I won't miss Notting Hill (apart from the crack, the graffiti and the chicken)

The street was on the way up. The man in the shop replaced his cage with a bulletproof glass case

I've gone and done it. I've finally sold my London place after 12 happy, weird years. I've lived in All Saints Road, off Portobello since 1992. It was formerly the front line, the most policed street in Europe. When I first moved in I had a top-floor flat overlooking a street awash with hookers, pimps and dealers. Night after night I'd spend hours watching the comings and goings and bashings and hoeings on the street below me. Four days after I moved in I witnessed a shooting right under my window. One drug dealer put seven bullets into another one sitting in his car. He survived and didn't want to press charges, it was never reported and no one seemed to care too much. It was a bit like Beirut so I felt right at home.

I've gone and done it. I've finally sold my London place after 12 happy, weird years. I've lived in All Saints Road, off Portobello since 1992. It was formerly the front line, the most policed street in Europe. When I first moved in I had a top-floor flat overlooking a street awash with hookers, pimps and dealers. Night after night I'd spend hours watching the comings and goings and bashings and hoeings on the street below me. Four days after I moved in I witnessed a shooting right under my window. One drug dealer put seven bullets into another one sitting in his car. He survived and didn't want to press charges, it was never reported and no one seemed to care too much. It was a bit like Beirut so I felt right at home.

The shopkeeper on my corner had totally caged himself in leaving a tiny little hatch through which he could dipense Rizlas and mini bottles of brandy. Black-cab drivers would regularly refuse to take me there. I remember, way before moving there to live, attempting to buy some hash as a teenager off a scary looking dealer in the street. He handed me a lump of something that, after three unsuccessful joints and a bad headache turned out to be damp tree bark. You live and learn.

Then things began to change. The local community and the police made a concerted effort to clean up the street and CCTV cameras were introduced. For four weeks nothing happened. The police were clearly collating evidence because one day the street was sealed off at both ends and everyone was loaded into a van and driven off, never to be seen again. This was the rebirth of the street. Expensive restaurants started opening up and immediately refusing Madonna at the door if she hadn't reserved a table. This has always been the Notting Hill sign that a place is on the way up. The man in the shop on the corner even went with the changes and replaced his cage with a slightly more welcoming bulletproof glass case. You still couldn't shoot him but at least you could see him. It was progress, of a kind. Meanwhile the street began to fill up with more media types like me. The mews on my corner started to be an almost 24-hour film set as everyone flocked to W11 for their London location shoots. Reggae shops sat uneasily next to weird spaces set up by Japanese trustafarians who didn't even make it clear whether their place was a shop, a gallery or some form of surrealist joke. I went in one of these about six months ago and there was just a single round sandwich sitting on a shiny star with the whole place wrapped in tin foil. I left a little confused.

Come carnival I would always find myself with a thousand friends that I never knew I had. This was alright until they made off with my stereo and my TV. It was OK updating my equipment annually but it was getting quite expensive. I would also spend longer than usual in my bath, underwater, as I tried to drown out the sound of the street's steel band practising outside my window every evening. I don't mind steel bands but since they are on a float during carnival and constantly moving they only need to learn one song. It all became a bit like Chinese water torture except without any water and no Chinese.

So anyway, I'm finally off, out of W11 over to a little pied-à-terre in North Kensington where I've cleverly snapped up a little mousehole at the peak of the market, canny eh?

From now on I will be officially based in Gloucestershire and a country fellow. I already have the Range Rover and the wellies and the dog but now I'm going to have to up my road-kill tally and get more guns and buy a tractor and become a 50ft chicken huntmaster.

I don't think I'll miss anything really. Maybe the ready access to crack and fast-fried boneless chickens and possibly graffiti but I've got a spray can and do a lot in my village so that should be alright.

My dog Huxley's pleased. He's been talking about moving back to Labrador where he's from but I've promised him we'll do more stuff together. He likes gin and wants to start a still in the woods. Looking forward to it actually.