I love London, but I wouldn't want to live there.
I must qualify this by adding that I am a native Londoner and when the circumstances arose that caused me to leave The Smoke I really didn't want to go. I was 16 years old and I guess that was the age that London just started to get interesting. An awareness of the frenzied life and lives that gave the Great Metropolis its' Mojo, the markets, the shops, the music, the venues, the FREE museums, the London Underground tubes...... Everything.
I used to hate PE, particularly weedy, along with a group of others that had their own misfit reasons for skipping the PE lessons I opted to do Social Service tasks instead. It would have seemed odd to many that I should skip PE in this way as I was in the Rugby team (and enjoyed every minute of it), I did cross country for the school and had enjoyed rowing on the Thames (and some times swimming there too, not by design) and even took up fencing.... On guard! Sadly my enthusiasm for PE waned as a result as of the actions of a particularly nasty and vicious bully whom I found it preferable to avoid. So instead me and another student used to go and help an elderly lady with chores for three hours every Wednesday afternoon. Her husband had clearly suffered a debilitating stroke which left him with practically no control including the inability to speak, other than soft mumbles. The love that this lady had for her husband (and devotion) was inspiring and even as I write this some 35 years later I can still feel a breathlessness within me as I recall how I admired her. She, and only she, knew exactly what his soft mumbles meant and she would move a cushion here or ask us to help re-sit him, whatever it was, it always appeared to be the right thing. I guess she was probably exhausted most of the time but I feel that the lessons from that experience alone have touched me far more in my life than a bit of PE.
Anyway, where am I going with this..... I was 16 and this Lady like to buy the finer things in life and accordingly she would frequently ask us to go to Barkers Department store in Kensington High Street to collect something or other that she had already paid for. We were scruffy oiks, untucked, grubby hands from, well from just about everything we were school boys, hair down to our shoulders and our school ties about 4" long as we had made the knot the size of a tennis ball. School ties went through a metamorphosis daily starting as a normal tie when you left home, by the time you got to school the ties tail had all but disappeared and the knot blown up to more of a chin rest than a tie and disappeared completely as we walked out the school gates. The girls in the school next to ours seemed to have a similar problem with their school skirts which apparently shrunk on the way to school but miraculously by the end of the day as they returned home covered their knees once again.
So there we were two scruffs walking into Barkers and in our best oik common way we approached the poshest of floor-walkers asking for Mrs X's order, which was normally a mohair rug or such like.
Well while we were out on the loose, we liked to travel around a little. We had caught the District Line in to Kensington High Street, which shared the same station with the Circle Line and it seemed to us that we could pop onto the Circle line and hop off some where else jumping on another train all the time knowing that we have got to get back to Ken. High street before we re-emerge from the bowels of London. Once we even stayed on the Circle line and did a complete tour of all the stations, it took about an hour and I remember that I was worried that she would think that we had been run over.I have to report that as sightseeing tours go it is the one in which you see the fewest sights, mainly just black, with the odd glimpse of daylight at a couple of stations, still great for people watching, I got to see all the weirdos.
It was that buzz, that interaction with thousands of people, posh, nobility, common, black, white, even blue, just people all different all going God knows where or why, for all I knew half of them had been on the Circle line all day. It was this madding crowd that made it all so exciting and it is this same madding crowd that drives me round the twist today. Why do I write this on my blog? Well on Friday my Daughter treated me to a Daddy / Daughter day as for my birthday she took me down to London to see the Titanic exhibition. Fascinating stuff, I have always been interested in the rise and fall off the Titanic and to see these artefacts that had been pulled up two miles from the ocean bed was incredible. We had a great day, popping over to St Katherines Docks where there was a festival of world foods and the tower of London too. As I say I love London, but I wouldn't want to live there and by late afternoon I started to feel my middle age intolerances start to kick-in.
Claire says that I mutter things too loudly, perhaps she is correct, I can't really say but for Gods sake does that guy have to blow his fag smoke right in my path? Awwe that stinks, he's smoking pot, disgusting, core how fat is she, do you think there'll be any space on the train for us! What do those girls look like? Are those actually shorts or belts? Why does that guy think I want to listen to his music, and that girl on her mobile, cracking on about her love life. At this point I can sense that Claire is getting a little exasperated with me, "Sssshh, he'll hear you!", "Good then he might move to the side with his great big suit case on wheels swaying around like a poorly towed caravan and we can all get past him!" "You are very loud" she pointedly replied just as I go on to ask her opinion in regard to whether the person walking towards us was a boy or a girl..... or indeed a midget.
When we got to the train at Kings Cross, I was pretty well in full grouch mode. We ran to the far end of the train to try to get past the hoards of commuters all knocking off early because it was a Friday, lazy gits. We only managed to get two separate seats, each side of the aisle and as I sat on mine I felt a dampness under my left cheek. Having made a point of 'going' before catching the train, I knew it was not me, so I checked only to see that the brain dead zombie fixated on his Nintendo Playstation 'I' bloody player thingy next to me was so wrapped up with his head phones droning into his gormless form that he had not realised that his half drunk bottle of Sprite was dribbling all over my seat! Even when I told him he just grunted - no apology or by your leave, which I pointed out to Claire whom seemed not to want to know me for some reason.
THEN, with just two minutes to go the train driver announces that the train isn't working and that he will have to close the doors for a minute whilst he reboots it. The doors all shut and the lights went out as he actually 'rebooted' the bloody train as if it were just a little Laptop playing up a bit! Well that filled us with confidence I can tell you.
For the next hour and a half I sat with one cheek on the seat and the other hanging over the aisle to avoid said leakage all the time in awe that so many people even know where Kings Lynn is let alone are actually going there!
All of this goes to demonstrate two things, number one that I may just, perhaps, be getting a little intolerant in my old age and not quite the 16 year old of my past. Secondly that my Daughter must have the heart of an Angel to even consider taking me down to The Smoke (something else she said I shouldn't call it in front of the locals, as it is a little derogatory I am given to believe).
No my love for London started to diminish a few years after moving away from it, we moved to Birmingham, now in the 70's that was a stark and grey concrete soulless place (in my opinion), so when I finally got to live in a village, well I had found my heaven and then after 24 years to more to an even more remote part of the country, well, if you ask my Daughter, or indeed any of my immediate family, I think they will all agree that London can only be better off without me!
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