Sunday Paranoia

Trains on a Sunday can be frightening places... Not too many people there... Just scary ones... You stand on the platform, looking over your shoulder... They're sitting on the seats, looking rough... Don't look back... Don't let them hear you on the phone - your accent's too different... They hate difference...

The train's coming... You get on... There's a family of leering ugly chavs with a pitbull sitting over there... Get to the other end of the carriage... Sit amongst the old and the gentle-looking and the female... Stack the odds in your favour...

A young man gets on a few stops later... He's wearing sports gear... Laughing loud into a mobile... He's standing close to you... But wait, his voice is cheerful and moderate and his face looks friendly... He's talking to his girlfriend about dinner: chicken with salad... You're safe... He sounds like he's been off doing Sunday sports... Yes, very respectable... Your train leaves the station - there's graffiti on the archway - 'YOU'RE BEING WATCHED'...

It seems safer now... Just a few more stops... Past Stratford now... Chavs have got off... In the home straits... Liverpool Street the terminus is next... Get off quick... Don't tempt fate... Will the tube be safe? Will the tube be safe?

You stand up, ready to get off straight away and look at the passenger who's still sitting down on the next seat... He's reading a book with a lurid cover of a fascist looking policeman in riot gear firing a gun on a turquoise background... The book's called - 'Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said'... It seems scary for some reason...

The train pulls in... You get off... There's a reassuringly large number of people at the station... A hooded youth stomps past you as you near the ticket gates... You show no fear, but there's a sense of relief he didn't start anything... Get on the tube... Next stop Clapham... Then Brixton... Fearsome, unpredictable Brixton... Keep on going... You can make it...

As cities go, London is pretty safe. Just blend into a crowd, avoid lonely dangerous places and do your thing by day and you'll have no problems. Still, some areas are better than others. Paranoia about what could go wrong (loons with trainers and knives, loons with beards and bombs, loons with football colours and broken bottles) makes one choose where one lives quite carefully. If one can afford it.

The end result is the gentrified neighbourhood, that most maligned of places, at least by those who haven't the money to move there. Here the well-off go to breed, force up house prices and swamp the gastropubs with their kids, who turn the local state schools into de facto grammars or preps. Their names are infamous: Hoxton, Notting Hill, Islington, Clapham, and, ironically enough, bits of Brixton... Can you feel the bile rising yet? Yes, some people are more successful than others - and so the UK's national sport of envy and spite is engaged for yet another outing.

And yet what all these places have in common is a serene, empty calm. Even if the enclave is in relatively wild parts of town like West Kensington, these places bring such a sudden surge of placidity and lack of threat or CCTV, it hits you almost as hard as some of the rougher locals might. For the neo-yuppies at least know what anyone who's lived in a particularly godforsaken neighbourhood knows: sane, rational neighbours who don't have criminal records come at a premium. Being free from fear is a luxury item.

After doing what I had to in Clapham (again) I then headed off to Brixton. I had to change at Stockwell to get there, but the Victoria Line was down so I needed to get a bus. I walked past the shrine-memorial for Jean Charles De Menezes that's just outside the station's main entrance/exit. It's a permanent fixture now, a reminder of grievances that are far from resolved. And police who panicked and shot to death an innocent Brazilian electrician. Even armed men in kevlar get paranoid. You never know when danger may strike...

At the bus stop, I found myself being stared at by a black kid. He looked 15, but a bit short for his age, in dark street clothes and a white imitation New York Yankees cap. But maybe I was staring at him too? Or maybe we were staring at each other? Maybe, just maybe, we were sure the other was staring at us so felt justified in staring back. Or maybe he looked away just as I did. Paranoia is a funny thing. At times it's synchronised.

I got off at Brixton. The upmarket pubs are closing down and house prices are falling. Maybe it's time for the degentrification to begin and for the urban grot to reclaim parts of its realm once more like the jungle gobbles up old Mayan cities. It certainly seemed scarier than last time, but then again, I live in Dagenham and like to cast the first stone.

Nonetheless, Brixton still had its way with me. I was walking down Coldharbour Road. It was loud and rowdy like it's always been with my visits. Suddenly a man on a bike screeched past me. He stopped and looked back: he was a middle aged West Indian man, thin and wiry.

"Glasses, mate! GLASSES!"

He was looking rather smug, like he'd scored a moral victory by doing this. How dare I get in the way of his bicycle on the pavement? Bloody pedestrians.

"Sorry" I mumbled, and crossed the road. No point in picking a fight with a man who thinks you should be able to see behind you via some strange ESP ability or weird physical mutation. Who knows what he might do? Attack me with a plucked chicken or strip naked and smear himself with jam while screaming his father's name, perhaps. For there's always been a latent weirdness about Brixton. It's the Twilight Zone of South London, or maybe its answer to Wales.

Or maybe I was being paranoid.

Seeing a bus, I got on and sped away, if not from my fears then certainly from any encouragement.