This is an account of the fourth leg of my mildly cynical (though open-minded) dérive, for which I am trampling the word “Bollocks” onto the streets of Hackney.

Northwold Road is like a dialysis tube, filtering out Clapton’s poverty as it sluices towards Stoke Newington Common, appropriately known once as Cockhanger Green. As a ‘B’ road it is coloured piss-yellow on the map. The eastern end is clamped onto Upper Clapton Road, not far from a bulletproof petrol station, and clustered round with banks-turned-betting-shops, fried chicken joints, cheap electrical outlets, hairdressers, newsagents, a pentecostal soup kitchen.

This is where I got my first taste of London living. It’s a little shabbier, a lot more expensive, but not much else has changed since 1998. Only people’s clothes and some of the cars tell you that time has shifted on, mostly leaving this area behind. Again.

Now, as then, lingering is discouraged and eye-contact is forbidden. Staring at the pavement also means that it’s harder for the CCTV cameras to identify you, and given the high crime rate in this area it’s quite possible these cameras film in enough detail to actually identify people.

Heading away from Upper Clapton Road, the first landmark I see is one of the least inviting libraries I have ever seen. It has a retro sign - “Clapton Library” - jutting out of the wall, making it look like someone has opened a 1950s milk bar at the entrance to a redbrick penitentiary. I didn’t see anyone enter or leave, but I could see at least two people inside. I should have checked for signs of life.

Northwold Road continues to play chronological tricks as I travel down it. One sign, attached to the side of a building and looking a bit like one of those early 20th century fountain pen advertisements, reads:

 
The name of the Building Society is almost invisible, making ownership of the sign uncertain and leaving one wondering whether it was erected by some enterprising, early loan shark.

Here and there modern buildings have been erected in a sop to regeneration. Red bricks, blue paint, breeze block porticos with air vents sandwiched in the cracks allowed for mortar. Toytown structures storing up trouble for the future.

The older buildings will outlast them: the Sam and Annie Cohen day centre, with pseudo trades-union medallions above its entrance (”Social oOo Club; Teas oOo Welfare Rights; Transport oOo Entertainments”); the vast Victorian buildings of Northwold Primary School, with its separate entrances for Boys and Girls & Infants; the Royal Sovereign pub, defiantly traditional and set against a background of new brick and stone-clad houses.

Northwold Primary is set on a bend in the road which, once turned, leads you into a far more prosperous stretch of road. Here you won’t find history left to rot on hoardings and house sides, but carefully preserved and exhibited, even where it makes little sense. At one house, the owners have kept the remaining quarter of green glazing in one street-facing sash. The lettering suggests it (if not the pane itself) dates from the 1980s:

NORT
PINE • ST
SERV
DOORS,
CABINETS,
COLLECTIONS DELIVERY

Next to it is a pane of cheap, bubbled glass; the type that obscures the sight of people crapping in their own bathrooms.

The corner of my “L” shaped route is dominated by St Michael’s Church. This is huge, Victorian, solid, reliable, boring. There’s a vicarage next door, similarly roomy and dull. I don’t see anyone around, but the noticeboard reveals the parson is keen on building bridges with other faiths.

A right turn leads me on to Fountayne Road, one of the least interesting streets in Hackney. It has a surgery. It has some sheltered housing. The residential houses are big. The water board contractors are digging up the road. I looked harder for points of interest than at any stage so far on this dérive. I didn’t find any.

Next: time for a scratch as I tackle the second ‘O’ in ‘Bollocks’

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