It's been a typically class conscious few months up here in north London. Last autumn, the final (I hope) series of Fame Academy was being filmed in an empty mansion in what we like to call Highgate Village. The place was full of young people wearing hipster jeans and frowning at designer mobile phones. The boys looked like Beckham, the girls like Posh - or rather, the boys looked like "David Peckham", a type defined by Viz as "someone who wants to look like David Beckham, but lacks the resources". I didn't mind these star-struck young folk until one stood in front of me at the baker's and ordered something like 17 tuna and sweetcorn rolls with no mayo for himself and his fellow weight-conscious wannabees.
A Portakabin was placed outside the mansion to serve as a reception. This caused some muttering in the largely Georgian village, so some joker from the programme nailed a sort of gibbet to the side of it, and dangled a hanging basket together with a sign reading: "Ye Olde Security Check Point".
Meanwhile, there's been the regular drip of stories in the Ham & High of relatively well-off north Londoners beaten up and robbed by less wealthy ones. I hit a spot of bother myself last Saturday night while walking up the hill from Kentish Town. Four youths stood across my path. They were all wearing those sinister cowled sweatshirts, but I could see there were blacks and whites among them. Multiracial thuggery: commendable in its way, I suppose. Celebrating diversity through violence. Except that they did nothing as I approached but stare.
How to walk towards menacing-looking young men? Middle-aged, middle-class folk should be given lessons in this. As with dogs, you should not show fear. Veer towards the youths rather than away from them. If possible, gob fiercely as you approach, but most middle-class people can't spit, whereas life at my own northern secondary modern was one continuous masterclass in spitting. There were people there who could spit not just aggressively but also thoughtfully, apologetically, intellectually. Actually, there were two basic techniques: you either flicked the spittle out through front teeth, or mustered it into a viscous ball and blew it out - but I couldn't do either.
So I walked on towards the youths, very conscious of the label on my V-neck jumper. This had been pointed out very proudly by the wife when she'd given it me for Christmas: "Marks & Spencer," I'd read, but it was the next word that was important: "cashmere". I walked up to the youths and, yes, past them, but then one called out: "Oi, mate!" I turned around, and the youth who'd spoken assumed a look of intense concentration before breaking wind at considerable length and volume. It was hardly a respectful gesture, I admit, but I felt I'd got off lightly.
