Camden

Salena Godden

Mar 13, 2025

Transcript

Remember the best times of your life when you’d walk from your tiny flat all the way to Camden Market to buy tights and it was three pairs for a fiver

and you’d take ages picking the colours and patterns and you’d buy three pairs of tights and feel so rich and so happy because although you wear the same cowboy boots you always wear and the same skirt again and again you’d at least have new tights with no holes for a change and you would feel lighter and how you’d walk happily by Camden Lock with your boot heels clipping on the wet and shining cobbles and you’d see the punks and goths drinking cider by the canal and you’d go into a pub like the Hawley Arms and have a pint of beer and maybe some chips and find that quiet corner to write and you’d be so content with your shopping and so happy with the three pairs of colourful tights for a fiver and maybe you also bought some silver hoop earrings for a quid and a packet of Nag Champa joss sticks from the hippy stall and a butternut squash and a nub of ginger to make a big pot of soup or a curry which would feed you for a few days and you’d write about it all in a new notebook with your blue fountain pen and you’d write the date on the first front page in big curly letters and marvel at how the years are passing and you’d write about how this felt like a happy and special day you would never forget . . .

and that this was really it and you were here and writing and even though you were lost just for once in that small moment you felt found and there was a shift just then because you had made these small purchases for yourself and you lived on your own for the first time and you were living your messy life and writing every day and you hoped you would be better now even though it was a task to remember to eat and sleep and look after yourself and your hair was knotty and your left boot had a piece of cardboard in it to cover the hole in the sole and your life was a fiasco of bad choices but books felt like a safe space and your girlfriend Kelly would text to say she was at Camden Tube station and on her way to meet you and you would feel excited to see her knowing that later you’d probably have another funny Saturday hanging out in Camden and eating truffles from a paper bag and laughing at everything and you might walk down to the Good Mixer like last time and play pool with a young Amy with her cool tattoos and pink ballet shoes and her girlfriend and the four of you girls might play doubles and drink pints and laugh and smoke fags and have a perfect hour or two which means nothing at the time but so much more now as you see how you wrote about it all here in your diary and as you wrote that page you looked down at your pen in your hand and you see how it looks the same as your hand now writing this page because your hands haven’t changed too much and neither has the memory and so maybe this is your reminder to please try to remember the lost hours and the nothing days and make space for ordinary glimmers of joy as they could be illuminating some of the best times of your life and you’d not even know until so many years later when you remember walking all the way to Camden Market to buy tights and you’d get three pairs of tights for a fiver and feel so rich and so happy . . .

*this piece is made from found footage, it’s a recording of a live performance with our band many years ago, whoever filmed this zoomed in on my face and not the rest of the room or the audience or the others playing in the band. I like my facial expressions and so set this poem to it. The audio of the poem ‘Camden’ is taken from the audiobook With Love, Grief and Fury read by author Salena Godden, and is available now and wherever you like to listen to audiobooks … Hope you enjoy this piece, sharing with love and thanks

link: https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/With-Love-Grief-and-Fury-Audiobook