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From The Editor

Sitting in the sunshine on Tooting Bec Common last weekend, listening to live music, eating a delicious goat curry (followed by, I confess, an authentic Mexican Taco and a slice of organic hemp cake) and watching my children play, I got to wonder whether the Notting Hill Carnival was ever this good. Perhaps way back when, in the days before it became just too big to bother with, when you could still walk around, soak up the atmosphere, relax, enjoy the music and not worry about your handbag or losing your children, maybe then, when it was more like our carnival, the Notting Hill Carnival was also worth a visit, but these days, with small kids, it's somewhere to avoid.

I told my friends in Notting Hill, of course, and they nearly choked on their toasted goji berry muffins. "Tooting? Don't be so ridiculous, what has Tooting got to offer?". So, just for you, I thought I'd perhaps mention a few things, without meaning to boast.

The food in Tooting is seriously good, surprisingly affordable, wonderfully varied and truly tasty. The diversity of cuisine tells you something about Tooting which I haven't been able to find anywhere else in London. Try, among many others, Fujisan (Japanese), the Kastoori (South Indian vegetarian), the Boon Thai Restaurant on Amen Corner, Rick's Cafe (great English and European food), the Rada Krishna (which does the best deep fried cashew nuts you've ever tasted), Mirch Masala, Baboosh (fantastic bacon sandwiches), the pie and mash shop on Selkirk Road (yup, they sell eels, and liquor and people queue outside), the Italian Deli and cafe on Franciscan Road, (La Mediterranee), run by Aldo and Giovanni who serve great pasta, fresh Sicilian olive oil and seem to know everyone and Kay's cafe on Moyser Road, with a child-friendly garden complete with toys and books and a menu of entirely home-made everything (including the best carrot cake I've ever eaten). These cafes, above all, create and nurture a proper sense of local community.

Pubs. There are loads of them. The Selkirk (Selkirk Road) plays live music and has a weekly quiz, The Ramble Inn is, I'm told, a proper, great pub, which does a mean Irish Coffee, The Tooting Tram and Social is, I think, owned by the same people who set up The Dogstar in Brixton and I've seen it listed in the London Paper as a great new venue for London, the refurbished Long Room (which has Black Sheep on tap), the Bec Bar, the Smoke Bar, the Sunday quiz in The Castle and Monday nights in the Moon where you can get a pint for £1.50. Did you hear that Notting Hill? £1.50?

The Market. Tooting has two of them! They sell basically everything you've ever needed but didn't know where to start looking. The food stalls, including the butcher and fishmonger, sell affordable fresh food and are happy to offer advice on what they are selling because they care about food. In the past, I've bought octopus from the fishmonger and pheasant from the butcher! Need some muslin to wrap your spices in for a chutney? Obscure, I know, which is why you can buy it in the Broadway Market, along with flea-killer, tamarinds, kittens, children's books and wigs.

Some of the shops may look a little shabby but many of them are little Aladdin's caves of treasure once inside. Deepak is my personal favourite. It sells every spice and herb you've ever heard of plus Indian, Thai, Greek, Italian and Chinese ingredients, but more than that, it sells disposable paper table cloths, fireworks, fresh mangoes by the box load and all the kitchen stuff you can't find elsewhere. I have a friend who drives from Battersea to buy tin-foil boxes from Deepak so she can freeze her home-made whatnots. The staff in Deepak , having watched my belly swell over 9 months and being generally lovely people, gave my daughter a present when she was born. Do they do that in Waitrose?

Other shops that must be mentioned include the off-license near Smith Bros, the charity shops (try Oasis on Tooting Bec Road, great selection of second-hand books and I nearly bought a piano there once), Smith Bros. (think 'AreYou Being Served'), Coppin Bros butchers, which has been there for over 100 years and does great sausages, Mica hardware store which sells everything known to mankind, the Mixed Blessings bakery near Amen Corner, the Greek showmaker a few doors down, who still makes handmade shoes (and may use elves, else I don't know how he does it), the Patio Garden Centre on Tooting Bec Rd, K and K stationers (great kid's craft stuff), which for good reason just expanded its premises, 1 and A Fashion, where you can get new wheels put on your buggy, any school uniform you've ever needed and any number of smart things to wear..it's basically 3 shops in one. Primark. Visage Beauty (great for kids's haircuts) Sainsbury's. And more are opening soon, including TK Maxx (see the chat room).

We need to support these shops or they will go. The architect's salvage by St George's recently closed. How sad is that?

St George's. This is one of the best training hospitals in the UK, (note it used to be in Charing Cross, but clearly saw the light). It's on your door step. As well as offering a drop-in centre and being a generally highly- considered hospital, it is great for those those having kids as it's just opened up a brand new maternity unit, complete with birth pools..

There's more. There are leisure facilities agogo in Tooting. As well as the Leisure Centre off Garratt Road, which has a great soft play area for kids and offers classes in gymnastics, trampolining, football, yoga, you name it, the Common, where you can take tennis lessons, Graveney Rec where you can learn to play bowls, the Lido, where you can swim, there is talk of a Fitness First opening above the old Marks and Spencer's.

Tooting has a library, a good one, which is set to become even better (and more wheelchair- and buggy-friendly) as it's about to undergo major improvements. It's on-line service is fabulous. Tooting has really good schools (the best-performing state school in Wandsworth is, I believe, Graveney) and great transport links.

And Tooting is seasonal, have you noticed? I personally love the honey mangoes which you can buy for next to nothing from ad hoc stalls dotted along the road in July and August, along with mangosteens later in the year and The Fair comes round once a year, like it used to in kids' books, and it's now being joined by the Carnival which promises to be bigger and better each year (but, I hope, never too big).

Last year Tooting hosted the world's winter outdoor swimming championship (the first time it has ever been held in the UK), and the Common filled up with Fins, Norwegians, Russians and Ukranians (as well as participants from the South London swimming club, who did rather well) and a few year's ago a crater on Mars was named after this glorious place putting Tooting firmly on the astral map alongside Slovenia, New Guinea, Australia, Upper Volta and Wales. Why Tooting? Because Peter Mouginis-Mark, the Nasa scientist who named Tooting on Mars, grew up in south London and though he now lives in Hawaii he wanted, he says, to give his mum and brother a kick by putting their town's name on the Red Planet. I guess it's called community. And that's the point.

I don't blame my West London friends for failing to understand the wonders of Tooting. Indeed, I'm grateful to them. Somebody needs to live in amongst the fly-overs and motorways, or we South Londoners wouldn't be able to leave the city so quickly when sunny weekends tempt us away. What they fail to understand is that Tooting has a real community.

And our name is sky-high, rather than our house prices.

Please get involved in this site and become part of Tooting's online community. There's so much about this place that people don't appreciate and, actually, why not boast when where you live is this good?

From The Editor

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