Transcript
RachidWhen we moved here it was in 1977. Yes, so coming to 6 Chilton House, finding your own bathroom, your own ...
LatifaThere were two toilets ...
RachidTwo toilets.
LatifaFour bedrooms ...
RachidTwo gardens.
LatifaSo we all had a bedroom each, literally.
RachidIt was like a mansion to us.
LatifaIt was brilliant.
RachidA dream come true, basically.
RachidAnd we had the Venture playground right next to us which was totally different, you had to build your own activities, i.e. your own swings, your own slides, you know, from scratch.
LatifaWe literally built the Venture playground together which was great.
RachidI remember we used to have, for example, we used to have school friends that would come over because they loved the flats, you know, it was like a maze and what have you, and ...
LatifaI remember my cousins, our cousins used to live in ...
RachidEast Finchley.
LatifaEast Finchley.
RachidAnd when they used to come over ...
LatifaAnd when they used to come over, it was like Disneyland.
RachidYeah. And I remember they used to try and hide their shoes not to go home to say, 'Oh, we can’t find our shoes, can we stay with auntie?'
LatifaYes, because they had a lot of green and everything else, which is nice, but when you have something like this, it’s like a concrete playground.
RachidBut the actual estate itself was looked after – we had a caretaker in every block …
LatifaYes.
RachidSo where we are living now in Macaulay House we had a caretaker on the ground floor and on the top floor. Yes, it wasn’t called by the block’s name, it was called by ...
LatifaIt was called by the person that lived there.
RachidSuch and such a person lived there. For example, Mohammed’s dad ...
LatifaYeah, Mohammed’s dad’s block.
RachidYeah.
LatifaSo, it could be Macauley House, but you’d just call it Mohammed’s dad’s block when we talking to mum. In Arabic.
RachidMy English friends used to call me Fred, because I remember when I was young, they said 'What’s your name?' 'Rachid.' 'Oh, no, no, we’ll call you Fred.' You know, simple as that, just not that Moroccan name. But then they’d hear my mum shouting out, 'Ah, Rachid', which is 'Ah, Rachid', and they’d say, 'Fred, your mum’s calling you', rather than saying, 'Rachid, your mum’s calling you.'
RachidI remember I used to work for a bone man. I was about 8 years old, 9 years old and he had a horse and cart and he would go round during the week looking at all people’s secondhand things that they threw away. And then he’d come on a Friday, which I was in school but on a Saturday, I would go about 9 o’clock in the morning, help him out and by midday, 1 o’clock, he wouldn’t pay me wages, he would just – whatever’s left on the stall, he would say to me, 'It’s yours' and I would just stand there and sell everything for 10 pence, whether it was a massive wardrobe or a little t-shirt, it would be 10 pence, you know? By the end of it, you got like a fiver or something.
RachidWhen Athlone Gardens was being built which we call the new park, I remember when they were building it, they had builders there and I walked through and the builders asked me – they had a couple of rabbits there and I said, 'Oh, can I play with your rabbits?' and they goes, 'Yeah, yeah, of course you can.' And he goes, 'Look, you can have one if you get us a cup of tea.' So I ran home, made the whole builders – my mum made the whole builders a pot of tea …
LatifaShe didn’t know why she was making it – she didn’t know why …
RachidI remember running with a tray in my hand with a pot of tea and mugs, there was about 4 builders, and I gave it to them and they gave me this rabbit, this black and white one, with the cage and everything and it was like they gave me, I don’t know - they gave me - a million pounds wouldn’t have been as good as that rabbit and the cage.
LatifaThe witches hat, the witches hat!
RachidThey call it the witches hat because they built this big cone thing, you know, when on a rainy day you ran in underneath there and it was like a hexagon, wasn’t it, like a 50 pence thing and we’d go in there. Yeah, we did spend a lot of time there …
RachidThis is going to sound weird. From wherever you’re from, you’d have a distinctive smell, so if you was Moroccan, you will have like Chamila smell ...
LatifaChamila smell, yeah, that’s the ...
RachidWhich is a marinade, a marinade that goes into most cooking. If you was African, you’d have the distinctive smell of fried fish, you know.
LatifaFried fish or chicken.
RachidIf you was Caribbean, Jamaican, you’d have like a chicken smell, you know. If you was English, you’d have that – I wouldn’t say – it’s an English meal, I don’t know how – mashed potatoes …
LatifaYeah, but you can’t smell that, do you.
RachidLat, it’s the rules that are coming with it as well, like, for example, you can’t hang your clothes on the balcony in these new places. Yeah, or you can’t have … You can’t have a barbecue, they’ve mixed private housing ...
LatifaTogether with council flats.
Rachidand council flats, yeah, and the people that have paid £800,000 for their flat or a million, they don’t want to smell a barbecue coming from ...
LatifaOr a curry from an Indian family ...
RachidOr they don’t want to see clothes hanging on their ...
Latifaor a tagine from a Moroccan family.
LatifaIt’s always been a diverse area. However, at the moment, I think it’s because both - all types of people have moved in like people that have nothing or have just come in from other places and people that found that this place is very trendy and they want to claim it for themselves.
RachidI feel that we’re getting bought out.
LatifaDo you know what I mean? We’re being bought out.
