www.camberwellbeauty.co.uk -- read an extract

You can do your shopping here: there is a supermarket round the corner where they sell dented tins of fruit in syrup and corned beef in brine. But up the hill and half a mile away or so, there is a nice Sainsbury’s with a deli counter full of fat, herbed olives, cheeses that smell of the Queen’s sick, hams as pink as babies’ clove-studded buttocks and, or course, shelves and shelves of buttery yellow chardonnay: £3.99 a bottle. Here the carpark is full of mummies’ second cars, nippy little hatchbacks: Polos, Pintos and Puntos, with biscuits on the dashboard and dollies on the back seat.

Lark Grove is bang slap between an art school, where young people wander up the steps with bits of birdcage in their hair and cardboard portfolios beneath their arms, and one of London’s largest mental hospitals, where inmates jabber and weave baskets that they wear on their heads. Spot the difference if you will. This is a colourful area, full of girls with dyed purple fringes and savage dogs on strings, where junkies fall down and the drunks trip over them and nobody raises a pierced eyebrow. Here, there is vomit on the pavements, syringes in the gutter and graffiti all over. This is where someone once went to the effort of writing ‘Sophie Dahl eats too much Dhal’ in six-foot orange-paint letters on someone else’s wall, and a man bit the head off a pigeon and no one knew whether to call the hospital or Charles Saatchi. Here live the mad, the bad, the arty and the ordinary. You can get a very nice house on these parts for a fraction of what it would cost somewhere else. The architecture is chipped but good and there are blue plaques littered about where famous music-hall comics once lived, drank, ran out of jokes and committed suicide.

At the bottom of Lark Grove, big red buses trundle north towards Piccadilly Circus and John Lewis and then back the other way to deepest South London, where angels, mortals and pit bull terriers fear to tread. After all, not everybody can live in Islington, and at least around here you can park your car albeit with the crook lock on and the radio removed. People end up here for all sorts of reasons, even posh types who put holly wreaths on their doors at Christmas and scoop the poop from their pathways. There are just enough of them to have formed their own small tribe, a last bastion of well-educated, flute-playing, council-tax-paying, pasta-eating people, braving it out amongst the great unwashed, the Spam eaters and estate dwellers, with their bad breath and cataracts. Professional people like Anna and Chris and Nigel and Jo, successful middle-class types with everything going for them: jobs, kids, cars, holidays, tennis-rackets, tumble-driers, shoes for every occasion, and no reason to weep or gnash or seethe or spoil it.

Imagine a day when the weather is glorious, and you take a picnic out to the countryside and somehow find a warm (but shady) spot overlooking a lake and lay your tartan rug on grass (that is not damp) and eat sandwiches (that have not gone soggy) and delicious chicken legs - marinated, grilled and crispy - and the lemonade is cold and all is calm and the water is still. Why is it that someone has to come along and chuck a big rock in the lake so that everyone gets splashed, and the sun goes behind a cloud and the day is ruined?

don’t trouble trouble till trouble troubles you

Some people live accident-free lives: they do not fall into stinging nettles, birds don’t shit on their heads, blood clots dissolves in their veins and wasps leave them alone. Others court disaster, ripping new trousers on rusty nails, slicing their fingers on sharp knives, biting into the salmonella sausage and banging their heads wherever they go. Life can be one long banana skin, so look before you leap and for heaven’s sake remember: a stitch in time saves nine.

