Flight

When K-Baby fled inner city London for the suburbs in the mid-nineties, he was merely indulging in the end reach of a post world war II syndrom. He was amongst the last wave of native Londoners that had embarked on what is now referred to as 'white flight'.

London in the mid nineties was a different Landscape to the vibrant multicultural welt stadt that it is today. K-baby like those of his generation had been fleeing the decay and death of inner London Shoreditch for the safety of the outer suburbs, away from the hordes of inner city immigrants and run down schools to the safe haven of a clean little England suburban outpost with its good schools and 'people like me' atmosphere.

If K-baby had had more foresight at the time, he would have thought twice about leaving his council home in run-down Shoreditch and perhaps stayed put or moved a few blocks down the road to buy an equally run down but affordable cottage in what was to become the epitome of inner city 'organic' living - Stoke Newington. But at the time, no one could have imagined the hipster paradise Shoreditch and Hackney would eventually become.

However,  K-baby - newly armed with an MBA, waves of ambition and a somewhat vague intention of breeding and then colonising the high performing 'Waldegrave Girls' with the fruits of his loins - struck out for the semi woods. Not the Chilterns or the Cotswolds or anywhere in that vein, but to the anodyne and clean suburban Middlesex town of Twickenham.

Twickenham no doubt, has its charms and lies firmly within the clean-lined affluent English parkland of Richmond Upon Thames, but Richmond it ain't. K-Baby's settlement there and eventual fermentation into suburban life, meant that escape would become nigh impossible as the inner city heartbeat began to revive it's pulse.

Today the Kingsland road, Dalston, Hoxton and Stoke Newington areas are the heart beat of hip and trendy Europe. Property prices have more than quadrupled, wealthy bankers and the ultra hip have moved into K-baby's former stomping ground. The very people he had hoped to find refuge among, playing cricket on Twickenham Green or crossing the bridge to Richmond, are the ones who have traded places with him and now sip fair trade lattes and moccas from  hipster mugs  while munching on organic beef carpaccios in Stoke Newington and Notting Hill delis.

For K-baby and many other middle aged singletons now marooned in their suburban flats, the prospect of returning to cosmopolitan city living  has diminished with time and affordability.

It seems if you were not at the party before 2007, chances are you may never be invited except as a day tripper, this is because inner London's astronomically high property prices have firmly ensured that.

By way of an update, K-Baby did finally pluck the courage to flee the excruciating mundane of Twickers for life in the wild bushes of West Africa, where perennially  he will atone for his many sins.