N5 ok, N4 no way!

By Tadej Zupancic of the BBC Slovene Section

It was a few months ago when a North London football club Arsenal, clinched the so-called double. Namely winning both the English Premier League and the Football Association Cup.

And it was then when I realised that many people believe that the Arsenal stadium is in a rather posh area of North London called Highbury because that's what this stadium is called.

Don't believe them. The Arsenal stadium is in the rather less posh Finsbury Park and the evidence for that is very simple. More than two thirds of all football supporters arriving for the Arsenal home matches use Finsbury Park underground station.

There is also the added attraction of the biggest Arsenal memorabilia shop just outside the station.

Marc Overmars with the FA Cup after Arsenal beat Newcastle United 2-0 in May

Arsenal, both the football club and a stadium, casts a long shadow over life in Finsbury Park. In fact, Finsbury Park is only a derelict inner-city area.

Apart from the Arsenal paraphernalia, it has two other attractions. The first is the park itself, occasionally used for open-air concerts, and the second is Seven Sisters Road, the main northern thoroughfare linking central and east London.

Blackstock Road is a typical inner-London street. There are shops, banks, shabby pubs, greengrocers, real estate agents and other assorted businesses.

Home for many ethnic groups

Finsbury Park used to be an Irish, Greek, Italian lower middle class area, now it is fast becoming very Arabic and Nigerian but remains resolutely, lower middle class.

Despite some changes, you can still find odd pockets of the old order. For instance, one of the oldest delicatessens in this part of town is Mario's, run by Mario and Antoinetta Mura. But the area has problems which may yet see him leave. "The problem is people going and stealing from shops and people going and taking the shopping from shoppers and you know, and stealing and it's very very bad", says Signor Mario.

"In fact, I wish to sell my shop and go away because this is a very bad area."

And yet, I sort of like Finsbury Park. You can tell how smart a London address is by its postcode. In the past eight years, I have lived in W1 and SW1 - very smart, and SE9 and E17 - much less smart.

Finsbury Park is in N4 and there is absolutely nothing to be pretentious about. In fact as I said before, even the stadium is being disputed with our neighbours.

But this being London, we're still better off than let's say Wimbledon. After all, they only have a few tennis courts to brag about.