I grew up in a housing estate in London, “The World’s End Estate”, the roughest building in Chelsea. Chelsea was known as the stomping ground for London’s high society, renowned for its carefully manicured streets and it’s elite inhabitants, gracefully overlooking the River Thames. It’s decadent pearly townhouses housed all of the debutants and duchesses, the socialites and their most eligible royal suitors. The Kings Road, appropriately named, was the King's favorite street. Dotted neatly with artisan cheese shops, chocolate confectioneries and boutique designer stores, each boasting glittering and immaculately rendered displays.
And then there was the World’s End estate. A towering, brown monstrosity, smack dab in the middle, just off the Kings Road. Massive industrial brick buildings, hovering over the neat boutique stories like the fucking death star. Looming over the pretty people like a comedic glyph of class imbalance. The Worlds End Estate was guarded by cycling chavs in Adidas sweatsuits and their rabid Pitbulls, bellowing the occasional “Awright Luhv?” and it was a good month if there wasn’t a stabbing. You had to triple lock your bikes and avoid walking through poorly lit areas. A great place to be a thief. The elevators, fragrant with the aromatic notes of fish’n’chips and piss. I was too young to be alarmed by any of this. It was home. I didn’t care. I had Winnie the Pooh bedding. I could get six sour gum balls for 25p from the lady with the grumpy face at the newsagents store.
By the time I learned to read, I realized everything around me said “World’s End”. Despite me living in the “World’s End Estate”, there was the “World’s End Bookstore”, the “World’s End Cafe” and the Vivienne Westwood flagshop, marked by a giant spinning clock counting down to the World's End. This confused my child brain. I oscillated from thinking that the world was indeed, coming to an end, and all of these stores and buildings had decided to let me know through their advertisements and signs- or that we were at the edge of the planet, the corner of earth.
My mother was a posh aristocratic artist, who had fallen in love with a working class Scottsman because he made her laugh. My dad was the son of a construction worker, who had escaped Glasgow to become a writer. Instead, he was teaching English to high school kids. My Dad would poke fun at my mothers posh voice, her eccentric wealthy parents, and sing her Common People by Pulp.
I must have been about 7 or 8 when I began to pick up on class conscientiousness, I realized people would perk up when I told them I lived in Chelsea, but wince and cower when I told them I lived in the World’s End Estate. My friends, in their shiny, pastel Kensington townhouses- were too afraid to come over. On one particular daily ascent in the piss drenched elevator of the World’s End Estate, I brought my observations to my Dad’s attention. He took a deep breath, and then crouched down to me so he was eye level, and whispered. “Listen, I know you have been told that your mothers side of the family are the wealthy ones- but who cares about that. I’ll have you know- my family are descendants of the High Kings of Ireland. So we are royal blood. You can’t tell anyone though. And the High Kings of Ireland, they weren’t like silly English kings. They were warriors, our people. Magic. Don’t forget that. And don’t tell anyone.”
He was lying, of course. But I believed him then. I had a skip in my step the next time we would go for one of our walks down the King Road together, his hands like big warm saucers, one of his giant steps equating to six of mine. In my mind I was a descendant of the High Kings of Ireland. And the only two people who knew, were me and him.
I believed him then, and I think for several years afterwards. The belief probably sat and sedimented in some fold of subconscious that informs my present behavior. So did all the signs that said, “World’s End”.