I was born into a bedstting room, a slum. Alie Street, near Aldgate East tube station, had a view of a little Synagogue.
When I first started at LBC I was asked my history.
Relishing the badge of honour, growing up in poverty, I said;
‘That slum is now an Indian restaurant with less than average food.’
The proprietors heard the programme and were going to sue for defamation.
Being new to Radio I had no idea that the most flippant of remarks could cause a ruckus. LBC exonerated me, the restaurant dropped the charge.
But I never went to eat there.
The room we lived in was dark, damp and ridden with mice.
My father went to the council office and threatened to punch the lights out of the housing officer, he refused to leave until we were rehoused.
We moved up the road to a smaLL flat.
The only view was other flats.
Ana a large patch of grass next to the Highway.
My parents argued every day. Russia invaded Hungary. My mother tore up her Communist Party card.
He didn’t.
The endless arguments had the other residents complaining.
We were rehoused again. This time to a new build council house just down the road from Elstree studios.
The house felt like a mansion, with a big garden.
The only views were the gardens at the back of the house;
Stairs and an indoor lavatory. A Bath with big silver taps. A living room – full of stylish furniture , and a a proper kitchen
In Ailie Street my mother cooked on an old oven on the landing.
And so we went up in the world.
A three bedroom semi-detached with space.
Age 18, I moved out.
I got into Drama school in London, opposite the ‘Old Bull and Bush’ pub
Every day I would scour the ‘Evening Standard’ classified ads until I found a flat suitable for an aspiring actress.
House hunting was so easy in the 60’s.
Highgate, near the suicided Bridge, was perfect. Five Jennifers lived together, labelling their milk and hiding away bath salts.
The view was chimney pots and fancy houses. When one of the ‘Jennifers’ purloined my cheesecake I moved out .
I found a delicious flat in Hampstead.
Four of us gels, all of whom are still solid friends, shared a tiny kitchen, a huge bedroom – like a dormitory – and a massive living room. So large was the room that we ended up rehearsing our plays there. Our view was you guessed it, yet more chimney pots.
.
I had no fixed abode until I was in my late twenties.
Always on the road I didn’t need one. Then I settled, I found a beautiful house in Queens Crescent, a short walk from Hampstead train station.
My house mate was American. She’d lied about her age so she could sign the house contract.
We still talk pretty much every week, she now ives in Saratoga.
And then the old git joined us.
Coming down from Leeds with only a handful of clothes and 48 bottles of home made beer.
We lived there till the landlady asked us to leave. We squatted for a bit, I left with a`’Weight Watchers’ cookbook and two blue enamel saucepans. The view was nothing special. A wide road, shoppers and a stones throw from Dingwalls and Camden Market.
And then we left. Homeless for a bit I fought for a flat in a housing association next to The Tower of London and Tower Hill station, a spit from where I grew up.
A small flat with a dead room, so called because you had to walk through the sitting room to get to it. The view was perfect. The Thames rolled past our flat, the boat horns were comforting.
And then 40 years ago we bought.
I came down from Wapping and secured the sale with a handshake, it’s an old blacksmiths cottage, dark in the winter and cool in the summer.
I hadn’t clocked the cottage it was the garden that seduced me. A view to die for. Rolling fields, with a donkey, Simmental cows, a golf course, and a huge expanse of sky.
The hedge between us and the fields was low. So low that planting vegetables meant a short break to moon over the view. We built a studio at the end of the garden, the window over looks the rolling fields.
I had no idea that a view was so important to me. After all I was an East Ender with a history of chimney pots.
The neighbours then, were an odd couple.
The ‘oosbind pruned a rose bush, carrying the baby dawter, and the geezer complained.
‘Put up a fence then’ said the angry git.
The pathetic neighbour put up solid panels. So high our beautiful airy garden became a box with no view.
We went to see ‘The Testimony of Christ’. I came back from the cinema vowing to be a good Christian. I asked the wife of the imbecile to come and check out the devastation they had caused. .
I forcefully escorted her into the garden, she said she would have me for assault.
Her very words were.
‘The view belongs to our cottage’
Rather than removing the eyesore they moved. When the new neighbours arrived I implored them to take down the fence. Within a day the wooden panels had gone.
The view restored.
So now whatever happens we have an ever lasting vista. An everlasting thing of beauty.
The hedge now is fully grown, If I stand on the garden table I can still see the Oast houses,
It gets pruned and then we have our view back.
I’ve no intention of moving. I want to stay put, we have a garden room with a view.
Thank you E. M. Forster.