By Andy Kingston

Highbury “The stadium.” Dad said the words as if nothing else was needed or indeed possible to say on the matter.

“Yes. There’s the football ground. But I’m talking about the area, from the Fields to Finsbury Park. The whole lot. The whole shooting match from the posh pretend-period streets and pretend gas lights at the back of Highbury and Islington tube, right up to the rough and tumble in Finsbury Park.”

I was trying to explain what had grabbed me about my new area. My new neighbourhood. “In the space of fifteen minutes, you walk from rough to posh and all points in between. There’s such a load of…… well stuff. Even if you just take Blackstock Road.”

I mumbled something about the clock tower, the roundabout and the college building at Highbury Barn and the friendly lights of the number 19 and number 4 buses. And how even the rain looked benevolently orange.

My father regarded me with a querulous expression as if he was uncertain what was expected of him. He seemed to take inspiration from his pint. “Nineteen eighty-six.”

I rolled my eyes, knowing what was coming. Of course, I had been subjected to the story when I told him I was moving, but even before then, well before that, I’d heard it countless times before.

“You were just a lad. Even if you’d been interested in football, you were too young to come with us. What a game…….”

His voice trailed off into his magical world of deep heat, cigar smoke and boiled burgers. All of which, apparently, were missing from the game these days.

It was time, I’d thought, to start connecting with my father. That was what one just past the awkward adolescent period. I was trying, but rather than listen to my story, Dad was far more interested in rehashing his version. To him, the whole socio-geographic community of Highbury could be summed up as ‘such-and-such’s-finest-hour; at-least-while-he-was-with-us’. It was as if his own restricted experience from inside the football ground, twenty years ago, formed the only objective view of my new found independent world.

What could he know about the area, really? Had he been in any of the pubs and found himself in either a re-furbished, trendy bar, or a run down, up from the carpets diehard boozer? Did he know where he could buy banana curry, or where the health food shop or the best greengrocer or African restaurants were? Did he care that the library in Highbury Grove kept books Joe Orton had famously defaced? Did he know? Was he aware that almost opposite the blasted football ground and behind the tube station was the Gillespie Park nature reserve? Was he interested that the whole area was fit to bursting with the good, the bad and the ugly and not just the alternate Saturday hot dog and programme vendors?

Part of me wanted to tell him to shut up. I had experiences he hadn’t. Walking into a pub with the old man had been quite an effort. Plucking up the wherewithal to attempt to share my pre-rehearsed thumb sketch of my new neighbourhood had been just as difficult. I wanted him to listen to me this time and not just reflect on the area as he had cast it.

Nineteen eighty-six for Christ’s sake. That was all twenty years – two decades ago.

It was while I was reckoning on this that Dad stopped. Suddenly. I assumed he’d finished his pint and immediately dusted down a ready-made excuse to get away.

“Well.” I stopped when I realised his glass was almost half full.

“Well? Well what? You’re not that interested in what I’ve got to say about Highbury.”

“No, not that; it’s just……….”

He raised his hand. “Well, I wouldn’t be that interested in anything your Grandpa might have to say on the matter. And besides, my Highbury’ll all be gone within the year, once they’ve finished the new stadium. No more Clock End or North Stand or whatever they call the bits of their ground. It’ll all be finished.”

I flushed and raised my glass, a little confused by the way the conversation had developed.

My father looked at me squarely, raised his glass and took a huge gulp, before appreciatively smacking his lips.

“Well son. What’s it really like round here? You and your friends like it alright?”

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