Comfort Hotel Finchley

Dollis Valley Greenwalk

by Kap2

This is part of the London, apart from the distant and not so distant buzz of traffic and occassional you can follow Dollis Brook and believe you are in the countryside with dogs, ducks and squirrels...

Dollis Brook originates on Mount Moat Open Space in Mill Hill and ends at the Welsh Harp (Brent Reservoir).

The name the Dollis is believed by some to have something to do with the rights of commoners at Barnet, and is rooted in the same word as "dole".

Highlights include the Northern Line bridge arches between Mill Hill East and Finchley Central, an elegant brick built structure of 13 arches.

Lowlights the culverted section under Staples Corner. A graveyard for shopping trolleys under the Brent Cross flyover...

I'll add more information as i walk the route...

Topophilia. Finchley.

by Adaptor-Plug

My Spot in Finchley, Barnet.
Important, Because It Is Supposed To Be.


We've all got to start somewhere and I was officially started in 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.

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 records. And seeing they don't allow the Europe, World, Solar System, Galaxy, Universe bits - they just upped the Finchley a level and focused on the 'Barnet'.

Barnet, as in wig.

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 far as I got. I'll just have to use reasoned trust. Like when watching re-runs of the lunar landings in 1969.
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If only 'Barnet UK' had instead been 'Barnet Australia', then my memories of and attachment to Finchley could have been all so different.

If the forms said I was born in 'Barnet, Australia Outback Land' I could tap into deep, rich, mysterious, Finchley / Barnet 'dreamspaces' of days gone by. Or at the very least I could pretend to - and so not upset the tribal elders.

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 spaces bordering the flank of the North Circular Road weren't built up with flats. Finchley borns, and only us Finchley borns, would see an icecap over where others would see that 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 houses lived the mysterious Glacier God.

As a Finchelyian / Barnetian a la Australia I could join with the other Finchleyian fruitloopers 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 Chairs.
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If my records said 'Finchley / Barnet, Country Somewhere Far Eastern' I might be able to witter about emerging as a poppy seed. Out I 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. Dropped into the moist soils of the Pingowan Forest I flourished into a huge opium tree, to be widdled on by a passsing brown bear, which resulted in me morphing into the Great Green Monkey Demon of Ping.

Nope, no chance of that, alas, not with Finchley / Barnet UK there isn't.

Thank the Lord my Finchley wasn't a 'Finchley, Mesopotamia,' a 'Finchley, Ur' or a '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 dinner parties,

"Well hello, and where are you from?"

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

"I'm from Finchley, Barnet"

and then an embarassing pause. (Though 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 nonsense going for it. (So should you visit Finchley you don't need to feign respect for the local customs - even the daft, archaic, freedom inhibiting and ridiculous ones that necessitate lopping off body parts and believing in fate.)

No.

Finchley / Barnet, U.K. has a sensible, rational, registrar with a fountain pen filling in the gaps left on the birth certificates. And away in Wales a government clerk bashes that 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.

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

"Where are we going?"

"How much time have we got ?"
"Who's got the spending money ?"

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Next


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Finchley

by Kap2

"The Naked Lady"

"Lord Finchley"

by Hilaire Belloc

Lord Finchley tried to mend the Electric Light
Himself. It struck him dead: And serve him right!
It is the business of the wealthy man
To give employment to the artisan.

Finchley Society http://www.finchleysociety.org.uk/

There is even a Finchley Society that aims to preserve it character, founded by Spike Milligan, the recently departed comedian and writer.... their is a campaign to build a statue for him... http://www.spikestatue.org.uk/ and more here: http://www.thegoonshow.org.uk/page24.html

"Joseph Brodsky - East Finchley"

Evening. A bulky body moves quietly along a narrow
walk, with brush-cut hedges and rows of fuchsias
and geraniums, like a dreadnought on a country canal.
His right jacket sleeve, heavily chalk-dusted, betrays
the way he makes his living.

The full Russian poem, below, anyone fancy translating for me?

http://freespace.virgin.net/peter.morley/poetry/brodsk1.htm