I was a town mouse. I sometimes fantasised about becoming a country mouse but I would never in my wildest-or tamest-dreams have expected to become a suburban mouse. But this year, directed by size of family and purse, I moved to Barnet, at the end of the Northern Line.
I was delighted with the house and garden, but unable to get over the idea that I was living in the suburbs. I could not stop saying "Barnet" in a tone of despair and contempt, like someone holding out a particularly unpleasant sock at arms-length. I told a friend, before we moved, that in 1983 I had had no doubts about going to live in a black township outside Harare but was having trouble nerving myself to leave London for the green belt. She pointed out, severely, that my attitude was typical of the English upper classes. I am not upper class and do not see myself as English (my parents were Australian). But I agreed that my feelings were snobbish.
I have always loved inner London, its history and variety-even its anonymity. I love the liberating privacy of the place. I never minded if it was dirty and was only starting, in middle age, to object to its pollution. London is inexhaustible. You could not imagine Dr Johnson writing: "When a man is tired of Barnet he is tired of life."
In Hackney (where I used to live) there was a mixture of classes and races. I liked the parents of my son's friends. What would I do with the philistines of the suburbs who could polish a car but never a sentence? Our large Victorian house in Barnet did not contain a single bookshelf when we bought it. Had a book ever been read in it? Another friend tried to reassure me by mocking the middle-class parents of Islington and Hackney with their unsavoury ambition for their children: the violin in the back of the Volvo estate for the talentless child who would never play it well. I laughed, but my heart would not leave N1.
During my first weeks in Barnet, I would see people outside their houses, every Friday morning, washing the inside of their rubbish bins. This induced in me a panicky gloom. What could their lives be like if they had time for this? What made them emerge like cuckoos out of clocks each week to do the job? Barnet seemed Germanic, house-proud. Its lawns were cut competitively as though disaster might strike were short-back-and-sides ever allowed to grow long.
It is now three months since we moved and I am aware of undergoing a quiet conversion. My house in London was opposite a tower block. In summer, you sometimes heard sounds of domestic violence. In one flat there had been a fire, killing its occupant. The council had done nothing to rebuild the flat, it remained a black charred square, a kind of coffin for a wasted life.
In Barnet I look out on to fish ponds. At night, no street noise disturbs. The only violence has been a visiting heron who silently helped himself to some fish. It is a place where one can feel safe (Hertfordshire apparently has the lowest crime rate in the whole of England). The garden is full of life you would associate with the country. In the evening, bats ricochet around the garden; the birds have clean, untarred feathers. It is an idyll in the making. There is the promise of the countryside everywhere-and the promise of town.
I note, on the way to New Barnet station, that instead of breathing in carbon monoxide fumes, I can smell flowers. Sometimes the scent of roses and honeysuckle is heady. I put it to myself that to be house-and-garden-proud is preferable to neglect and squalor. There are crowds of flowers here but hardly ever crowds of people. The supermarkets are large but empty. On the overground train into Moorgate, it is always possible to find a seat. The man selling newspapers and magazines outside the station recognises me each morning and is cheerful and civil. And the space that was our reason for moving is a luxury that is becoming a necessity.
I take my son, who has just learnt to ride his bike, down the street. There is no fear of traffic (only the hazard of a few manoeuvring learner drivers). He cycles in a rural park with more ducks than people watching him. He is not as yet attending school in Barnet but they are reputedly excellent (I have yet to put the local parents to the test). I have discovered that Irving Wardle, the theatre critic, lives in our street. One evening, passing his house, I heard him playing his piano and, as the sound poured out of open windows into the summery street, I reflected that maybe Barnet was not so philistine after all.
And then one warm evening in August I discovered the excitement of going "up to town." I went to a cabaret at the Donmar Warehouse in Covent Garden and I felt suddenly like a celebratory tourist. The streets seemed full of exotic people, beautiful young birds of paradise (to my newly suburban eye). I could relish London's excitement and style in a different manner and look forward to returning to my almost rural retreat. And when I want to leave Barnet for the real countryside, I can get on to the M25 in five effortless minutes, skimming down roads with fields on either side, instead of crawling for a dreary hour before reaching the motorway.
I used to joke about having a "bee in my Barnet," now I am more likely to bring news about bees in Barnet. A fortnight ago we retrieved from a tree in our front garden a pure white unsullied honeycomb. Last Friday, I caught myself looking inside my dustbin, wondering whether to clean it. I gave it a hasty swipe with a J-cloth-the merest flourish.
