Never mind the tennis, where are the Wombles? (Wimbledon, London)

Member Name: black sheep

Product:	Wimbledon, London
Date:	13/09/01 (260 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: welcoming, a town in its own right, tube stop

Disadvantages: expensive

Wimbledon is very much a place in its own right. It comes across more as a town in its own right than as a generic commuter housing area for London. I'm not much of a one for pretty areas, and Wimbledon is a very pretty area, but I'm rather fond of the place despite that.

I'm going to use this op to describe what Wimbledon's like to live and work in, and if that's not what you're interested in, you can stop right here.

I'd better start off with a bad point. Considering the fact it's South of the River and 20 mins away from the centre it is expensive. Very expensive. Where I work, every other car's a porsche and every other shop sells designer clothes (well not quite, but it must be getting close). This is Wimbledon Village - Wimbledon's posh end. Now if someone had said this to me before I started working here I'd have said give over, Wimbledon's posh all over, but the village it really is posher.

Actually, that makes it quite a nice place to be. The people here certainly don't make me feel excluded. They make me feel like one of them (which I'm not, my car's an eleven year old Citroen AX diesel, a long way from a Porsche). The added bonus is that the charity shops up here (Wimbledon Village is up Wimbledon Hill) have barely worn designer clothes in them (admittedly at prices I'd usually pay for new clothes, but look at what you're getting for it). If that's your thing, I particularly recommend the British Red Cross shop which is just at the beginning of Ridgway. Of course the sandwiches round here cost £2 a go, but I assume they've got ground rent to cover. Right, now you know what I do in my lunch hour, it's time to venture back into the heart of town.

The heart of town is still posh and still expensive, just less so than Wimbledon Village. It's served by train, the District line, a tram that I think goes to Croydon and more buses than you can
shake a stick at. Like Wimbledon Village, despite its poshness, it feels comfortable and home-like. I felt instantly at ease here. You walk out of the station only to come face to face with a number of coffee houses and bakeries along with Centre Court shopping centre (yeah, I know, but a nice shopping centre all the same). Centre Court (the shopping centre one - or the real one, as I now think of it as) is full of clothes shops ranging from H&M to Debenhams, with most of your middling budget fashion shops in between, as well as a Superdrug, a Boots etc. Then, opposite the station there's a Waterstones, a Smiths and a Books etc. If they're too expensive or too ecologically unsound for you, you can turn to your right, walk a few hundred yards and visit the medium-sized library, which as libraries go is OK (I've spent a lot of time in libraries and 'OK' is an excellent and accurate description of the Wimbledon facility). There is also a Sainsburys, a Safeway, a Tesco Metro (an excuse to offer a smaller selection of products at higher prices) and a Woolworths. (If you've got a car go along the A3 to New Malden's Tesco or Roehampton's Asda.)

If nightlife's what you're after, Wimbledon has a reasonable sized, predictably expensive cinema, a Po Na Na's, a large selection of restaurants of a variety of national origin, at varying price. For good value I particularly recommend the Chinese Restaurant near Woolies where a group of us got an excellent meal at about £10 each including the wine. Eating out in Wimbledon is, surprisingly, not particularly expensive by London standards. Drinking in pubs, on the other hand, is very expensive and not particularly satisfying. You remember 'My bank is now a trendy wine bar', well the spitting image of that trendy wine bar (possibly the very one, I've not asked) resides in Wimbledon, and for the amount of money you hand over for a round, you'd think it was still a bank
. There are a number of such venues dotted around the centre, playing very loud music and charging a fortune, which would be fine, were it not for the fact that there seem to be very few alternatives, for when you're with people you'd quite like to have audible conversations with. There are still proper pubs about, but they seem somewhat lacking in atmosphere, and not particularly good value for money either. Hmm, hadn't realised I was so bitter about our pub-life. It's not been that bad. It's just not that good either, and I tend to avoid the centre for pubs.

Incidentally, if you want to meet people trying to meet rich people, go to the pubs in Wimbledon Village. They're full of people who come along on a Friday night hoping to pull a rich bird, and finding nothing but likeminded souls.

What else is there to mention? Oh yes, I suppose I ought to tell you how expensive it is. For £70 a week you can get a double room in a slum. Wimbledon's slum landlord advertises in the library on a grubby looking card, using an Asian woman as a contact point. Avoid his rooms unless you want to get diptheria. For £80 a week you can get a single room away from the centre. For £1,800 a month you can get a one bedroom flat. Fot £125,000 you can buy the cheapest thing in the estate agent's window. For £1 million you can probably get quite a nice 2 bed semi.

There are also other parts of Wimbledon. The District line stops at Wimbledon South, but I've never got out there. If you get out the train at Raynes Park and wander back a bit you reach West Wimbledon which is a pleasant suburban area with a lot of parks (don't be fooled by the Raynes Park station area, it changes drastically when you reach the parish boundary). Talking of parks, Wimbledon Common is massive and varied, with a golf course in the centre and many people going for walks on it on Sunday afternoons. Along with many others of my generation, I searched for w
ombles, but I found none. I have not given up hope, There are large areas of woodland which would provide excellent cover for them. Then there's the bit where they play the tennis - very similar to West Wimbledon, but on the other side and not next to the Common. There is also a tube stop on the Northern line at Wimbledon South. My only knowledge of this area is that it has a kebab shop. I have no idea whether that is representative of the area or not. It's also on the side of town that the cinema and the Wetherspoons are on.

Oh yeah, I forgot to say earlier, Wimbledon also has an Argos (a very important indicator of a town's size and prosperity to my way of thinking).

All in all, I do recommend both living and working in Wimbledon, just make sure you're earning a lot of money to do it, as your dough won't stretch very far.

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