Dear Kensington High Street

Flat 3, Kensington Court, W8

Dear Kensington High Street,

Hello, it’s me, Flat Three, from those red-bricked Mansion Blocks ranked behind you. I’ve been meaning to drop you a line for the last 120 years but, you know how it is, life and all that.....

Today the mood gripped me, struck by a burning question I must ask. What on earth has become of us both?

The twenties and thirties were fine. You: the Grand Destination with your magnificent department stores in a Kensington of shabby gentility. A time of maiden aunts and struggling piano tutors living in dim, dusty rooms with their grandmothers’‘good’ Turkey carpets, defended by awnings to block out the sun.

The Misses Rose, my owners, would patter up to Derry and Toms for a new pair of summer gloves or a nice piece of fish for tea. I liked their respectability and orderliness, even though the smell of poached haddock did linger.

In the 50’s after the Misses Rose’ petals faded, the seeds were sown for your next great incarnation: Destination High Street Ken!! Biba, Hyper-Hyper and Kensington Market. You were hip. You were cool. You WERE swinging London.

Bambi-eyed Chelsea Girls with cloche hats and feather boas roamed your pavements. Fledgling rock stars with really bad hair bought fringed jackets and weighty metal chains for Top of The Pops or that gig at the LSE.

As for me, I got a young couple, who transformed me into an orgy of Bohemian excess: swathes of velvets and satins in peacock, magenta and emerald. Brass holders for candles and joss sticks littering the sitting room, their ash surrounding a rather disturbing Bhudda they bought on that trip to Goa.

Dazzled by it all, I throbbed to Led Zeppelin, watched as they rolled joints on Pink Floyd album covers and inhaled the heady smells.

But time passed and, caught up by respectability and children - though not necessarily in that order - they moved on and so did you.

And with the stroke of a bureaucrat’s pen and pressure from egregious landlords, you’ve switched from cool to corporate. Blink and you could be a High Street in Ispwich, or worse, Swindon.

Now I have someone ‘in banking.’ She strides up to you in charcoal LuLu Lemon yoga pants and virgin Nikes, past the scowling girls in Zara and the vacuum that is Currys, to buy a quilted gilet in ‘neutral’ from Uniqlo.

I’ve gone the same way: it’s called post minimalism. Like one of those pots of instant vegan porridge from Wholefoods, I’m now fifty shades of beige.

Where next? Well, I know history. I am history. Empires crumble, new conquerors arrive. When you and I have our next incarnation, I’ll write you again.

I hope it won’t take 120 years.