True stories: In praise of anonymity

Overfriendly neighbours give the big city a small-town feel

It's a common observation that people don't talk to each other in London. But the anonymity becomes comforting after a while. I like the complete disregard I can have for my appearance and I positively relish being able to pop to the local greasy spoon on Saturday mornings looking like something the cat dragged in. But I've just moved to north London and I've discovered, to my horror, that people want to know my business again.

I grew up in a sprawling, ugly satellite town on the south coast where everyone knew everyone else. Peacehaven was built during the Fifties by a town planner with so little imagination that he named most of the roads after his sisters.

Where I lived, in Edith Avenue, the only excitement was that the girl up the road played snooker and that I once had a disastrous hair experiment with food colouring. She became the women's national snooker champion and I became a journalist. It didn't exactly put Edith Avenue on the map but people might still point out our two houses to this day with a knowing look. It's that sort of town.

NW2 is that kind of place, too. On my first morning there I felt like I was 13-years-old and back in Edith Avenue. Bleary-eyed, I stumbled out of my new front door into the shop over the road. As I looked around, the proprietors grinned at me, introducedthemselves and asked me what I was looking for.

I felt confused. As far as my experience of the big city stretched, people in your area knew you by sight; a friendly nod or "all right" was as far as I'd got in local shops.

I had a sudden premonition that I might not want to get too friendly with someone who could discover all sorts of personal details from the contents of my shopping basket: my rare but desperate purchases of shortbread biscuits; my sudden urges for late-night whisky. Call me paranoid, but I don't feel relaxed being on first-name terms with the person who sells me tampons. Then I remembered; my lettings agent had asked the shop owners to look after my keys for the British Telecom engineer's visi t, so they probably know what the inside of my flat looks like. Convinced I'd left something embarrassing lying around, I picked up two things I didn't need and hurried out.

When I searched out the nearest cashpoint, I prepared to queue, silently musing as usual. Then the woman in front of me turned round, smiled and told me the cashpoint was broken. I looked back with the usual Londoner's blank gaze but, undaunted, she offered to drive me to the next cashpoint up the road. I panicked, decided I was a bit old to be kidnapped, but declined as graciously as I could and nipped into the cafe next door.

NW2 has an excellent selection of cafes but the one I picked in my first week turned out to have an eager-to-please chef who likes to know your food preferences. Charming as this was, I felt a little uneasy when he noticed that my companion and I orderedthe only two vegetarian meals on the menu. "I'll put more vegetarian specials on the menu next week," he said. I grinned weakly, and protested that I had been known to eat fish, too. Some people feel nervous around flesh abstainers.

I decided to get an extra set of house keys cut. The cafe owner pointed out one of those junk emporiums that sells everything and told me he would keep my lasagne hot until I returned. I hadn't intended to get the keys cut right that minute but there's not a lot you can say when someone offers to keep your dinner warm, so I meekly set out over the road.

In the key-cutting shop, the owner tried to engage me in cheery conversation, asking what I thought of the place, as if I'd just arrived from Mars. I mumbled something non-committal and kept a close eye on him in case he made a copy of my key for himself. Good thing, too, because the TV shop next door asked for my address later that afternoon and smiled familiarly, as if the locals had been canvassing public opinion on the new resident.

The last straw came when I caught a local bus to the sports centre. I asked the driver to tell me where I should get off, and, unprompted, three people offered me their opinions, pointing out different routes to the centre.

I hadn't realised how much I liked my privacy. I'm convinced the next shop I pop into for cigarettes is going to tell my mother I've been getting home rather late recently.