Dear Readers,
Good evening, we’re back with another Tuesletter this week. Our last outing was the most popular yet – over 800 of you signed up to read about Russ-in-Cheshire’s book launch, which means that there are almost 6,000 subscribers to this newsletter, which means this mail-out is costing more to send while remaining free to read. If you’re new to the magazine, or a long-standing fan of what we do, please do keep us in the game by purchasing one of the print issue from our shop page here.
Issue 13 is almost sold out, and Issue 14 is landing next week, so if you subscribe today, you will receive two bits of post in just seven days from a quarterly magazine – which really is exciting for everyone concerned.
Today, we’ve got another bonza feature to lead with. There’s a flat in north London which looks like it’s a swingers’ den. But is it just the home of a particularly keen swimmer? Harry Shukman went to find out more.
In N19 Did Kubla Khan Decree
At first glance, Apartment A at 422 Hornsey Road seems like one of the more enviable flats in London. It has a swimming pool in the basement! And a sauna! And a steam room!
But there’s something unplaceable, even a bit uncanny, about this property. Why are there armchairs positioned around the water? What’s with the viewing platform above the pool? Why are there two kitchens? Surely this isn’t some sort of… aquatic sex dungeon? Other people have noticed it too. A couple of years ago, pictures of the flat were posted to Twitter and people commented on their ‘deeply chaotic energy’.
As weird as it sounds, I’ve always wanted to know if this house was, as Alan Partridge would say, for ‘sex people’. Is it a swingers’ paradise? Or just an ordinary two-bed flat, built perhaps by a wealthy Finnish businessman who missed his saunas?
Curiosity got the better of me. This autumn I went to the flat, knocked on the door – it’s next to a Chinese restaurant – and found Michael, an eccentric and cagey Northern Irishman who declined to tell me his surname. He’s the owner of this incredible property, and has lived there for eight years. He’s in his fifties or sixties, and wasn’t great at eye contact. He invited me on a tour of the place.
The smell of chlorine clogs my nose as I move into the apartment building lobby. But that’s not the most unusual thing. There is a metal cage around the door leading down to the swimming pool. None of the other apartment doors have bars over them, just the one for the pool. After a stroll through the upstairs flat, Michael shows me downstairs to a living area with black leather sofas, separated from the pool by a glass wall. This is where he explains that rumour-mongering about the flat has prevented him from finding a buyer.
In 2020 he listed it for £1 million, then £1.2 million, but had no takers. Earlier this year he put it up for £850,000 and again, nobody was interested. ‘I get all sorts of negative comments about this place,’ he says, gesturing, before pausing for effect: ‘Does this look like a fucking whorehouse?’
Michael categorically denies that his pool flat has been used for anything other than swimming. ‘Do you know something?’ he asks. ‘I’ve owned this place for 25 years and I’ve never had a fucking whore or anybody down here. It’s kind of sad for people to take that kind of approach.’
We’re talking at the water’s edge now. To paraphrase Nelly, it’s incredibly hot in here – because the AC is on the blink. The water is clean though, and Michael swims in it most days. He lives around the corner and comes in to work out. We look at the sauna and the steam room. There’s building work going on, so definitely no swinger activity. Not that that kind of thing ever happened here, as Michael says.
‘People’s minds are stupid,’ he tells me. ‘I think that with 90 percent of people, the sound of sauna, steam room, swimming pool, they automatically switch their fucking brain to that porno side. I would think sleazy, wouldn’t you?’ He pauses for a moment and realises that he’s talking about his own home, and then adds: ‘Well, I wouldn’t, because I have it. But most people are like that.’
I mull over his answer and then something terrible happens. Michael moves to switch on the mood lighting for the pool, but accidentally treads on a plank of wood with a nail sticking out. ‘Ahhh!’ he screams. ‘A fucking nail! It’s fucked!’
I worriedly say ‘Shit!’ and ask if he’s alright, and he tells me: ‘I’m OK, yeah. Just cool it down a minute, yeah? Fuck that. Right, pool lights, have a look.’
The pool lights start flashing red and purple and green. I ask Michael, who is now limping slightly, if he’s in pain. ‘I’m OK,’ he says. ‘I can take a nail any time in the fucking foot.’
As we look at the underwater lights some more, I wonder if I might be dreaming. What am I doing here? Why am I in a stifling underground pool, sweating gently with a man who’s now muttering about getting a tetanus injection?
Michael shows me the second kitchen – kitted out with a fridge, a freezer, a cooker, pots and pans, just like the one upstairs – and I ask why he thought to install two of these. ‘The reason behind that is quite simply, what else would you put down there?’
He has plans to split the upstairs bedrooms of 422 into a separate flat, and build more bedrooms downstairs and turn that into a second home, which he might live in. ‘Whatever way this goes, I’m going to be a happy bunny,’ he says. ‘Fuck all the doubters.’
He also plans to spend more time in the Thai resort of Pattaya, where he has a bungalow and goes to ‘lie on the beach and whatever and whatever and whatever.’
