This week, news from Highgate. Some alarm has been spread by notices relating to a planning application for a pitch-and-putt course just off the High Street. Should it be allowed? Highgate being Highgate, the question boils down to this: is pitch and putt middle-class? Full-blown golf, obviously, is, and I have a funny feeling that putting greens are, too. Crazy golf - a sport that is by definition tasteless - clearly is not. But pitch and putt? It's a tough one. I suppose it boils down to whether they call it pitch 'n' putt.
If we do get such a course, it will take its place alongside a strange array of local facilities. There are half a dozen beauticians in Highgate, half a dozen hairdressers, half a dozen estate agents, half a dozen shops for women with too much money, and one shop in which you can buy anything you want as long as it's beige: beige candles, weird beige objets d'art and so on. Every time a new business sets up, I hope it will be something useful - a place where you can buy light bulbs and boot polish, say - but the local economy somehow always dictates that it be another tasteful, recondite business, such as an aromatherapist where you can also buy designer-made blue shoes for the under-fives. Where a pitch-and-putt course fits in, I do not know. But I suspect the thing will never be allowed to come to pass.
Meanwhile, in the Bishops Avenue - which is located in the semi-rural no-man's land between Hampstead and Highgate, and often known as "millionaire's row" - things are looking bad. A religious group called the Vedics, who follow the teachings of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, are keeping the millionaires awake with the clapping and chanting from relaxation workshops that take place in the group's own mansion.
One's class-based Schadenfreude is limited, though, because the Bishops Avenue, once a street of decent, if huge, Edwardian houses, is gradually destroying itself. About half the original properties have been knocked down and turned into palaces that look like inflated Barratt Homes. These properties remind me of Michael Jackson's face: perfection aimed at with unlimited wealth. And missed.
