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Angel, and other bits of London that sound nice but aren't

PERUSING an Underground map, you imagine London is filled with beautiful, charming enclaves. How wrong you are, for these quaint-sounding areas are actually shitholes: 

Angel

A stone’s throw from King’s Cross is the heavenly-sounding Angel: a busy junction where confused tourists and the long-term homeless mingle on their way to snooty Islington or the dodgy estates within snooty Islington. An unsettling mix of overpriced offices, dirty chain restaurants and prostitution hotels from which God and his seraphim seem altogether absent.

Shepherd’s Bush

Tempted by the rustic promise of Shepherd’s Bush? It’s a misnomer in two senses; first, no shepherd would guide his flock to a stretch of A-road bordered by dodgy mobile phone shops. Second, apart from a single triangle of glorified traffic island, nothing can grow beneath the malignant shadow of the behemoth that is Westfield Centre.

Little Portugal

Between the brutish Vauxhall and Brixton lies an area known by the cutesy name Little Portugal, for its Portuguese and Brazilian inhabitants. It is not Lisbon in miniature. It remains South London and you’ll be reminded of that emphatically as you’re mugged at knifepoint before you can say ‘artisan pastel de nata’.

Forest Gate

To the naive ear, it sounds like a rolling avenue bordered by lime trees leading to gorgeous woodland. To which the wise mouth says ‘In this f**king city?’ Instead, it’s classic East London dog-rough with extra rough added like chilli sauce on a kebab. Do pay it a visit if you’ve got something to fly-tip.

Archway

Archways are usually associated with magnificent feats of architecture, like Rome’s Colosseum or Fountains Abbey. This Archway, however, is stunning only in the sense that you’re momentarily knocked back by the horror, the denizens, and the price of a flat even though it has no discernible redeeming qualities. Remarkable.

Old Oak Common

Ah, now here’s a typical English village with dancing around the maypole and a pub operating since Tudor times. No? No, in fact it’s a semi-industrial area, much of it disused, with its only open space overlooked by Wormwood Scrubs prison? And this is where HS2 is terminating? Christ, why is there even London?

Seven classic Britpop tracks and the excruciating 90s memories they are inextricably linked to

CAME of age during Britpop? Can’t hear those classic songs without flashing back to a moment of buttock-clenching shame? These are the memories they evoke: 

Oasis, Cigarettes & Alcohol (1994): Being a teenage smartarse

Key track which reminds you what a wanker you were at family parties. It was New Year, all you had to do was be nice to Granny, but you sang this loudly to inform those gathered you’d been on the booze and snouts the night before. Still, take comfort from the fact that Liam Gallagher’s still that much of an arsehole now.

Suede, Animal Nitrate (1993): Losing your virginity

Losing your virginity to the sound of Brett Anderson’s histrionics was endemic to the era. We thought it was ‘sexy’. Even if you didn’t, this painfully epic track reminds you of your earliest shags. Hard to say which is more embarrassing: your inept, heavy-handed attempts at clitoral stimulation or the pun of the title.

Blur, Girls & Boys (1994): Bad fashion choices

It was so exciting, leaving school and being finally free to express your individuality by wearing the same lad fashions as everyone else: art-school mockney Damon’s Adidas tracksuit tops, Oasis’s football shirts, and terrace fashions like Ben Sherman and Tacchini that screamed ‘middle-class wanker’ on you.

Sleeper, Inbetweener (1995): Unrequited love

You loved him so much, that boy who’s fat and bald on Facebook now. You went through so much performative misery and penned so many rancid poems of devotion. You wished you could be like the female-fronted bands who were so cool and casual with their shags. And when you weren’t 17 any more, you were.

Elastica, Stutter (1993): Self-inflicted A-level grief

What a twat you were, not revising, believing two Es and a U would make you a tragic hero whose potential the world would mourn while you worked in Asda, girls weeping as you died alone. Or maybe you genuinely hadn’t done enough work and were now watching the clock tick down to failure with no chance of catching up. Dickhead.

Primal Scream, Rocks (1994): Incompetent drug-taking

Primal Scream liked their drugs and were better at taking them than you. Your own attempts at getting higher than the sun were fraught with humiliation: badly-rolled joints, ripped off for £15 a pill on Junior Disprin E, pretending to be vibing to the music while your bowels clenched. It’s put you off recreational substances for life.

Pulp, Common People (1995): Futile nights out

You know all the lyrics. You heard it every sodding time you went out. And you went out a lot, hoping for a cool Britpop night out like in Camden’s The Good Mixer, necking snakebite-and-black, vomiting purple, never getting a shag. Going out with the hateful posh girl in the song would have been preferable. She considered Tesco a date.

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