What is it about Wood Green?
When you've lived in the in the same place for most of your life, you get the chance to see it change and grow and shrink and grow again and it kind of feels like it reflects your own life...at least, that’s what I’ve found. I’ve lived in the same house for 20 years now...close the Mall that was built in the year I started secondary school.
Back then, opened by Her Majesty the Queen, it was the shopping Mecca of North London...full of the big name stores ... C&A being my old Nan’s favourite and of course, the ultimate department store..DH Evans. Along the high road, there was a shop that stocked only jeans...for a style hopeful adolescent in the 80s, What She Wants promised a whole world of cool...pinstriped drainpipes, my first purchase was a delight, even though I could barely fit them over my feet... I could barely breathe so tiny was the waist. Fashion. Always comes at a price.
More than three decades later, my hometown is much changed and if I had been away and come back, I’m sure I wouldn’t recognise it.
We no longer have the big names...apart from Primark of course who took over Pearsons and apparently wouldn’t allow the juice bar that stood in the way of its footfall. Marks and Spencer left a while back, as did BHS and there are more discount stores than you’d imagine could survive.
WH Smith now houses the Post Office at the back and Ottakars went years ago, leaving space for a host of branded coffee shops with Charlie’s emerging as the new independent. We also have a Pret Which suggests a degree of gentrification but I don’t see much real evidence of that yet.
Bizarrely, we currently have two Holland & Barrett shops, the small one returning after a brief sojourn as a muscle supplements shop and all around the Mall itself, there seemed an ever changing shift of brands after the global crash in 2008. Yet it’s all still there.
We do have a Wilko which is great for domestic stuff first thing on a Monday morning...as long as you get there by 11.15 when suddenly the queue has a growth spurt. There’s Tiger, which is full of vital stuff that you absolutely didn’t know you need and there’s still Toy City...busy as hell at Christmas selling toys you can’t get online.
I don’t actually do much by way of shopping these days so why do I love this ever changing, some might say quite grubby place, that I call my hometown.? After all, the Library, despite its facelift, attracts the hardcore drinkers on a sunny afternoon and the alley along near Boots is often a sticky mess of cans and high end odours. not all of them from the lovely flowers kept so nicely by the Residents Association. It’s busy and noisy and the pollution is much. Where can the love be in that?
Well, as ever, it’s about the people isn’t it? Wood Green is a place of many faces...over 190 languages are said to be spoken in this epicentre of Haringey and though we are from everywhere, in the main, we seem to get on. I’ve spoken to hundreds of strangers over the years...only ever in English sadly because I didn’t do languages at school but always using the hahalala theme as my introduction to pave the way for friendships.
It’s how I became friends with a Syrian refugee who painted my wall and now brings gifts at Eid. It’s how I came to be a tutor to three boys from Chechnya and a little girl whose hearing was stopping her from learning at school. I met her mum in the cafe. She’s a grown up artist now. A smile, a chat, an openness. A hahalala mindset.
In the Mall there is a market. A real market selling fresh produce and home made food made by real people using the food from the stalls. There’s an old fashioned cobblers mending shoes and cutting keys and a card shop that’s been there for more than 30 years. We talk about food, the weather, our elderly relatives and the general state of the world. The friendships form in the littlest ways. Starting with a smile even.
There’s a sweet shop run by the same people who were selling sweets when my friend had a Saturday job there and we’d all go up the escalators and try and get free sweets. We were 14 and now I’m nearly 50. How does that even happen? Fortunately, they’ve never realised I was Lauren’s mate.
There’s Kevin at the Mauritian Paradise who makes some fabulous curries and samosas and Violet and her team at Eliza’s kitchen who do a great red pea soup and a lovely bit of snapper. Men and women with big smiles and the strength to make cakes and rotis every day.
When the shouty man comes along and does his shouting, no one flinches cos he’s been like that for years and the lady who always dresses in blue...we all say hello to her even if she does cuss us on a bad day. Others days, she’ll leave fruit at the cobblers and in amongst the busyness, someone is always being kind to someone else. There’s a lot of mental health stuff in Wood Green. A reflection of the stresses and strains of modern life perhaps.
I didn’t know about the magic of the Mall until I got sick and was forced to stay local and therein lies the real treasure. Living in your community, buying what you need from your local shops, sharing the load and keeping an eye on the hahalala moments.
That’s why I love Wood Green....because all of life happens here and even when it’s tough, there’s always someone with a story and somewhere to get a bite to eat. I recommend it most highly because sometimes, it’s in the detail that we see beyond the dirt. People are alright.
#hahalalamood
