I happened to be in Chelsea when I learnt of the attempt by Lord Cadogan - who owns a good chunk of the place - to stop a developer building private houses on land designated by Cadogan's grandfather as being for "the working classes".
As I read that the developer has issued a writ contending that any such covenant can have no meaning today, I looked up from my pint and my paper (I was in a pub just off Sloane Square) and saw an old map of the Cadogan Estate, "From a New and Actual Survey". It was dated 1836, and the words "The Earl Cadogan, Chelsea" were written at the top amid voluminous curls.
Feeling a surge of warmth for all Cadogans past and present, I gradually tuned in to the conversation of the two women at the next table. "Where were you at school, Emma?" asked the first. "Cheltenham," replied the second. "Cheltenham?" said the first. "Are you really a Cheltenham lady? Isn't that frightfully academic?" The first then said something that must have been hilarious, judging by how the two could only wheeze and splutter for the next five minutes.
They were drinking spritzers, and had been talked into big ones by the barman, not that he'd had to do too much talking. "It's Friday, after all," he'd said, and the two had immediately agreed that it certainly was, and therefore the brakes could come off. Typical Chelsea. It's a very unconstrained place, not at all like anal-retentive, aspirational Fulham, where everything seems grey and tense, and there's a permanent Tuesday afternoon mood.
In Chelsea, it always seems like Saturday morning, and a sparklingly sunny one, too. It's because you have genuine toffs there, with their life-enhancing, brightly coloured socks and rubicund, unselfconscious faces. Plenty of working-class people also live in Chelsea. I admit this is surprising, and I used to wonder where they all worked - until I went to the Chelsea training ground near Heathrow to interview Marcel Desailly and met all the enormous, cheerful blokes whose job is to look after the kit and tousle Gianfranco Zola's hair whenever he walks past.
It seems a harmonious mix they have in SW3, only duplicated at any race meeting you care to attend.