Some people are luckier than others: they have nicer lives with more things. But luck can run out and whose fault is that? Fate has a fickle finger, and when you are least expecting it, she can poke you in the eye. It was an accident...was it really? Nah nee nah nee nah nee - see, even the sirens sound sarcastic.
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	hello Welcome to South London, to one of the nicest streets in one of the country’s vilest boroughs: Lark Grove SE5. A determined middle-class oasis of skips and bay trees, where Volvos sniff each other’s bumpers, and men called Giles live with women called Samantha. This is a satellite-dish-free zone of tall houses with big front doors, standing shoulder to shoulder, five floors apiece. Come inside, shut the door and smell the coffee. You could almost be in Kensington.This is where the actors, writers, media-types live, where small children wearing smart uniforms and shoes in the shape of light bulbs get ferried every day to schools that are not local. Round here, ten-year-olds never get to ride their bikes beyond the front gate and nannies carry cans of Mace. In these houses people laugh, cry, eat, argue, sleep, fret, toss, turn, masturbate, penetrate, yawn and fart.
You can do your shopping here: there is a supermarket round the corner where they sell dented tins of fruit in syrup and corned beef in brine. But up the hill and half a mile away or so, there is a nice Sainsbury’s with a deli counter full of fat, herbed olives, cheeses that smell of the Queen’s sick, hams as pink as babies’ clove-studded buttocks and, or course, shelves and shelves of buttery yellow chardonnay: £3.99 a bottle. Here the carpark is full of mummies’ second cars, nippy little hatchbacks: Polos, Pintos and Puntos, with biscuits on the dashboard and dollies on the back seat. Lark Grove is bang slap between an art school, where young people wander up the steps with bits of birdcage in their hair and cardboard portfolios beneath their arms, and one of London’s largest mental hospitals, where inmates jabber and weave baskets that they wear on their heads. Spot the difference if you will. This is a colourful area, full of girls with dyed purple fringes and savage dogs on strings, where junkies fall down and the drunks trip over them and nobody raises a pierced eyebrow. Here, there is vomit on the pavements, syringes in the gutter and graffiti all over. This is where someone once went to the effort of writing ‘Sophie Dahl eats too much Dhal’ in six-foot orange-paint letters on someone else’s wall, and a man bit the head off a pigeon and no one knew whether to call the hospital or Charles Saatchi. Here live the mad, the bad, the arty and the ordinary. You can get a very nice house on these parts for a fraction of what it would cost somewhere else. The architecture is chipped but good and there are blue plaques littered about where famous music-hall comics once lived, drank, ran out of jokes and committed suicide. At the bottom of Lark Grove, big red buses trundle north towards Piccadilly Circus and John Lewis and then back the other way to deepest South London, where angels, mortals and pit bull terriers fear to tread. After all, not everybody can live in Islington, and at least around here you can park your car albeit with the crook lock on and the radio removed. People end up here for all sorts of reasons, even posh types who put holly wreaths on their doors at Christmas and scoop the poop from their pathways. There are just enough of them to have formed their own small tribe, a last bastion of well-educated, flute-playing, council-tax-paying, pasta-eating people, braving it out amongst the great unwashed, the Spam eaters and estate dwellers, with their bad breath and cataracts. Professional people like Anna and Chris and Nigel and Jo, successful middle-class types with everything going for them: jobs, kids, cars, holidays, tennis-rackets, tumble-driers, shoes for every occasion, and no reason to weep or gnash or seethe or spoil it. Imagine a day when the weather is glorious, and you take a picnic out to the countryside and somehow find a warm (but shady) spot overlooking a lake and lay your tartan rug on grass (that is not damp) and eat sandwiches (that have not gone soggy) and delicious chicken legs - marinated, grilled and crispy - and the lemonade is cold and all is calm and the water is still. Why is it that someone has to come along and chuck a big rock in the lake so that everyone gets splashed, and the sun goes behind a cloud and the day is ruined? don’t trouble trouble till trouble troubles you Some people live accident-free lives: they do not fall into stinging nettles, birds don’t shit on their heads, blood clots dissolves in their veins and wasps leave them alone. Others court disaster, ripping new trousers on rusty nails, slicing their fingers on sharp knives, biting into the salmonella sausage and banging their heads wherever they go. Life can be one long banana skin, so look before you leap and for heaven’s sake remember: a stitch in time saves nine. Some people are luckier than others: they have nicer lives with more things. But luck can run out and whose fault is that? Fate has a fickle finger, and when you are least expecting it, she can poke you in the eye. It was an accident...was it really? Nah nee nah nee nah nee - see, even the sirens sound sarcastic. read more