The sign in the estate agent window says We Love Forest Hill. And I think we probably do... or maybe we will.

In the same way that Ebbsfleet has become a by-word for Europe with the new Eurostar route dropping in, so Forest Hill represents New London. You’ll have to be quick to move in there ahead of the lemmings. As soon as London Transport announce their plans to extend the tube network to this neck of the forest, house prices will rocket (if we can imagine such a thing in the current climate). For now it’s one of those unlikely suburbs that houses wily businessmen and truly impoverished artistes.

There are signs of a neighbourhood knowing it’s on the up: The Dartmouth Arms by the station wouldn’t look out of place in Hoxton; wirelessed up to its eyeballs with chintz wallpaper and cheese on toast for a fiver. (The pub I would recommend for a quick pint is ‘The Capitol’ over the road – frustratingly wrapped in Weatherspoons despondency and day-time drinking, the building itself is a sight to behold: a once resplendent art-deco cinema.) Just around the corner, there is a new rehearsal space opening on Havelock Walk. This promises to produce some very interesting fringe work that will no doubt drag Lewisham out of its cultural black-hole and put it firmly on the map as an epicentre of the avante guarde!

The jewel in the FH crown for me though is the long established Horniman Museum, 10 minutes walk up the London Road. It houses an eclectic permanent collection ranging from living sea-horses to dead dodos, alongside the current temporary exhibitions comprising a range from African totems to Japanese kimonos. Give it a few hours to really learn something but don’t hang around too long or you might never escape!

And just a little story to finish. When they installed the giant walrus centre stage, the taxidermist had never encountered such a beast before. He did what all the best scientists do under pressure and improvised. The result is a massively over-inflated sea-hippo bulging at the seams with stuffing to much larger proportions that it's ever found in the wild, where it's skin folds as flabby insulation.

Maybe you had to be there... but the walrus entertained me no end until I found the cabinet with the mounted heads of Pugs and Pekinese.