There are five skips on my street, is my neighbourhood basically going to be Notting Hill in 20 years time?

Lord I hope not. Ed Vulliamy’s piece on the ‘upscale vandals’ tearing up The Notts with highest-spec house projects (usually involving excavating the basement) paints a picture of a place I don’t fancy. Like me, you’ve probably read before that basement excavation causes alarming cracks in other buildings. Like me, you might have worried that London’s old streets can’t take this kind of underground abuse. Although the idea of a pool downstairs is, you know, quite nice.

But it’s more than that. The whole piece highlights the ‘them and us’ mentality that’s a big enough issue in our class society. In Notting Hill it’s between ultra rich ‘incomers’ and locals who have been there for 50 years. Locals who find themselves sitting in a shaky house while next door is drilling the pants out of itself. No wonder community spirit is in short supply. Plus, if inhabitants are only there 1/3 of of the year, how are they going to even recognise next door much less say hello and sorry about the noise?

My mother-in-law was brought up in nearby Paddington and still says ‘what you going there for?’ if you mention going to Notting Hill. She remembers a very different place.

And I know complaining about gentrification – which I’m not wholly against – makes me a massive hypocrite. We moved, plonked a skip outside, did up the house, and shopped at the organic butchers. I just don’t like the idea of the loss of neighbourhood spirit, the loss of a socially mixed neighbourhood and of a neighbourood where the foundations might be questionable.

I once heard that in London, Battersea has the most integrated community of people from very different social backgrounds. So if it does all goes tits-up here…