initially looked like a row of single-storey shops. We entered down a narrow corridor, increasingly squished, to where the existing tenant was waiting in midday gloom. All I can remember is how dreary it was, and how terribly small, and how quickly I decided this absolutely wasn't for me.
Heading back I have trouble reconciling that memory with how things look now. The flats behind the shops look taller and a lot more pleasant, so maybe they weren't there at the time or maybe the flat I was shown was in fact the back of one of the shops. The parade's astonishingly gentrified now, including two artisanal coffee shops (for vegan croissants and acai bowls), a heavy metal vinyl store (notice on door: "Wear Mask, Spray Hands, Hail Satan"), a sustainable fashion pop-up and a carver of cutlery. The latter is the legendary BarntheSpoon, a bearded whittler who's devoted his life to functional sculpture and woodwork workshops. I very much doubt that this is somewhere I would still be living. Nearest station: Shoreditch (until 2006), Hoxton (from 2010)... bad choice
My second estate agent was Ben, a sharply-dressed Arsenal fan, who was based in Stratford back when this was the grim end of town and not an up-and-coming Olympic neighbourhood. He said he had two very different flats to show me and he wasn't kidding. The first was one of east London's earliest bespoke apartment blocks which had been planted between Woodgrange Park station and an Esso garage with ultra-convenient Tesco Express. The flat was halfway up on the 6th floor so had great views, but I remember being concerned it was rather small and wondering where I'd store my stuff. It also had a concierge, which in those days I thought an unnecessary novelty, so this was another to cross off my list.
Twenty years later the Lumiere Building is half-shrouded with scaffolding because it's got caught up in the cladding scandal. The exterior contains five different types of cladding that fail to conform to building regulations, only one of which (Aluminium Composite Material) the government is willing to compensate. The estimated replacement cost is £30,000 per leaseholder, and running late, and I can't imagine what it must be like to be living inside with a sheath of netting blocking all your natural light. A lucky escape. Nearest station: Woodgrange Park ...unreliably marginal
Ben's next target was in the heart of Canning Town. We drove there keeping up the football banter (yeah, we were so unlucky in the Cup this year), headed deep into an estate and pulled up at the end of a cul-de-sac. I remember thinking surely it can't be that, a ground floor terrace with a skip outside and a ropey-looking front door, and it was even worse inside. That was not a kitchen I ever hoped to call my own. In my diary I described the flat with the single word "horrid". It was almost as if Ben was testing me out at both ends of the rental spectrum to see which way I jumped.
Alas I have no recollection precisely where this flat was, having been driven there through unfamiliar streets. I've been back this week and walked round the locality trying to relocate my mental picture and the best I can do is this terrace at the end of Golden Plover Close. It's probably wrong, and what's more it's a lot closer to Custom House than Canning Town, although if I was an estate agent I might have overstated its location anyway. Glad I skipped it. Nearest station: Canning Town (cracking) or Custom House (not cracking yet)
My third estate agent was based on the Isle of Dogs and was called Jason, which is a true millennial estate agent's name and no mistake. He too had two divergent properties to show, starting with a flat round the back of a parade of shops on Manchester Road. It looked very council, as in unloved, although it was of a decent size inside. My verdict this time was "big but nasty", and very much not a reflection of my hoped-for go-getting London lifestyle. I declined.
The shopping parade still looks much the same, indeed the pharmacy, dry cleaners and newsagent (Confectionery Tobacco Travel Cards Bus Passes Cold Drinks Wine News & Mags) could easily be stuck in a timewarp. But the flats behind have had a considerable makeover since including the appearance of a fully accessible staircase extension, not to mention several adjacent smart new housing blocks that definitely weren't here in 2001. I'm not even sure the flat I looked round still exists, so it's just as well I didn't end up here. Nearest station: Island Gardens ...a bit peripheral
Jason's trump card was a gated development almost overlooking Greenwich. The flat I saw didn't have a river view, more a close-up over the car park, but it did have a very smart kitchen, wood flooring and plenty of space. It was alas too good, more the sort of flat a financial whizzkid on the up might have started out in. Also I had absolutely no need of a second bathroom, and it was £70 a week more than I could afford, and this was very much not for me.
I've walked past the back of Langbourne Place dozens of times during lockdown, and resented the railings that divide the smug within from us lowly souls on the promenade. On this occasion I walked round the front just in time to see the gates close after a resident drove out, and considered sneaking inside but wasn't certain I'd ever get out again. I'm glad I didn't end up somewhere shut away, not to mention shut away at the foot of the Isle of Dogs. Nearest station: Island Gardens ...ditto
In the end I went back to the very first flat David had taken me to, the one with the dodgy toilet, dark kitchen and horrid sofa, and put down a deposit. I knew I liked the area, although I hadn't realised I'd be living in what was once a medieval village so there was proper history to the place. The toilet turned out just to need a good clean, the kitchen I've learned to live with and although it took several years I did eventually persuade the landlord to replace the orange sofa. In terms of location, size, value and long-term stability I definitely picked the right flat to move into twenty years ago. The fact that the Olympics would be turning up on my doorstep a few years later was just the cherry on the cake, and this blog might well have died an early death had I plumped for E2, E7, E14 or E16. Nearest stations: Bow Church and Bow Road ...ideal
