Sarf London
I’ve just started re-reading Wise Children, Angela Carter’s other showbiz novel. Here’s how the narrator describes our city:
Once upon a time, you could make a crude distinction, thus: the rich lived amidst pleasant verdure in the North speedily whisked to exclusive shopping by abundant public transport while the poor eked out miserable existences in the South in circumstances of urban deprivation condemned to wait for hours at windswept bus-stops while the sounds of marital violence, breaking glass and drunken song echoed around and it was cold and dark and smelled of fish and chips. But you can’t trust things to stay the same. There’s a diaspora of the affluent, they jumped into their diesel Saabs and dispersed throughout the city. You’d never believe the price of a house round here, these days.
Not quite the same as this, but I happened to see both on the same day.
Hi Andrew, yes Wise Children is a good South London novel set around Brixton, IIRC there’s a Bards Road in it which I always assumed was Shakespeare Road in Brixton.