So, farewell then, Mr Pooter
The area of London in which I live is relatively unknown to history. Okay, 'Dr' Crippen resided locally (although the house in which remains were found in the cellar has long since vanished). But the other figure for whom the locality is remembered, if at all, is Mr Pooter, the eponymous 'Nobody' of Diary of a fame.
When I moved here, the area had been gently gentrifying for some while and has continued to do so.
We are led to ask, however, how much further can this process go?
Around the corner there is a small parade of shops, which used to be the basic sort of thing one would expect. When I first moved in there were two 'corner shops' (one of which was not actually on a corner), a greengrocer, an offlicence, a paper shop, a laundrette, a butchers and a betting shop. The butchers and the greengrocers have gone, one corner shop closed, the other expanded into a small supermarket operation and appears to have absorbed the functions of the offlicence.
Several years ago, a wee upscale food shop opened on one corner, and still doesn't open every day of the week (it is the retail outlet of a small catering firm). Nonetheless, they have expanded into the shop next door (which, to the best of my recollection, had been boarded up for decades) to establish a cafe, which seems to be pulling in the punters.
Next door to that, another shop which had been an empty shell for a very long time has opened to sell upmarket children's clothes.
The hairdresser which opened next door closed down within a short space of time, but has re-opened and possibly rebranded.
The betting shop closed some years ago and so far nothing has reopened on that site.
And the large pub, just around the corner, which when I moved here was a gloomy spit and sawdust sort of place, then closed and reinvented itself as a studenty venue (there are some large halls of residence near here), had several closures due to protests about noise and disorder from neighbours, and has been closed and having some kind of renovation work done for months and months, has finally reopened -
As a gastropub type of enterprise, under the same management as a well-reputed gastropub in another part of North London.
Lupin Pooter has probably been down there already.
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