"Topophilia. Finchley." Finchley by Adaptor-Plug

My Spot in Finchley, Barnet.
Important Because, I Was Born There and Thus, It Is Supposed To Be.

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We've all got to start somewhere and I was officially started in Finchley. Exactly nine months after my sister's third brithday party. Launched into London I was. Thrown in a Sartrean tumble into the world. Thrown into Finchley.

It was a quick birthing trip down through the fallopian tube (family gossip has it that half of me was arriving in the corridor, my head out early and taking a good look at who was walking by).

Then it was into the new arrivals ward (no passport or customs papers needed) for a snuggly, warm sleepover. First night in the cot next to Richard Baker the BBC news reader's son. No commercial channels for me thank you very much

Next day it was "off home" in a Morris Minor... and the home was Clandon Gardens, Finchley, Barnet, U.K. Europe, World, Solar Sytem, Galaxy, Universe.

Unfortunately, the official United Kingdom kiddie counters decided 'Finchley' wasn't a grand enough location for their birth and census records. And seeing they don't allow the Europe, World, Solar System, Galaxy, Universe bits onto their forms, they just upped the Finchley a level and focused on the 'Barnet'.

Barnet, as in hair. Barnet Fair. Hair. Oh never mind...

Barnet's what it says it in my passport and Barnet's what I've penned onto hundreds of forms ever since. Barnet, UK. June 1964. It's the only geography they want to know.

I can't remember much about Barnet and 1964 without "help" from others. When I was in Barnet I was too young to snap photos or keep a diary. So I can't honestly confirm whether others' interpretations on the place are correct or not. Dribbling on and drooling over Barnet was about as much as I could manage. Therefore when I write / talk about Barnet I just have to use reasoned trust. Like when I am watching re-runs of the lunar landings in 1969, when I know Neil's steps onto the moon weren't done on a fake surface in a studio round the back of Cape Canaveral.
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If 'Barnet UK' had instead been 'Barnet Australia', then my memories of and attachment to Finchley could be all so different.

If the forms said I was born in 'Barnet, Australia Outback Land' I could muck around with all that ethnic non sense and touchy feely tripe. I could tap into deep, rich, mysterious, Finchley / Barnet 'dreamspaces' of days gone by. At the very least I could pretend to - and so not upset the tribal elders. And I would have a decent excuse for shoving an alligator bone through my nose.

While sitting under a twisted Australian outback tree, smashed out of my box on petrol fumes, I would 'see' (with my ethnic Barnet eye) that the space bordering the flank of the mighty North Circular Road wasn't built up with flats. Finchley borns, and only us Finchley borns, would instead see an icecap where others would see an ex-council estate. Because a million years ago there once was. And only us bonded-through-birth-with-the-dust-of-North-London Finchleyians would know that within those sold off council houses lived the mysterious Glacier God.

As a Finchelyian / Barnetian a la Australia I could join with the other Finchleyians and sing of our cultured group legends; those related to the delivery grounds of Wallolloollooobedoo; the epidural places where our ancestral foremothers rode and screamed on the Crystal Swan Birthing Chair.
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If my records said 'Finchley / Barnet, Country Somewhere Far Eastern' I might be able to witter on a National Geographic "special" about emerging as a poppy seed. How I, like all my brothers, came from the gaping mouth of the Golden Gemini Dragon that defends the Divine Emperor against the dark hell of Yang, way up there in the barren expanses of the north west.

I could go on, after the irritating advertising break, about how I was dropped into the moist soils of the Pingowan Forest. I flourished and grew into an opium tree, to be widdled on by a passsing brown bear, which resulted in me then morphing into the Great Green Monkey Demon of Ping.

Nope. Sorry. No chance of any of that, alas. Not with being born in Finchley / Barnet UK there isn't.

Thank the Lord that my Finchley isn't a 'Finchley, Mesopotamia,' or 'Finchley, Ur' or 'Finchley, Atlantis'. If my Finchley had been any of those ancient pre historical places then you wouldn't be able to shut me up after the probing conversation starter at smarmy dinners,

"Well hello, and where are you from?"

Emerging in Barnet, UK means that all you'll get from me is

"I'm from Finchley, Barnet"

and then that embarassing pause. (It's not long before someone else chips in with, "It's near IKEA. They do a lovely Swedish meatball.")

You see, Finchley, Barnet, UK doesn't have any mythical spatial fluff going for it. (So should you visit Finchley you don't need to feign respect for the cutesie local customs - even the daft, archaic, freedom inhibiting and ridiculous ones, that necessitate lopping off female body parts and believing in fate.)

No.

Finchley / Barnet, U.K. only has sensible, rational, registrars with fountain pens filling in the gaps left on the kid's birth certificates. Away in Wales a government clerk bashes the same data into a computer; so they can laser print the essential Barnet UK June 1964 details onto my passport, next to my splash of DNA spit.

Barnet, UK. It's where the law judges a person's actions based on assumptions of an individual's responsibility, . Finchley, where the assumption is that there is choice when making those actions. Finchley a place founded on principles of free will. Smashing. So help me God.

Right. That's the 'where and when froms' out of the way. Now for life's bigger and more stimulating questions,

"Where are we going?" "How much time have we got?". "Who's got the spending money ?"

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