![\"tumbleweed\"](\"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/tumbleweed-300x221.png\")
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nOne of the beautiful inspirations of writing is the blank page \u2013 the idea that you can put anything you want on it, the only limit being your imagination. The ultimate passport to anywhere. It\u2019s the primal chaos of freedom, the warmth of the womb.<\/p>\n
It can also be an oppressor of course, once a few filters have been applied. Like the pressure of a deadline to meet. Or the internal pressure of the inner narratives that threaten and taunt. The voices.<\/p>\n
Voices that say things like \u2018how on earth can you write the psychogeography of somewhere like Bickley? You\u2019ll run out of things to say after a few lines \u2013 if you get that fa<\/em>r\u2019.<\/p>\n Another, more benign, voice chips in and says \u2018then you can write about that!\u2019 And maybe quote David Bowie\u2026<\/p>\n \u201cDown on my knees in suburbia The station at Bickley belongs in an Enid Blyton novel. Four sleepy platforms, rarely inhabited. The sun always seemed to shine on those platforms, as Enid would surely have had it, only with a suspicious looking man with a foreign accent to let us know that he was a baddie. Blyton taught for a while here in 1919 at Bickley Park School.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve left Orpington and Petts Wood behind now and we\u2019re hurtling (well, dawdling) towards Bromley. But before that, the train pulls in at Bickley station.<\/p>\n It\u2019s one of those places that only really exists for housing. The few token shops and pubs exist purely to serve the inhabitants. Nobody actually goes to Bickley for any kind of self-gratification.<\/p>\n Self-actualisation, however, was a bit of a thing around here in the 1970s, if you take the word of The Buddha Of Suburbia<\/em>, Hanif Kureishi\u2019s perceptive take on growing up around there at that time.<\/p>\n Like many locals in my group, I read that with excitement when it came out \u2013 it caused a double-buzz by not just being brilliant but also local. I must confess I haven\u2019t read it since, or seen the \u2013 also good – TV series since that came out. No matter, they were great. Spirit captured.<\/p>\n The point is, I\u2019m not sure my recollections would tally exactly, but in my mind, it was always in Bickley he\u2019d set it, particularly the Widmore Road area, which links Bromley to Chislehurst (and therefore Billy Idol to Siousxie Sioux).<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been quite down on the previous stations, but really Bickley feels quite benign, at least when looking back on it at the age of 58. You could compare it to the space between thoughts during meditation. The quiet sweet spot that allows you space to reflect. Hanif knew, or at least his dad did. Allegedly.<\/p>\n Unlike Petts Wood, Bickley is old. The name was first recorded in the 13th<\/sup> century and started to really come into its own in the 18th<\/sup> century. Starting life as a hunting lodge, the landowner of the time started selling of bits of the land when he was (relatively) skint, and the posh houses started springing up.<\/p>\n A search for Bickley on Google brings up an estate agent\u2019s guide to the place, which is telling. Apparently it\u2019s so popular that they really push the envelope when describing adjacent areas as Bickley. Not unlike Stockwell being rebranded as North Clapham amongst the many sleights of hand employed by these doyens of society.<\/p>\n The difference between Orpington \/ Petts Wood and Bickley is that there are no poor bits in Bickley. Most posh-ish areas in South London \/ NW Kent have a token council estate or two thrown in, but not Bickley.<\/p>\n Bickley is where things get properly posh, like posh people want \u2013 where roads are deliberately unmade to discourage cars from actually driving down them. Where houses are detached and seriously out of reach. Estate agents should have a section marked \u2018YOU WILL NEVER LIVE HERE<\/strong>\u2019 for places like Bickley, on behalf of the residents who pray that your kind will indeed never darken their doors.<\/p>\n There are punky types of course, back when the 70s was turning into the 80s. But they seem different. They shop at Worlds End and buy the impossibly pricey clothes the rest of us can only dream about (or indeed idealistically reject). This lends some of them an unpleasant arrogance that essentially mirrors the snobbery of their forefathers, just in a different context. Squiggles rather than suits, but performing the same job. We laugh bemusedly at them, as they look down their noses at us. Punk was never unified to that extent, let\u2019s not forget.