A Day in the Life: Camden Through My Eyes by Tarin Rahman
- Apr 30, 2025
- 3 min read
Updated: Dec 2, 2025
Camden isn’t just a postcode to me – it is a place where I call home, a place where I grew up learning how to cross the road, before I learnt how to spell. It’s central and north all at the same time, like a middle child who refuses to pick a side. The older I’ve gotten, the more connected I am with the area within the borough because of how many memories I have made – the good, the bad and the ugly memories.
Tourists are always welcome to visit locations within Camden like the famous Camden Markets that seem to be as busy as Oxford Street. Remember to take pictures with your loved ones under the ‘Camden Lock’ sign!
The smell of Egyptian incense from these markets is always comforting, to the up-beat electronic music blasting out of Cyberdog that is known for selling rave clothes. Stepping into Cyberdog is like going into the future, everything feels futuristic inside the shop.
Hungry? There are delicious cuisines around you in every corner within the market. The mouth-watering smell of these gigantic pizza slices you’d get from Pizza Warehouse and ending it with desserts like crepes with Nutella and strawberries which you’d usually come across if you have a sweet tooth like me. It doesn’t stop there, there is a lot more than just pizzas and crepes scattered around Camden High Street, stretching all the way to Kilburn High Road that serves diversity with cuisines from the countries of Turkey, Iran, India, Thailand, Japan and more that adds to the areas tapestry of tastes and culture.
Food is the key to the heart – in Camden, that couldn’t be truer.
A total tourist attraction but to me, it has always been home, and the funny thing is, the more I am far away from it – physically and emotionally, the more connected I feel because the memories are already stitched into my skin and looking back at these moments, I don’t see myself living elsewhere.
I remember during my teenage years my friends and I would walk through Camden High Street to Stables Market like we owned it. Time flies and so did everything else in the high street, where stores like Select changed into K-Mart and Woolworths turned into Aldi. I remember being as young as 10 walking the very same street after school with my mum and heading inside Woolworths because it felt like entering a candy shop and in fact, they did sell a lot of candies but also Barbie doll toys!
Simply going for these walks every other day is a road to nostalgia – I wonder if Camden will stay the same forever.
The vibe starts to shift once it hits evening where the city lights shine from the distance as I watch the view from the highest hill of Primrose. I see couples embracing into each other’s arms, two elderly women sitting on the bench playing their favourite old-school jazz in the centre of the hill whilst taking in the beauty of the London in front of our eyes. I thought about the tourists who save up to experience what I usually see almost every day.
I admit, we do have one of the gorgeous parks in London like Primrose Hill, Regents Park and Hampstead Heath. Imagine yourself walking through these parks full of cherry blossoms everywhere – blooming, during the months of spring and summer. Dog walkers going for a stroll as their pets playfully run around in nature, ice cream vans serving ice lollies to families and friends whilst mums and dads walk their children to school bright and early during the weekdays.
But these are just the richness of Camden, the side that half of the time I don’t always resonate with. There are two sides of where I am from, behind the colours and culture are rows of council estates, like the one I grew up in. While some people see Camden as bohemian dream full of posh modern Victorian built houses and punks, I’ve lived the reality of teenage gangs being taken and held behind bars for criminal acts, to neighbours from my south Asian community facing struggles with family and financial instability.
Throughout my life living in Camden, I connected with those who faced the darkest times whilst others only seen sunshine and rainbows. The connections I grew blossomed, these people became familiar faces; not only do I call them my neighbours, they’re like my family to this day and I carry the less fortunate struggles with me everywhere whilst I remind myself, walking down the pathways through the canal that Camden still has its vibrance and harmony that keeps me closer than I’d expect.
The way I talk, the way I was raised, the things I crave and other way I see past the darkness – there’s no place like Camden. Home.
Written by Tarin Rahman. Published 30 April 2025.
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