Mentioned in passing
For twenty years, my main place of work has been in Edmonton. As London suburbs go, Edmonton is definitely not chic. Some Londoners have never even heard of it. Others only know it as the place where most of London's garbage is incinerated. Most simply have a vague impression of it as somewhere that flashes by on the North Circular Road, or on the A10 to Cambridge. Essentially, Edmonton is on the way from somewhere to somewhere else.

Edmonton is transitional in other ways too. Few of our patients were actually born here. Even fewer dream of living out the rest of their days in Edmonton. Some have moved here from Hackney or Tottenham in order to buy their first property, and now their greatest hope is to move out of London altogether, to the leafy vales of Broxbourne or Waltham Abbey. Others have arrived as asylum seekers, but once they know London better, they have no wish to stay in Edmonton any more than they want to return to Kosovo, Somalia or Kurdistan. For …