Suburban buildings

Well, today is a pause in the fairly frantic activity of the week. I was so tired yesterday I could hardly do anything without it feeling like I was carrying a heavy weight. OK today though. So what did I do, and what was I meant to do?
Plans included taking more photos of the path behind my garden (did), mowing the front lawn (not yet) and carrying on with the painting (not yet but it's only 3.25). Instead once I'd posted the photos on flickr looked through some others and found a fan in Montreal. Now The only experience I have of Canada is an afternoon going round Niagara Falls so it's not very familiar to me. But weirdly the crew who came here on Monday were French Canadians from Montreal, and now I've seen where they come from I'd say it's one of the only places I'd yet live in besides the UK. I expect the photographer did what I do and selected many of the nicer places as we all know what slums look like and I'd rather not see even more on photos. But each nice place is different and we can't visit them all so share our photos. I have selected some here before to show examples of the contrasts. London certainly has the worst places I've ever seen. Walthamstow, Harlesden, Edmonton and many many more would frighten off anyone from an affluent suburb but (besides having little choice financially) attract millions of immigrants. Many move to better areas when they can afford to but I know some who are so used to the most degenerate places they are happy to call them home.

It's a mixture here like marble cake, the trip from one end of my old road to the other starts with the most affluent part of the world (from a recent survey) to some of the nastiest places I've ever seen in East Finchley. It was 1/4 of a mile from my house, but the odd walks I had in the deepest parts of the slum areas left me feeling like I'd had a nightmare. If anyone local wants to take a walk on and around Long Lane they'll see some of the roughest areas with people who could easily populate a zoo within a mile of some of the country's best housing. And the funny thing was the slums were there first. A mile away in 1910 there were fields. When purchased for a planned community within 25 years a rural collection of some of the best examples of Arts and crafts and art deco architecture were spread out with trees and parks in between. Then you had the Victorian terraces with railway arches and grotty corner shops and industrial workshops and factories which hadn't changed since Dicken's time. There were two massive factories, one went in the 80s and one a little later, which is now yet another housing estate.

There was even a house with hens in the garden and it was just the sort of scene in the post war films of how poor Londoners used to live before the slum clearance programme and the blitz destroyed some of the worst housing. But East Finchley not only missed that (besides one road) but when the newer housing was built (including over many of the remaining fields) the most eastern bloc style monoliths were put up, attracting all the criminal elements and not safe to walk through at any time of day or night (though I often did). Where I live now is far more typical of lower middle class 1930s suburban Middlesex (as it was then). Rows of almost identical houses, with spaces and trees between the better ones, and crammed together in terraces for the others. But ultimately, except for the architect designed ones, it's all there for money and the appearance was never considered, just the maximum returns for the least money. So standard designs of quick and easy houses to spread over miles of farmland, and now where big houses used to be, are squeezed into the smallest possible areas and then people wonder why it takes so long to get there, park and queue for everything. If you turn London into the equivalent of Gdansk or Mexico City that's exactly what'll happen to it. As other third world countries 'develop' (if you believe the hype) England reverts slowly but surely towards third world status. Soon all the Brits will be off to Poland and Albania as it's got a better standard of living than here. I may not be alive to see it, but if you are, you saw it here.