Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy and why Crouch End is shit

In Douglas Adam’s, Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy, he talks about a concept where the last man alive, Arthur Dent feels displaced because his home planet, Earth has been destroyed. The concept is that each of us has an invisible tether by which we are bound to, in this case, the world of our birth.

I find a similar thing happening to me at the moment, with the family home about to be sold. Now I’m guessing everyone will say, well you’ve got to leave home sometime, true enough but how many of you can still go back to the place you spent most of your life, without people saying, ‘what the hell are you doing here?’


I’m in a kind of Cartesian duality about the whole thing. On the one claw, I’m sad that somewhere that’s encapsulated so many happy memories (gush) is going but at the same time I’m glad to be getting out of Crouch End.

‘Aren’t you being a sore loser? You’re only saying that because you have to leave Crouch End.’

Not really, if you’ve had the miss fortune of hearing me drone on in the past, you’ll know there’s no love lost between Crouch and I. ‘It used to be’ (what am I, middle aged?) a kind of bohemian village, Clock tower and everything. But you can see it all around now, the corruption.

The Crouch End Broadway now has only four variants: Hairdressers, chain cafes, supermarkets and estate agents. Nicely tying back into the Hitch Hikers Guide theme, you’ll be surprised to learn that mankind’s ancestors aren’t the stoic Neanderthals we all thought, it is in fact the survivors of a space ship crash.


The space ship in question was one of three all escaping some unknown apocalypse. The one that was programmed to crash and burn on Earth was filled with hairdressers, estate agents, waiters and supermarket middle management. Just goes to show I suppose, Crouch End has officially become the third ship. Good thing I’ve been shown the escape pod.