It wasn't any surprise that this section of the walk was the most pleasant so far. Putney Heath and Wimbledon Common together form one of the largest open spaces in London while Richmond Park, where it would not seem out of place to encounter a stray sheep, is the largest urban park in Europe. Yet this section of the walk was also freighted with unexpected memories so the rural idyll was embroidered with unbidden glimpses of long-forgotten past.
Being largely the preserve of the affluent, one would expect tennis clubs to be located in the most desirable neighbourhoods so it is entirely logical that the All England tennis club, representing the zenith of the sport, should make its home in the relentlessly middle class enclave that is Wimbledon. Large, solid houses coyly visible behind specimen trees placed amid manicured front gardens set the scene, but it was the sight of a home delivery van specialising in fresh fish, that completed the picture. Such a phenomenon bespeaks quite a different class milieu from the Tesco trucks plying lowlier neighbourhoods. It also put me in mind of the world of the 1950s, before the advent of the supermarket, when tradesmen would deliver my mother's various household requirements on weekly rotation. In the days before universal car ownership, retailers felt obliged to bring their wares to customers in much the same way that Amazon would decades later. The daily milkman, until quite recently a feature of most areas, headed a procession which included a baker, a greengrocer and a fishmonger. The Kleeneze representative would pitch up on the doorstep regularly, laden with all manner of cleaning apparatus and consumables which, after much wheedling and cajoling, she would occasionally condescend to buy.
At Wimbledon Common, a cluster of low buildings nestles around the apparently famous hollow-post windmill. It included a cafe with the most appealing range of food and drink and comfortable seating I've seen in such places. Sadly it was too early for my lunch but the place was well-patronised by women with small children and dogs the size of ponies. A significant area of the adjacent common is given over to a car park, evidently for the exclusive use of Range Rovers. Behind the cafe, horses were being exercised at the riding school. I reflect that the transition which was embryonic in the previous section of the walk is complete: neither of those forms of transport would be much in evidence in the easterly reaches of the Capital Ring.
Passing golfers from the London Scottish Golf Club resplendent in their mandatory red tops and then descending into caliginous woodland, my earlier associations with southwest London started to resurface.
London is so large and sprawling that most residents carve out small localities with which to identify. The most notorious boundary is that between north and south London. A south London acquaintance complains that her north London friends insist she visits them rather than vice versa as the journey is so tiresome, the implication being that it's somehow less stressful for her to travel northwards than for them to endure the same journey southwards. Or maybe they deem it an entirely justifiable penalty for her choosing to live in such a declassé area. My familiarity with southwest London was for many years confined to memories of day trips to Kew Gardens during languorous summer holidays, chaperoned by a succession of Dutch au pairs. The trip involved a boat from Greenwich to Charing Cross, then the interminable District line. Acknowledging my indifference to exotic plants and needing to find some effective distraction, they fed me ice lollies ad libitum. My favourite was the Mivvi, an ice-cream centre with a fruit ice outer shell. Curiously, the name forms a link with my next association with the area.
During a French camping holiday, I met Mimi, a fey and distant creature to which my gauche sixteen year old self formed an urgent and unrequited attachment. I had no way of apprehending the extent to which this product of the knowing and sophisticated circles of southwest London outstripped me. Our lives, although superficially congruent, both being the offspring of liberal professionals, could scarcely have been more different. She was effortlessly accustomed to life at the epicentre of the cultural and political world (her father was a cabinet minister, mine was a reclusive academic) she was glamorously urbane. It took just a single visit to Blackheath to expose the gulf and sever the link, and without the benefit of modern social networks we lost touch. Nearly half a century later, five minutes research on the internet reveals that she now lives in Stoke Newington; doubtless she frequents Fresh and Wild.
Emergence on to the Thames path was a welcome respite to these family memories. This was an area unburdened by associations and I enjoyed the sense that in being by the Thames there was a palpable link with home, as well as marking the geographical halfway point on the Capital Ring.
© David Thompson 2014
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