Peckham

I can't imagine why I was surprised that I'd never been to Peckham before. Granted I spent a lot of my childhood in London but it's a very big place and I should think that there are far more places that I haven't visited than I have.

Of course, London's pretty much one big sprawl, so it's not easy to tell when you're leaving one part and entering another. Certainly on the train down from London Bridge, there was no exciting moment when I suddenly glimpsed Peckham standing proudly on the horizon. In fact, the whole journey looked a lot like most of the other places I've been, south of the river.

It was only when I was leaving that I suddenly remembered why the place seemed to have some resonance for me and that was because when I was a little lad, my granddad used to (affectionately) refer to me as 'a big, fat boy from Peckham'. I have no idea why!