There goes the neighbourhood.

Literally. There’s a rather grim stretch of the Harrow Road, not far from where I grew up, that was always known as “Prince of Wales”. Like Swiss Cottage and the Elephant & Castle, it was a neighbourhood named after a pub. And quite a horrible pub. This is where the rough end of Maida Vale meets the rough end of Notting Hill. And where Harrow Road police station was not a place you wanted to end up if you were black or, like me, had an Irish surname. Up the road was the notorious Mozart estate, so “Prince of Wales” wasn’t the most salubrious of neighbourhoods. And yet, it’s now feeling the force of gentrification. Cycling past today, I noticed that the Prince of Wales is now a branch of Costa coffee. So it’s only a matter of time before the sound of Mozart comes floating out of the Mozart estate.