Like me, one of my closest and oldest friends grew up mostly in Stamford Hill and Stoke Newington. In fact, we were next-door neighbours for years. She had Friday night dinners at my parents’ with me countless times and I had Christmas Day lunches at her family’s home for many years.
In those days when we were still living at home, my family’s chaos contrasted sharply with her family’s quiet and orderly serenity. One of the first times Kim came over to my house my mother was blowing her nose and Kim asked me who was playing the trumpet. I thought she was joking and she thought I was joking when I told her it was my mum and we didn’t own any musical instruments.
Other times she was convinced there was a massive argument going on when we were just talking. She got used to our wilder ways though and soon enough knew that on no account was she to even think about trying to wash up her tea mug, or get some cutlery out of the kitchen drawers, because she would invariably do it wrong, upset the laws of kashrut by mixing up the meaty and milky and cause my dad to have panic attacks in the process, and throw out every single piece of cutlery and crockery that might possibly have been contaminated, even if was just nearby. Like in the adjacent drawers. She also learnt fast when we all needed to suddenly duck down in my parents’ car because the rabbi was coming and it was a Yom Tov or Shabbat, never mind we all might crash and die in the process because even the parent driving would try and dive out of sight.
Getting yourself, your daughter and the neighbour’s daughter maimed for life or even killed because you totally relinquished control of your vehicle was far more preferable to my parents than, heaven forfend, God forbid, ptu ptu ptu, the rabbi seeing you driving on Shabbat! Can you just imagine the horror? The shock, the disbelief. Why, it would most likely be the actual end of the poor, belief-beggared rabbi.
Kim was the first in her family to go to university and there she met her husband-to-be. Their three children, two boys and a girl – my godchildren – impressively all went to Oxford and did brilliantly.
It looks like something straight out of Bugsy Malone. If Bugsy Malone was set in 17th-century eastern Europe
It amuses her sons that often on Shabbat, near their family home in an increasingly frum neighbourhood, Charedi men will ask them to enter their homes and switch on a light or device or light something. They call themselves “Sabbath goys”. Over the past decade however, things have changed fairly drastically. It feels like there’s been a population explosion in Stamford Hill and the surrounding hoods. Although the birthrate in Hackney has declined overall and primary schools are being shut down and merged with others, causing a massive amount of stress and upset, the Orthodox are having families larger than ever, and they have them fast and young. In some wards of Hackney, 90 per cent of births are to Charedi women. Kim’s children’s school is being closed due to the decline in non-Charedi birthrate. Over the years neighbouring Charedi schools have got bigger. What was once a genuinely diverse area is now less so.
Driving through Stamford Hill, Amhurst Park and Clapton is like going back in time a few hundred years – if you imagine the cars are horses and carts and children’s scooters existed back then. Thousands of sweet little tiny children and teenagers walking home from school, not an adult in sight. You will see impossibly little “young men” who look about nine years old wearing long black coats and very big black hats. What with these mini-men and the very young girls who are often in charge of even younger girls, the whole scene looks like something straight out of Bugsy Malone. If Bugsy Malone was set in 17th-century eastern Europe.
