to want to move house in London just because the area where I live has become extremely poncey?

[Mintyy]

Yes, yes, of course we have been unbelievably lucky that we chose to live somewhere that became gentrified and therefore have made a lot of money on our house.

However.

We now feel like we have less and less in common with the people who live here. We are 49 and 51 and have good but not outstanding incomes.

I have just discovered that my new neighbours (who paid an extraordinary amount for their extremely average terraced house) are newlyweds in their early 30s. They are going to be doing building works, so I am imagine an extension and a loft conversion.

We are going to have nothing whatsoever in common with them are we?

I sincerely yearn for more authentic London living. Either inner city or further out and less pretentious and overpriced than where we are now.

Such a pita to have to move though! And nothing on the market .

Branching Out - no, not for me it isn't.

I just honestly love London and everything about it but there are some areas which become extremely bland and homogenised and I happen to be in one of them. Saddest of all, for me, is the thought that my children may never be able to afford to live here.

There is a good caff in the centre...forgotten what it was called

Is there still a gun shop?

Gun shop is no longer with us. Excellent Cypriot deli and fab Chinese supermarket. There is an attempt at refreshment and redevelopment but I suspect the underlying Catfordiness will remain.

Cypriot deli...hmmmm this could be a the start of a slippery slope. You may one day find yourself hurrying past an artisan bakery and a woodenhearts-and-twiggy-shit shop.

There is indeed a great cafe opposite the back of the theatre, and a great Japanese restaurant too.

But surely it is just as limiting to reject the incomers on the basis that they might be middle class/poncey/bugaboo pushers etc?

There is diversity in everyone, if you look for it. My DH and I are an eclectic mix of city/public sector/middle class/state educated/privately educated/incomers/home counties/London-born. And oh look we are ethnically diverse too! Are we adding to the authenticity of an area by bringing ethnic diversity, or are we removing it with our middle-class lifestyle?

Oh, the 'wooden hand crafted paraphenalia' shop around the corner from me in North London was run by a man who was about as 'authentic' as you can get for a Londoner. He used to carve the items himself, in a lock-up garage I think...

It is not about rejecting individual incomers. It is about talking about the general process of gentrification and what this means to us collectively and, yes, individually. We're just saying that when a whole area becomes relentlessly gentrified it loses something. OK?

Ubik, the Cypriot shop also sells the most amazing very lurid cakes.

Branching Out - as I said, I grew up in SE London and its population has always been fluid rather than settled.

But now when I return, I see areas I grew up in changed beyond recognition in the last decade. I see a concentration of wealth in these areas which is breathtaking when compared to the rest of the country.

Get yourself out here to south croydon. We moved from clapham to tulse hill when clapham started getting crazily expensive. Sold our flat in TH a couple of years ago and got fab big house out here.

We love it here, great mix of cultures, good fast transport and excellent shopping and not gentrified. Yet.

Westfield is, however, on its way.

OP, stay where you are!! we moved to Balham way back in the day when the dealers would terrorise the local shopkeepers to use their scales to weigh their stash... then moved to another part of Balham and watched the gentrification begin.

we sold a 4 bed house for £375k 14 years ago; today it is worth well over £1.2m.

now we live in the depths of the country; have to drive everywhere because public transport is crap; opportunities for teen DC are limited because this area is deprived (dont get me wrong, its safe etc, but an area of rural deprivation).

if I knew then what I know now, I kind of wish we had stayed, just so that we had a London base and therefore more access to London opportunities for the DC.

I have a Bugaboo and don't own a ridiculously priced house. Don't tar us all with the same brush please (I do sometimes go for a wonder down Northcote road, mind. Buy a sausage roll from the bread stall, mmm).

Streatham has started regeneration, now we have Tescos and the new leisure centre/ice rink. Gifty shops have arrived on Streatham Hill too and there's a few new cafés around.

One question...has Deptford ever come out of it's 'up-and-coming' status? Has it up and come?

i fucking WISH my area would gentrify. but no. each time a new shop opens its a......kebab shop, a-fucking-gain

no ubik, deptford is still a shithole!

Ah well, after all this talk of South London poncery and I'm off to do a big shop at Lidl and the big SavaCentre down by the gas works .

Catch you later homies.

MI - what postcode is Catford? I thought it was SE4 but when I look on Rightmove I keep getting Brockley.

SE6

Though I had a neighbour who used to allege it was almost SE23...

...she moved.

Well the prices in the bit of SE 23 that are right next to Catford seem to be soaring - all those roads running off Stansted Road. So the allure of Catford may be rising...

Where I live seems to have got even posher - the bread shop at the end of the road sells loaves for £3.40 (!). But the advantage with London is that if you want something else, just get on a bus. Here, I can't buy anything useful (needle, thread, tights) just lots of posh coffee, mobile phones and window shop in estate agent windows - it's definitely 'worse' than when we first lived here. But within bus reach you can find almost anything you want. That's why I wouldn't ever leave London, despite being tempted.

I recently went back to where I grew up (also London) - apparently that has been gentrified, but it hasn't changed much... still has meths drinkers propping up the street corners, barred shop windows, grafitti, filthy streets. If you want a bit of rough OP, you can always find it in London, but it's good to appreciate the up-sides of living somewhere poncey. :-)

mintyy how old are you children?

Well, I certainly understand what the OP is saying. My area used to be normal, slightly shabby, liberal, all sorts of people cheek by jowl, not necessarily mixing, but mutually accepting. Not any more. Fine for those of us who own and can profit by leaving, not so fine for those living in council or housing association properties and left adrift in a rapidly gentrifying and neighbourhood increasingly hostile to them.

My street used to be racially and socially mixed and relaxed with it. The last but two of the recent incomers (already cashed in and left) pointedly would not talk to his black neighbours (including me) though he was very friendly to the white neighbours. The other newbies are similar. A local shopkeeper I've known for years complained to me with real feeling yesterday about the unpleasant attitudes of many of the new arrivals, after I watched two of them brayingly treat him like a rather disappointing serf.

I don't get it, but I am sad and angry about it.

Ah, yes, Marsha, the magnificent Dog Kennel Hill Sainsbury's.
Very useful, true dat.
But it could be almost anywhere in S LOndon because people drive to it from miles arund and I see very few foot customers when iI am queueing for a space in the car park.
But it is true, you are hardly in a ready-meal-free black hole in ED

Oddly (perhaps) ED (as in Lordship Lane) has not been colonised by Sainsbury local or Tesco Experss. Unlike Brixton. There are Sainsbury's Locals almost every 100m in Brixton.

Pobble do you think a Waitrose in Streatham might be on the way? In the new development on the old bowling alley? (secretly and hypocritically hope so )

PolyEthyl - I agree that racial polarisation has increased in Brixton. It didn't used to be so marked. The 'Upmarketing' of all the various venues has come with a styling and market sector targetting that has actually polarised the people who go there. The various pubs used to be ordinary pubs and everyone used them. Now they are themed bars and less mixed.

The reasons and roots are very varied, though. In the 90s when 'yardy' cocaine gangs moved into the area lots of black families with the ability to do so moved away because it was them and their children most at risk. The market (Granville Arcade) was already struggling - the new generation were shopping in Tesco, not the market, or now Lidl, or the 99p shop. The market was over a third empty units when the fist restaurants moved in. It wasn't that the restaurants priced the market stalls out.

I still love Brixton, though, and don't think it will be lost for ever.