London
On my last visit to Stamford Bridge, the home of Chelsea FC, the area postal code SW3 hadn't been quite so disparagingly rebranded as 'SW Twee'. A lot has changed since 1984.
While King's Road in Chelsea was a mecca for youth cults and trendy tourists, its environs a mix of wealthy homes and rundown local authority estates, it had yet to be completely gentrified by the wealthy and swamped by visitors to Prada. Last week, Kensington & Chelsea made headlines with a poll showing the royal borough had an average household income of GBP100,000 (HK$1.56 million) - not enough to buy the average borough house, priced at GBP765,000.
The figures are skewed by the arrival of the super-rich and City financiers, notably Chelsea's billionaire owner, Roman Abramovich. In 1984, while little Roman was throwing snowballs in a Siberian playground, once-glamorous Chelsea was in the old second division, playing clubs better known for hooliganism than playing prowess: Leeds, Cardiff, and my team, Portsmouth. It was in the darker days of English football, the Heysel tragedy still a year away, when fighting between 'casual firms' was fashionable.
Back then, Chelsea's now-comfortable, all-seated, all-covered home was a half-built, half-empty mix of terraces and a three-tier stand. At one end, fittingly called the Shed, fans stood behind wire fences, controlled by police in riot gear and on horseback. The fear of being kicked by a horse was as much imprinted on my mind as a horseshoe was comically imprinted on my friend's right buttock.
He just got too near. Back then, 'David' was a casual, a troublemaker. Now, he stops trouble. He's a police inspector.
Everyone - fans, policemen and horses - now behave better. And it's all down to money.