<\/p>\n As I post my Petts Wood article on Facebook, my friend Michelle Brigandage posted about the Bickley Lido. I grew up in total ignorance of this beautiful oasis. We\u2019re back to the multiverse thing \u2013 her experience of Bickley was so different (and in this case far preferable) to mine. So, you know, never take opinion as fact, pop kids. On the subject of which\u2026<\/p>\n Bowie recorded the video for his Buddha of Suburbia<\/em> song in a road in Bickley where my wife used to work as a cleaner. It\u2019s brilliantly, bitterly evocative \u2013 the \u201cEnglishmen going insane\u201d line eclipsing all. The rest is pretty golden too:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cLiving in lies by the railway line<\/em> <\/p>\n My, how we clung onto Bowie. He knew. He was always on our side. Back at the age where it was all about sides. Every alienated kid who felt weird and isolated \u2014 \u2018these children that you spit on, as they try to change their world\u2019 \u2014 could listen to Bowie in their bedroom and know that it was going to be alright. We became \u2018immune to your consultations\u2019, or at least a little bit nearer an imagined herd immunity.<\/p>\n His death was announced on Facebook when I was having a bout of insomina at some crazy time in the (UK) morning \u2013 4 or 5am. I actually went back to bed in complete denial and re-awoke to the horror that it was real. But largely that\u2019s a story for the next essay, about Bromley South.<\/p>\n But!<\/p>\n According to Wikipedia, he lived in Bickley 1953-54, which would have made him 6 or 7 at the time. 106 Canon Rd, BR1 2SP for those taking notes or scuttling off to Google maps.<\/p>\n (I say that because I do it all the time\u2026 Paul Gorman\u2019s brilliant biography of Malcolm McLaren took me twice as long to finish as it should because I was forever checking out places from his story.)<\/p>\n There were a couple of pubs in Widmore Road, which a trio of us decided to check out one desperate Saturday night back then. I guess I had hormonal visions of posh young women in pretty frocks, all teasing giggles and exciting flirts. Or at least smelling of nice perfume.<\/p>\n We ended up playing darts badly in an empty version of the Rovers Return. I guess everybody else had the sense to rove without returning \u2013 Bromley, London, wherever. Not a bulls eye to be seen. Here\u2019s what you could have won\u2026<\/p>\n I wonder if Billy Idol ever made the same mistake? These would have been his local pubs too, way back when he lived in the street just opposite. I wonder if he ever sits in his California gaff and reflects on his time in Bickley?<\/p>\n I do know he went to the Three Compasses pub in Bromley one night to see our mutual friend Guy Jardine DJing \u2013 what a contrast that must have been for him. He took Joan & Bill, his parents, as well. Ray from Sigue Sigue Sputnik turned up too. True story:<\/p>\n Strictly speaking, that all belongs to the Bromley South section, but Bromley has more than enough to talk about. Let\u2019s be generous here, eh?<\/p>\n Bickley tempts generosity. It contains peace. At a price you could never afford. I would have railed with situationist angst at this when I was younger, but (privilege \/ financial injustice) aside \u2013 it\u2019s a pleasant place to walk around. The frustrated demon wonders what\u2019s going on behind all those perfect curtains but the answer is probably nowhere near as titillating as the demon would hope for. In this respect, it seems more benign than Petts Wood or Orpington – it\u2019s every bit as Tory but perhaps a shade more liberal.<\/p>\n So, what to make of a place purely designed for people to live, rather than a holistic community space? Something seems very wrong about that, but I can\u2019t quite put my finger on it.<\/p>\n Bickley is nice though, it\u2019s pleasant. It would seem churlish and curmudgeonly to slag it off piecemeal. That tumbleweed at the start of the article \u2013 I\u2019ve got older and reassessed tumbleweed as a good thing, a signifier of calm space rather than a malignant emptiness to be railed against as I perceived it in my teens. Was I bored, or was I boring?<\/p>\n Over to you Mr. Bowie, for the last word:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\nDown on myself in every way\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nPushing the hair from my eyes<\/em>
\nElvis is English and climbs the hills<\/em>
\nCan’t tell the bullshit from the lies<\/em>
\nScreaming along in South London<\/em>
\nVicious but ready to learn<\/em>
\nSometimes I fear that the whole world is queer<\/em>
\nSometimes, but always in vain\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n![\"Billy](\"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/billy-idol-parents-bromley-300x193.jpg\")
![\"billy](\"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/guy-jardine-billy-idol-300x240.jpg\")
![\"ray](\"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/ray-mayhew.jpg\")