I went home to the place where I was born and bred this weekend and I didn’t recognise it, ugh, gentrification! The Caribbeans, (if there are any skulking about the edges will soon have to tell their offspring what plantain is) it is sad.

It is said that black people lower the property prices, this was never true, as it was “Nice ones” moving out in droves that caused any collapse in the market not the black ones moving in.

However sure as sure it is these “Nice ones” who can suck the character out of a place filling it up with more of the same pubs and wine bars, all the cars the houses begin to take on a sameness, so much so that I can now get lost in the streets I once charged so freely about in.

Though it is true everything is shiny and bright, especially the cars, I felt a rage as I walked to Sainsburys, (now with a huge delicatessen, pizza furnace and rotisserie) the Black people were being run out, the old and beautiful houses they could no longer afford to maintain as parents died out. I know I could not afford to live in the house my parents bought forty years ago to raise us all in, even though I work hard and command a decent salary.

These houses are going to the big boys in the city. “Nice Ones”, who get big, pay cheques and even bigger bonuses, who have no idea about the people and the places the are moving out. I was going to have to close my eyes to remember those quirky interesting streets.

There was a witch living a the top of our street, we never saw her but you could tell the signs, from the unwashed curtains, torn and brown, the peeling paintwork and pile of forgotten objects in the front garden. Occasionally there was a twitch of curtain, and the wild hiss of a cat and lots of stories.

At the other end of the road was Mr Johnson and his wife, their house was rented out to a varied and noisy string of characters who would the play loud music every Saturday night and occasionally the police would be called out. Sometimes there were the ugly screams coming from the women in those rooms in uglier situations.

We would see the “brown skin” Mrs Johnson we were scared of, she went to our church and had seen us in the sweetie shop spending our collection money. Sharply she would look over us we marched to school her glare making us bow our heads and murmur good morning in response to her. The diminutive Mr Johnson her husband, later scared us when his playful hellos turned to comments on our emerging adult bodies; I used to run past the house clutching my cardigan to me, until there came Spence, the young mechanic who rented rooms at the Johnsons for a while. He was always outside fixing one car or another, his long locks wrapped round his head and blue overalls slightly open at the chest, his face smudged with grease and a fabulous smile.. We were coy when he was there; smiling, with skirts pulled up to show long brown legs, dry knees, vainly hoping that he would speak to us.

Then there was the market place, I must confess I hated it as a young child, damp and smelly waiting for my mother to pick out the fish she wanted to buy, or standing as far away as I could from anything in the Halal butchers, while I watched someone buying a blanket of tripe or I listened to my mother, tell the man not to give her the “bony goat.”

I, when sent on a errand in the market was always sold the rotten fruit and frequently given the wrong change, this was mainly my fault as I made it easy, my head looking this way and that, eager to go and be somewhere more exciting. I was easy picking for those canny sellers.

I had to be much older before I appreciated the sounds that emanated from Neville’s Music Shop, the smell of fresh hardoe bread being baked next door. The marketplace was live and vibrant, stall holders knew both my parents well and everybody would say hello. My mother would always run in to different friends and she would stop for ever as Mrs “Whitty” would ask a million questions about every generation of our family, then lower her voice to speak about her next surgical procedure or Mrs George her Bajan twang musically singing in the air above us weaving tales of damnation and intrigue. I sometimes listened but mainly I looked around to see if there was any “talent” I could spot, and show off my lovely new top and cleavage to.

We cussed the Asian shops for overpricing condensed milk, the Dunns River desiccated coconut, yams, green banana and the Blue Magic pressing oil,Sainsburys now sell many years later some of these foods, but have you seen how bad the quality is, we thought we knew what high prices were but we didn’t! and the Blue Magic just don’t look for them in the newly opened Waitrose because they won’t be there!.

All this was going to be lost to Pizza Express and M&S Simply Food and City boy buyers and tons of renters from those countries down south where they the “Nice Ones” had voyaged and run “Natives” out, but are now returning as the pickings are better here and they can colonise once again it seems