I can’t quite follow all of Michael’s plans for the Hornsey Road pool house, but it seems to involve constructing a bridge over the water and building an outdoor patio. He says that despite the ridicule his flat has come in for, he sees himself as a visionary architect. ‘I would like to be given the acknowledgement of being a great, fucking out-the-box thinker on my designs,’ he says. ‘That’s what I would like to achieve.’
So is 422 Hornsey Road for sex people? Michael insists it’s not. I’m inclined to believe him. But that doesn’t mean something even weirder hasn’t been going on there.
Michael owns a few properties on this street, and we leave the basement so he can take me to another building that he’s renovating with his son. It has a garden in the middle, with a Thunderbirds-style roof that retracts to cover the room. I make my excuses to go, and he shakes my hand. Then he asks, menacingly: ‘So are you going to do a little write-up that’s good for me, or are you going to be one of those stupid bastards, one of those cunts behind people’s backs?’ The stupid bastard, I suppose.
330 Milliliters of the Good Stuff
While we printed 50 of them, there are now five ‘Soho Map of Cokes’ left for sale, so this is very likely your last opportunity to score a Paul Cox print at a discount rate – and look how beautiful they are! If you’re keen for one, reply to this email and we’ll sort out the shipping and the invoice there and then. They’re £40, signed by Paul and in A2 size, and they will look magnificent in your lounge or downstairs toilet.
Tomorrow’s Chip Paper
One of our lead features from Issue 13 is now live on the website – Séamas O’Reilly interviews John Lanchester, Ian Urbina and Oliver Bullough about the stories that didn’t land with a bang, but with a thud. If you’re interested in the intricacies of investigative journalism – or you’re interested in how the world works – then this is one for you.
Pints For The Fence
Did you know that the House of Parliament is full of bars selling subsidised pints to thirsty MPs? It really is very very strange when you think about it. So there was no better place for us to send our resident jar-tsar, Jimmy McIntosh, for a lager-sodden dispatch. Few people write as well about London as Jimmy does, so if you haven’t tucked into his piece, you can do so now.
They Log You Off, Your Mum and Dad
These days, everyone is anxious about how much time they spend online, and it’s worse for screen-addled parents ignoring their small children slowly get hooked on the internet. Gareth Watkins, who has a young boy, has written a sprightly, warm and witty survey on what it’s like to watch your son grow up on mother’s milk and YouTube vids.
No Free Tote Bags
As writer Zoe Colvin kindly said last week, if you’re looking for a decent Christmas gift, then a year’s subscription to TF is a pretty safe bet: You can also give one to yourself – that’s fine by us too.
All you need to do is go to our shop page here. If you’re giving one to a friend, enter your details in the ‘billing’ section, and their details in the ‘shipping’ section. If you need some help placing the order, reply to this email and we will guide you through the process.
From the Pen of Old Possum
Last week, we challenged readers to dig into the archives and find the most boring letter that T.S Eliot ever sent. And we have a winner, thanks to Magnus Syner, who has found some correspondence between Virginia Woolf and T.S Eliot – two of the most interesting people who ever lived – that will have you nodding off in no time. We reprint it in full below.
26 March 1919 18 Crawford Mansions,
Crawford Street, W. 1
Dear Mrs. Woolf,
Thank you so much for sending me the patterns, and so many of them. I still think that the one originally chosen is the best, and would probably also be best liked by the people who might buy the book. The dark blue one is also good. But these may be rather expensive, so I have chosen one of the others (marked 3) as an alternative, and it is only reasonable to leave the choice between these three to you.
I wonder if your husband got my note. We were very annoyed at having made an engagement for Saturday so far ahead that it could not be broken, but I do hope you will ask us again.
I look forward to seeing you. It is very good of you to have taken so much trouble over the papers.
Sincerely yours,
T. S. Eliot
In Case You Missed It
Sarah Souli writes a chilling report on the murder of three Afghan women on the Greek-Turkish border, for Atavist.
For Tribune, Isaac Rose argues Against The Manchester Model, and the developers turning the city into a neoliberal dystopia.
Annie Lowrey surveys the Black Americans Burned By Bitcoin.
Ian Penman lets the thunder roll with the best review of the week; his polite dismantling of the Bob Dylan mythos for City Journal.
A truly harrowing piece by Ava Kaufman, on how America’s hospice system fell prey to exploitation.
Yasmin Tayag says what we’re all thinking: expiration dates are meaningless.
Stuart Richie reports on a recent criminal case in which twins were exonerated of cheating in an exam, on the basis that their minds were telepathically connected.
And Finally
We’re afraid that the best efforts of those pesky journalists and NGOs have all been in vain: World Cup fever has truly descended, and everyone’s chosen to forget about the litany of Qatari human rights abuses – at least for the time being. Last night, Brazil played some unbelievably beautiful football as they hammered South Korea 4-1. So there’s no better moment to watch the best bits of the greatest team ever – it’s Brazil 1970, with Pelé, Jairzinho and Rivelino taking the game to its heights that have never been equalled since.
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That’s it for this week, we’ll be back with you soon. If you’ve got some pointers, queries or postal enquiries, please reply to this email and we’ll come back to you promptly. Until the next time.
All the best,
TF
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