Victoria Summerley: City life

My son leaves school next summer, so this autumn term has been enlivened by visits to the various educational institutions to which he thinks he might like to progress.

He's decided that he's going to apply to do a foundation year at art college, and a London one at that, so he can live at home and save money. This means our open-day outings have been relatively relaxed – no getting stuck for half a day in a motorway jam or being trapped on a train for hours by engineering work at Newcastle or Stoke. Instead, we've had a pleasurable 20-minute jaunt by bus, Tube or train around the centre of the known universe.

The open-day trips have also given me a chance to glimpse inside establishments that I frequently pass but have never really noticed, from the Sixties blocks that make up Kingston University, for example, to the rather grand environs of the Chelsea College of Art & Design, now housed in the former Royal Army Medical College on Millbank, next to Tate Britain.

Kingston and Chelsea may be very different organisations, but they have three things in common: foundation courses that are respected nationwide, riverside locations (Kingston's art faculty backs on to the Hogsmill river, so the student café and bar is on the waterside), and a rather touching adherence to the Art School Stereotype.

According to the ASS, as far as my son and I could make out, at least one of the following must be on display: a silly hat (boys and girls); scary makeup (boys and girls); dyed hair (platinum/highlights for boys, black/blue/ pink for girls); or various spikes and studs, either in leather or skin.

The only shocking thing about this is that art students looked like that when I was at university. They haven't changed a bit. And my mum, who went to art school in London in the 1940s, says they looked pretty similar then, too. In all that time, haven't the nation's most creative brains come up with anything new in the way of rebellious attire?

****

Parking, Part Two. Automotive life outside my house, which I described a couple of weeks ago, has become even more fascinating following the introduction of a residents-only parking restriction in the nearby area known as The Toastrack. This group of roads, so-named because that's what the street layout looks like on the map, is famous in south-west London for being rather grand. Indeed, the comedian Jack Dee used to live here: you've either got to get belly laughs or a City bonus to afford a house in the T-zone.

Anyway, the Toastrack folk decided that their expensive enclave (average house price £2m or more) was becoming clogged up by the lumpen proletariat, so in came the wardens and out went all the parking-space squatters and camper vans and assorted vehicles that people dump in unregulated streets in our area. Of course, they've all ended up in our road, including one car that has been parked opposite my house for three months.

Last month, yet another controlled zone came into force to the south of us, putting even more pressure on parking for us, so I rang the council to ask if there were any plans to introduce residents' permits in my beleaguered boulevard. Currently, no, they said, but if a large number of people complained about problems with parking, they would look into it.

So what about the Toastrack, I asked, why did they get residents' parking? Well, said the nice man at the council offices, a survey among local residents was carried out at the request of the Toastrack Residents' Association. This showed a large proportion in favour of parking controls, so these were duly introduced.

I told him about the Volvo estate parked opposite my house. Well, he said, that might belong to someone who used to park in the Toastrack but has been pushed out by the new controls. Or it might belong to a resident who disagreed with the Toastrack Residents' Association and didn't want to pay for a permit.

I thanked him for his help and went and had another look at the car outside. On the windscreen, next to the (expired) tax disc, it carried a sticker. Which read: "Toastrack Residents' Association". It's sad to think that, in these hard times, people who live in £2m houses can still be too short of the readies to buy a parking permit, isn't it?

****

Parking, Part Three. I went to dinner at my friend Philip's house on Saturday. Philip lives in Hackney, at the diametrically opposite end of London from me, so it is a testimony to my affection for him (and his fabulous cooking) that I cheerfully embarked on an hour's drive (and perforce an alcohol-free evening) in order to spend some time in his company.

I'd been there before, so I knew that parking in his neck of the woods was a bit of a problem. Furthermore, the end of Philip's street has been blocked off and entry through the subsequent side streets is blocked by gates accessible only to residents. I'd failed to ask Philip how to unravel this Chinese puzzle in order to find the way to his house, so I parked a few streets away and walked the rest.

Philip is a keen gardener (he opens his garden for charity every year under the National Garden Scheme), so I wondered whether he found it inconvenient to have to go all the way round the houses in order to park in front of his own for the purposes of unloading compost etc. Had the street always been blocked off?

Yes, said Wijay, Philip's partner. It was a bit of a pain going all the way round. Apparently, the street had been blocked off a few years ago following a campaign by local residents to stop people using it as a rat run. Guess who led the campaign? Yup, Philip. Be careful what you wish for.

v.summerley@independent.co.uk