Life is Healthy

... from a local estate agent. Even in these days of credit crunches and plummeting house prices we still get regular missives from different companies saying how they've just sold or let a neighbouring flat and if we are considering doing the same to call them. I was just about to throw it in the bin with all the others when I noticed something unusual about the address they had sent it to:



Apparently there was a coup overnight and I AM NOW LIVING IN NW2!!!

I guess it's OK to be fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan, but in territorial disputes closer to home Gordon Brown has appeased the fascists of Cricklewood.

We have recently had some Eastern European workmen in decorating our communal hallway. This must be the Polish Corridor they were after.

The NW2/NW10 turf war has obviously been going on for some time. Check out this "rebel song" from 1999 by Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros in which the ex-punk rocker clearly wants change "from Willesden to Cricklewood". The lyrics also contain the phrase "Come with me and be no good, be a mad man on the street", which is obviously a reference to taking a black felt tip pen and altering postcodes on street signs. I can think of no badder or madder way to behave on the street.



When will the government ban this sick filth like they did with the Pogues's Streets of Sorrow/Birmingham Six? Or at least have the lyrics sung by an actor not quite in lip sync with the original.

I am going to release a triple album in response - Willesdenista!

The work of the Cricklewood Liberation Army continues in this Nagorno-Karabakh of north-west London. I am not sure if this was done at the same time as the sign around the corner, but it does look like the same handwriting and pen. So maybe instead of "Army" it is just "Lone Nutter".

If I hadn't seen the other sign first I would have dismissed this as a random tag, but a closer inspection reveals that the 10 has been crossed out and a 2 written beside it. It's admittedly even more hurried than the last effort, perhaps because this road is busier with passers-by, and so it's not great propaganda for the cause, what with it being totally indecipherable to anyone passing. Except of course I am now giving this/these terrorist(s)/insurgent(s)/freedom fighter(s) (delete according to your political persuasions) the very oxygen of publicity that he/she/they obviously crave. I can see why the Chinese are so keen to clamp down on bloggers - imagine how the CLA's cause could be advanced with the exposure to the half-dozens of readers of this post. Their ranks could be doubled in no time.

All this defacing is a bit like seeing signs for Londonderry in Northern Ireland. What next? Murals of Cricklewood heroes (eg Dennis Nilsen or Patsy Kensit) on gable ends? Hunger strikers? Willesdenites demanding the right to march in bowler hats up Cricklewood Broadway? A letter-bombing campaign? Though with this last one they would have to put the correct NW10 postcode on the envelopes as a defiant NW2 might result in the bombs being returned to sender, address unknown.

This is possibly my favourite piece of graffiti ever. It contains neither the territorial pissing of "Kilroy Was 'Ere" and its ilk, nor the angry sloganeering of "George Davis Is Innocent" (note to self - update graffiti references). No, this urban scribe has taken it upon themselves to correct a postcode from NW10 (Willesden) to NW2 (Cricklewood). How genteel is that? It is like the geo-locational wing of that organisation that goes around Tippexing out rogue apostrophes.

Except this road is definitely in NW10. The border is admittedly only a couple of streets away, and does veer wildly around as though the Royal Mail person drawing it were either drunk or looking to perform Anschluss with Kilburn. Given the quality of the postal service around here either is possible. But this road isn't even a Kaliningrad-esque exclave of NW2 with its own Passport to Pimlico-style customs posts on the North Circular - it's NW10 both sides from one end to the other.

Postcodes are clearly important to some people though. With insurance premiums often based on them there are many campaigns to have one's address associated with a less risky neighbourhood, or just a posher one in the case of Windsor residents who don't wish to be stamped with the SL of Slough. Why anyone would pick NW2 over NW10 is harder to answer though, with neither area likely to rank highly on any hot property guide. Perhaps the writer suffered from dyscalculia and meant to write NW3 (Hampstead), thus instantly transforming the road into an oasis of bohemian chic amongst the suburban semis and light industrial estates.

But for true upward mobility they would need to get their Tippex out:



(For anyone not au fait with London postcodes, W1 covers the priciest Monopoly squares of Mayfair and Park Lane.)