11. The Blue Door

Painting it Black in Notting Hill

This morning I was sitting in Posh Nails in Westbourne Park Road, fingers and toes splayed under the blow-dryers, gazing out of the window onto the street as that was all I could do to preserve the polish.

In the half an hour or so I sat waiting for my favoured shade (always Clambake by Essie) to dry to a Ronseal setting, the tourists kept converging from all directions. At one point formed a large clump in the street as they waited their turn, and what for, you are asking impatiently?

Nigh on 30 years after Notting Hill, the hit movie written by Richard Curtis that was filmed in and around the Portobello Road (I still buy my fruit and veg from Cheryl, the gorgeous blonde costermonger who appears in the market scenes), the flick where Hugh Grant played the floppy-haired, tongue-tied owner of a Travel Bookshop and lived in a flat with a blue door round the corner, the fans still stream in for their door-selfies. I was struck by how happy the tourists were to have attained social media Nirvana next to Posh Nails, and a lot of that is down of course to the unmatched cosy, sparkly, sheer niceness of RichardCurtisWorld.

The reason I mention this is we have to repaint our house in Notting Hill and therein lies a dilemma.

Before we bought it, and when I was at secondary school in Hammersmith I’d cycle this pair every past every day, having dragged my bike from the festering bin cupboard in the basement of my mother’s top flat on the corner of Ladbroke Grove. It was painted a splotchy pink, like drying plaster, as was the one next door.

I’d hurtle down Elgin Crescent, late for school, but would always look up at these two houses on the rise, surrounded by communal garden on all sides. Their setting was operatic, romantic, and unattainable.

“I will live there one day,” a voice in my head would tell me aged 16.

Fast forward ten years, and we are living in a bijou blue-painted cottage in Hillgate Village, and house-hunting with my saintly husband-to-be Ivo. He drives me to Clapham, and Camberwell, and explains how much more bang we will get for our buck if we leave Notting Hill. He drives me to a early Georgian townhouse on the common with a “wealth of period features” as the estate agents put it although I’m only taking his word for it as I recall I was at that point pregnant and refused to get out of the car. I had my reasons for this.

My only knowledge of Clapham, Balham, Stockwell, Dulwich etc was going to friends’ house parties there, an experience always tinged with that anxiety that no cabbie would go south of the river after midnight, and panic that I couldn’t afford a black cab anyway (I should say now that my son rents in Clapham and loves it and most of my day is spent sending him links to starter properties in Ladbroke Grove which he refuses to acknowledge).

In 1992, we drove back north in silence. I was entitled and obstinate. I am entitled and obstinate. In fact, I think it was during that drive that I made my position clear: I’m sure there were wonderful houses all over London, I said, and I know how spoilt this sounded then and now, but he should know that there were only three streets I was prepared to live in: Elgin Crescent (where my mother lived). Lansdowne Road, and Clarendon Road. (I’M ASHAMED TO SAY I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP) and all in W11. It all sounds beyond spoilt written down. But I wanted to remain as close as possible to my mother, who had Parkinson's. I knew this decision – where to buy the family house - would be life-defining. It was like Eminem’s Lose Yourself. I had one shot. My husband has never forgotten this little speech as I had no money and wasn’t buying the house and he was (my sole contribution was the baby, and then the Aga, if not in that order).

And then this house came up. One of the pink pair! There was a printing press in the basement. It was falling down, and uninsurable until it was underpinned. It was beyond our budget. But we (by that I mean “he”) pushed the boat out and bought it. It was not so much manifestation, I think, or my magical thinking – it was determination. It was, as we say, a project. A passion project, for me. We camped elsewhere while it was being done up and had the baby there and moved in sometime the following year, moved out for the underpinning, and had two more babies and all was quiet on the western front until That Film.

