"I'm not racist, but..."
I was moving into a new flat, full of excitement and the possibilities of moving away from home for the first time. This was my first interaction with a fellow resident, and at this point, I realised things would not be as idyllic as I had imagined.
Many residents of that block of flats I lived in back in the 90s were what you could describe as characters. I'll tell you about some of them, but first, some background on where I had moved to.
In 1994, I moved from the sleepy town of Broxbourne to a tower block in Hoddesdon called Tower Heights, a few miles away from the house I grew up in. Tower Heights was a concrete structure built in the '60s that once may have been considered glamorous, but 30 years later, it was considered an eyesore. It was like Nelson Mandela House from Only Fools and Horses had blasted off from Peckham and landed in the Hertfordshire market town of 40,000 inhabitants.
It was also considered unsightly and contained many people the town's primarily conservative populace would think of as undesirables, such as council and housing association tenants. I always felt the arched eyebrows of judgment when I told people where I lived, even if nothing unpleasant was said afterwards.
Although most town residents wanted Tower Heights torn down, it's still there now in 2025. In 2015, they removed the ageing shopping centre it once sat in and built a Morrisons underneath instead. The Tower seemed to defy logic and gravity for a year, standing on stilts as the construction occurred underneath.
Despite (or maybe because) we knew the town of Hoddesdon felt animosity towards our home, Tower Heights had a community feel. This helped bond the residents and gave us a 'no one likes us, we don't care' attitude.
In the Space song neighbourhood, lead singer Tommy Scott sings Oh they want to knock us down, 'cause they think we're scum, But we will all be waiting, When the bulldozers come, In a neighbourhood like this you know, It's hard to survive, So you'd better come prepared, 'cause they won't take us alive.,
Once you were through the run-down shopping centre and into the stark grey concrete lift lobby, with yellowing curly lino and dead rubber plant, you were in a safe space, away from all judgment but your own. All in it together.
The building was famously home to a celebrity from the '70s, Lena Zavaronni. She had bought that flat with money from her days in the spotlight but then considered it a prison once her fame waned and anorexia took hold. She lived above me, in fact, but that is another story.
There was the old man who, in winter or summer, wore a thick brown woollen overcoat and deer stalker hat, the flaps of which covered his thick mutton chop sideburns but did not cover a lustrous moustache, waxed into twirls at each side. Sherlock Holmes, if the consulting detective work had dried up, and the opium had taken hold. He always had a frightened look in his eyes, like a rabbit caught in the headlights.
At the very top, on the tenth floor, was the weed grower and dealer. He wore a military jacket and long brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. He looked like every Vietnam vet from 80s war films, although he was from Essex. Everyone knew what he did, but no one ever reported him. He was one of us.
Then there was Chris Pig, who lived on the floor and flat directly underneath me. A regularly boozed-up skinhead who was obsessed with pigs. He was a local celebrity to the pub-going folk of the town. You would hear him before you saw him. He would shout "PIIIIIIG" as he entered a pub before a chorus of people shouting, "PIIIIIIG" would return the greeting, like a porcine Norm from Cheers. His kitchen window sill, which faced out onto the walkway of the fifth floor, was filled with pig ornaments, large and small. On many occasions, I would hear him crash through his front door at midnight or later on a Friday or Saturday night, put on Bob Marley's No Woman No Cry, his favourite song, which he would blast out, singing along, but with his own lyrics of "no piglet, no sty..." Although made of thick concrete, the walls carried a lot of noise from neighbours at night, so this song would often be my lullaby at the weekend.
And then there was Trevor. I met him when I first moved in, and during that first conversation, I realised he was not the sharpest knife in the drawer.
"Have you tried that new pizza place down in the shopping centre yet?" He said to me, peering at me with beady rat-like eyes. This was his opening line to me.
We stood in the lift, an undetermined puddle between us; it could be a lager. It could be piss, but from the stench, my money was on the latter.
"No, I haven't."
"Don't bother, don't bother, " he replied, looking at me for a reaction, waiting for me to ask why.
"OK, I won't," I replied.
"You know the one I mean, don't you? The new one in the centre, next door to the Indian. They share a kitchen, I think."
I remember thinking, Please don't take this conversation where I think you are taking it, not today, not as I'm moving in. Please. But then he did.
"I'm not being racist, but.."
Here we go, then, I thought to myself, and I wondered what he would say next to a complete stranger.
"I'm not being racist, but my pizza just tasted of curry. Don't get me wrong, I love a good curry, but I don't wanna taste it on my pizza. Do you know what I mean?"
I didn't want to enter into this conversation; I didn't want to make an enemy on my first day, but I also didn’t want to ignore him, so I asked the only question that popped into my head.
"What kind of pizza did you order?"
"Chicken tikka." He replies.
I laughed, thinking he made a joke. But he looked back at me with incredulity. He was deadly serious and obviously an idiot.
We stood silently, and I watched the floor numbers count up to floor 6. The lift pings, and the door slides open. We both get out, and I realise he is my next-door neighbour. Welcome to your new home. Welcome to life in Tower Heights.
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