Norman Cornish and the new Kings Cross.

A few days ago some journalist or other, I can't remember what paper, was banging on about how wonderful the new Kings Cross is. Comparing today's uber-sterile environment to the old Kings Cross of prostitutes and junkies this scribe was claiming to wait for a later train these days so cool and trendy had the place become. I would be the last one to glamorise either the sex trade or smack addiction and I well remember just how grim a road York Way was in the seventies but am I the only one to think that the back of the station redevelopment has been hyped up out of all proportion? I wandered through the area the other day on my way to visit the Norman Cornish exhibition at Kings Place. Cornish, who died earlier this month, was the last of the so called Pitmen Painters and his work captures the thirty years he spent in the mines as well as the life of the local pubs and streets. For better or worse it's a world that has gone forever now - and it was a world away from the new Kings Cross.