White working class aspiring. Country boy. To this day. Grammar school education. Child of the 60’s. University dropout. Trained in City & Guilds carpentry, joinery and cabinet making at school. I learned early that I enjoy making things and fixing things. In Tolmers those attributes were useful. My work life has been more of a shopping list than a career path. I do what I want and or need to get by. And I’ve always been grateful that I can push a wheelbarrow and use a hammer. I’ve cleaned toilets in the bus station at King’s
Cross. And I’ve sat around the Cabinet Table blathering with the best of them. I watched ‘O Lucky Man’ on its release in Leicester Square. in June 1973. And I was impressed. I’ve lived that life. Well my version. ‘O Lucky Me v1.01’. Somehow, along the way I’ve managed to accumulate enough wealth to end up with a small mountain cottage, four children, two grandchildren and an ex-wife. Alone, blissfully, in an isolated ex-mining valley community of 20 or so houses. There’s people here whose family moved here when it was built. A very long time ago. Bedwellty Pits. Now I own a small piece. Mine. Lock stock and barrel. Overlooking a small river and an ancient woodland on the hill opposite. Again – O Lucky Me. In the Land of my Fathers. Whatever next? What an adventure. Now I’m on a pension. I’m retired. We’ll see about what that means…..

About our rehousing from Tolmers. We (Carla, Kolbi and I) were living under the shop at Alex’s (19-25 Tolmers Square). We came back one afternoon to discover our room under six feet of water. Most of our possessions floating in filthy sewage. We went to social services. They put us into one of the grotty B&Bs in Eversholt Street. Where we had to take everything with us at 10am and not return until 5pm. With a baby. Breast feeding. After a few weeks and camping out at the housing manager’s desk for a week they gave us a flat in the red light district of Kings Cross that was going to be demolished. After continuous applied pressure. More camping out at the same desk. We got a first floor flat in a block in Highgate next to the cemetery. It was idyllic. It was hard work. Up and down that hill. Nonetheless a glorious place to live.

I never really ‘got’ the concept of rent. And struggled with the concept and actuality of it all the rest of my life. Eventually Carla and I broke up when Kolbi was 5. I got rehoused again. This time at the bottom of the hill. In what could only be Archway.
Tolmers was a long way behind. And squatting had become illegal by then. To this day when I pass houses that are obviously empty I look for the easiest way in and assess the damage internally. I just can’t stop myself.