In 1999 Notting Hill the movie came out, as above, and life has never been the same since. It didn’t help that Hugh Grant jumped over the garden gate saying whoopsadaisy yards from my actual front door (when tourists come knocking Ivo always tells them, pointing far, far away from our house, “ah no no haha! It’s not THIS GARDEN, it’s over there!”) It didn’t help that there really was an excellent Travel Bookshop in Blenheim Crescent, and a blue doorway in Westbourne Park Road, where Rhys Ifans twirled for the paps in his Y-fronts. Here are the scenes I shot today

See? Overnight, the film turned the W11 postcode (the sort that estate agents called “desirable” ie it was the sort of ‘hood where media moguls rubbed shoulders with Notting Hill Tories like Cameron and Osborne, and “vibrant” ie everyone had a dope dealer) into a destination. After That Film it was a bit bankers-goes-the-neighbourhood, and it felt like that nice Richard Curtis turned our neighbourhood into a theme park...for everyone else. I didn't help, either. I wrote a semi-autobiographical novel called Notting Hell (Penguin, 2006), main character Mimi, ie me, married to a man called Ralph, a moth-eaten Old Etonian ie Ivo, who was more trout stream than fast lane.

My sequel had Mimi and Ralph downsizing for Dorset. It was called Shire Hell. and then finally, Fresh Hell (the Notting Hell franchise became a trilogy) when the family return to London, but can’t afford Notting Hill and relocate to Queen’s Park. Here is a smug photograph of me standing in front of the window display of Daunt’s in Holland Park when it came out.

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I had to provide a detailed glossary for all the US editions ie “the Slut and Legless” was the Slug and Lettuce, a pub favoured by Antipodean drinkers, Ribena, Babington House etc are all in there.

Interesting residential detail: Hugh Grant moved to Elgin Crescent for a few years. He was filming the first Paddington. He’d park his red Ferrari Testarossa outside my house. Every morning at 6am he’d rev the backfiring engine and wake me up as he roared off to the studios. Despite my man-sized crush on him I’d complain every time I saw him. He applied successfully to join the tennis club up the road (“the single most humiliating experience of my adult life,” he reported afterwards) and that was not just because he was paired to “play in” with the editor of Private Eye, an organ that has had its fun with our most clever, funny and handsome actor over the years. Then the Grants left, which was a shame, as I don’t think he even played once at the club. “I missed the superficiality of Fulham,” he explained.

Second interesting property detail: Richard Curtis, who cast Hugh Grant of course in That Film, lived up the road, with his now wife Emma Freud, for decades.

But the man who put Notting Hill on the tourist map has moved to Hampstead where I’m sure it is quieter. The bookshop has changed hands too, and my mother died in 2021 (having lived cheek-by-jowl with me, I’m glad to say, for the rest of her life). But still the hordes of tourists and these myriad pointless influencers come, to pose against the blossom and the ice-cream coloured houses.

The local residents are understandably fed up. And they are fighting back against the Japanese girls come with suitcases of clothes and lighting and set up camp on their doorsteps for the TikToks, and the streams of tourists. There are tons of websites instructing tourists where are the most “Instagrammable” streets in Notting Hill not to mention pages and pages on Pinterest, which chills the blood.

When Notting Hellions have to repaint (as we do) we are being encouraged to deter over-tourism and the scourge of the influencers by all painting our houses black. Black!

“It’s clear that the bright and contrasting house colours are a major draw for photographs for social media accounts,” a letter seen by the Standard has reported. Will I paint it black?

The house is no longer pink but a yellowy off-white a bit like English teeth. I’d love to go for an ice-cream colour, but I don’t think my minimalist neighbours would ever agree to one or black so it’s going to be one of Farrow & Ball’s exciting Clunch or String I expect, although three pots of samples sit on my desk. Mizzle, Scallop, and Teresa’s Green…and I do love a bit of duck-egg too….we’ll see.

PS In the interests of honesty, I should tell you that a version of this piece appeared in the Daily Telegraph and was extremely unpopular with readers below the line, who all thought I was a spoilt, snobbish bitch and didn’t deserve 1. My husband or 2. To live in such a sought-after postcode.