I started my journey at London Euston. It was rush hour. I gradually eased my way into a river of humanity, catching a current of bodies that were swirling towards the underground. My destination was an area of London called Brockley. To get there, I needed to change at London Bridge station. When I arrived at this second station, it was terrifyingly busy. Commuters waited whilst others disembarked, standing, patiently eyeballing smartly dressed strangers. This was London on the go; this was the city in full swing.
I stepped into the air conditioned carriage and found a seat. I peered into my phone to figure out where I was going. It was two stops. The event was being hosted in a pub that I had never been to before. I was going to a pub called The Barge; I wondered whether it was a ‘spit and sawdust’ pub, or something a whole lot fancier.
I stepped off the train and asked someone for directions. I was told that the pub was just at the back of some hoarding that protected a building site. The hoarding was daubed with the phrase ‘fuck gentrification’.
The Barge was a Wetherspoon’s pub. It was busy. I wandered slowly around the bar, trying to look for Meetup clues; looking for a group of people what were very different to each other, for someone who would be constantly fiddling with a mobile phone, checking for Meetup messages. It was on the second circuit that I noticed someone who had noticed my search.
‘Is this, erm, the Meetup?’ I asked. It was. Relieved, I sat down at a free chair, introduced myself to Sally, who had just arrived, Jason, who was sitting opposite, someone called Andy, and our organiser, Vanessa. After ordering a pint and some chicken (it was ‘chicken night’), I started to learn more about the group.
The Forest Hill, Sydenham and Crystal Palace social Meetup had been running just under a year and had a healthy membership of nearly five hundred ‘socialites’ (as they called themselves). Nearly twenty different events were scheduled: there was a curry night, a night out at the cinema and a lecture about the history and development of an area called Penge. I was impressed that there had been over one hundred events. The most unusual event that was advertised was a ‘Penge Tourist Board’ social.
Sally shared internet dating stories, and Lisa, who was sitting next to Jason, told us about his work as an officer at a local housing association. Andy, who was sitting almost opposite, was wearing an Indian coat, which had been bought from a shop on Tooting Broadway. Vanessa, our host, was a gregarious South London ‘gal’ in her mid to late Forties. She spoke with a warm South London accent; evidence that she was, perhaps, the only native Londoner in the group.
‘You gotta go to Hither Green Cemetery’ suggested Vanessa. ‘There’s five thousand parakeets living there! Can you believe that? You know, the green ones that are flying around. You’ve seen them, ain’t you? They started to count them one at a time years ago, then in two’s, then in tens, and now they count them in groups of twenty five! Can you believe that!’
I had seen them. Not long after moving into my house, I was looking out of my bedroom window that overlooks a small local park, and caught a glimpse of green feathers flashing before my eyes. Everyone I speak to who lives in my area seemed to know about the South London parakeets.
‘Go there at dusk! They make a right racket! They screech! They’re okay if they’re, like, roostin in the trees; they just chitter like a budgie, you know?’
Not only was Vanessa knowledgeable about birds, she also seemed to know about bats. She was going on a ‘bat walk’ which was a part of the ‘Penge Festival’. The ‘bat walkers’ would venture out at dusk and listen out for bats using special ‘bat listeners’. I remembered accidentally attending talk a few years ago about a ‘bat census’ that was run by an ecology professor.
It’s not easy to do a bat survey, so the professor’s idea was to recruit members of the public to help out. The inner geek in me decided that a ‘bat walk’ sounded like a fun and interesting night out.
Vanessa had other interests too. She was a keen cyclist, and had recently taken over an allotment not too far from where she lived. She showed us ‘before and after’ pictures using her tablet computer.
I gradually found my way around the table to chat to every member; I spoke with a secondary school maths teacher who was originally from India, a social worker, a woman called Paola and a former project manager who worked in a charity. We were joined by a couple who were enthusiastically welcomed: Steve, who was from Newcastle, and Angelo, who was originally from Spain. Angelo looked pretty tired; he had just finished teaching a language class.
I had become immune to difference being a constant; it’s almost something that I had taken for granted or accepted as a given. The Forest Hill, Sydenham and Crystal Palace social Meetup made me aware of it again; of the uniqueness of a Meetup group. Everyone was different; ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation or political perspective. Technology had become the catalyst to get people talking to each other.
Everyone was at ease and the group talked in a way that I couldn’t immediately understand. I later realised what it was: they had a shared history; they had met each other many times before and were developing their own language, memories and vocabulary of stories.
The first to head home was Sally, who had to deal with a needy chief executive the following morning. Jason quickly followed, and then it was Vanessa’s turn. She retrieved her bicycle from the beer garden, donned her helmet and hugged everyone goodbye.
I told my friend David, who lives in Brockley, that I had visited one of his local pubs. ‘Ah… The Barge. The Barge is a bell weather for gentrification in the area. When it re-opened as a Wetherspoon’s it was loads better than it was before. It got a bit rough for a time, but these days it’s usually filled with yuppies on a Friday and a Saturday night. One of my fondest memories is watching the Cricket on the TV, and drinking a pint of some weird banana flavoured beer’.
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