Breathe out, everyone. It looks as though Palm 2 has not only survived the arrival of Tesco Express, but thrived on it. Ultra-Darwinists (I'm not one) and ultra-believers in market forces as the answer to everything (ditto) will hail this as a triumph of adaptation and competition. I'll go along with that to the extent that Abdullah and his team have undoubtedly risen to the challenge the arrival of the supermarket monolith represented. But I'm more interested in the way they've done it. This seems to throw into relief the existence of certain trends that have long been predicted for this corner of the great metropolis, but never been conspciuously present.
I had a conversation with an estate agent about twelve years ago. "You live in the third most desirable part of Hackney," she said, "after Stoke Newington and London Fields." Back then, Fashionable Dalston (to give it its full name) hadn't been invented and although Happening Hoxton (ditto) had, it was all about art galleries and a long way away. Third, I supposed, wasn't exactly an insult in estate agent terms. She sweetened her portrayal by assuring me that this part of Clapton was "up and coming."
Was it? I waited. Folk spoke of it in mystic terms: aye, Clapton Pond is up and coming, for it has been foretold. I continued to wait, though not in eager anticipation. I've been wary of the area going upmarket, with all the supercilious cafes and pretentious boutiques that seems to entail. Mine was a mild state of sociological observation. Yet very little seemed to happen. There was evidence of gentrification, but it was sporadic and low-key. Now and again community activists rushed to defend old buildings from redevelopment, but there was nothing like Stoke Newington's scandalised middle-class revolt against the arrival of Nandos in Church Street (thank goodness, he added quietly).
A gentle demographic shift does seem to have occured, though. House prices are a guide to some degree. They've stop soaring recently thanks to the recession, and the general, strong upward trend over the past 20 years has been London-wide rather than particular to here. Even so, I could no longer afford to buy the house I purchased at a bargain price in 1992 when earning an average sort of London income. That rules out a lot of other people too: incoming home-buyers need to be well-resourced.
The first hard evidence I stumbled across came came my way last year, when a well-placed source at a local primary school - you'll never guess which one - mentioned that the percentage of its pupils eligible for free school meals had dropped dramatically since the time when my eldest son, now 22, entered reception class there. That really does tell a tale.
What Palm 2 has done with such industry and charm is - to lapse into the robo-jargon of the marketing industry - identified its unique selling point and adjusted its customer offer accoridngly. In other words, it knows which of its customers love it the most and has provided further reasons for them to do so. Coffee nation has arrived there with avengeance. The new ceiling, all varnished bare wood, looks like many of its client groups' floors. The delicatessen has got bigger. Classic FM springs, static-free, from the in-house sound system. The smell of fresh-baked bread is catnip to local shoppers of a certain variety. "Business is good!" Abdullah smiles, every time I inquire.
All very eductional. And the joy of it is that the shop's development has a constant improvised quality about it, while its character is still strongly defined by the people who work there. "Good morning, brother!" I am hailed in a deep African tone as I walk past of a morning. "You have a good day!" It's not every corner shop where you can be joshingly assured in the course of a conversation about gravy granules that your devoutly Roman Catholic mother-in-law would be converted to Islam in a trice if she bought more potatoes there. Palm 2 has handled the incursion of Tesco without succumbing to the sort of prim self-satisfaction you might find in, say, Highbury or Crouch End. Long may such a catastrophe be kept at bay.
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