A terrorist plot to target the London Underground? I take back everything I said about taxis...
Saturday, November 16, 2002
Disbelief: Some people don't believe in God, some people don't believe in democracy, some people don't believe in extra-terrestrial life, and some people don't believe in covering their mouths before they sneeze. Personally I don't believe in taxis. More to the point, I don't believe in taxis when there's a perfectly good public transport alternative at a fraction of the cost. I turned down two taxi rides on Friday but accepted one, which sped me home a whole seven minutes quicker than the tube would have done but at ten times the cost. In fact, given that I have a travelcard already, that would be at infinitely greater cost. For my money I got to career through the streets of late-night London along a route that could not in any way be described as a straight line, stopping at a high proportion of the 50 traffic lights between Tottenham Court Road and home, being driven by a geographical incompetent in a manner not dissimilar to that of a fairground ride, veering randomly from one blocked bus lane to another, and all without the added excitement of the post-pub drunken kebab-munching passengers you normally get to watch on public transport. Same time tomorrow night then?
Sunday, November 10, 2002
Strike a light
Things to do during another 4-hour power cut on a wet Sunday afternoon: surf the internet, write blog, watch video, watch television, listen to music, have hot bath, cook lunch, talk to neighbours for the first time this year, go shopping, give up.
I live within sight of the old Bryant and May match factory, site of the great matchgirl strike of 1888. The factory employed some 1,400 workers, mainly young women under the age of 15. They worked in appalling conditions for up to 13 hours a day and many suffered through handling the poisonous phosphorous used in match production. When journalist Annie Besant exposed the conditions in the factory, the management sacked three women simply for talking to her. The matchgirls then all walked out on strike, launching a golden age of Victorian trade union unrest.
That old match factory is now Bow Quarter, a rather posh development of titchy flats complete with sauna, gym, swimming pool and very high security fence. The inhabitants now all earn consideably more than a shilling a week, although I doubt if even half of them are members of trade unions.
I've spent much of this afternoon stumbling around my flat in the dark with a box of Bryant and May matches, lighting candles and igniting the gas on the cooker to brew a cup of tea. I could see the old match factory gently twinkling in the distance, a reminder that the Victorian conditions I was experiencing were nothing compared to the real thing, just a few hundred yards away.
Wednesday, November 06, 2002
Stalled
I was looking forward to a visit to the cinema in the West End tonight.
Leicester Square is usually pretty quiet on a Wednesday evening, although tonight the whole place appeared to have been turned into a rather upmarket car park. Dodging the limousines, we made our way to the one Odeon cinema that wasn't hosting the opening of the 46th London Film Festival. We wanted three tickets, but we confused the girl at the till by buying them singly so that she had to keep asking us which seats it was she'd already issued to us. The auditorium could have seated about 800 people, although only about 25 of the seats were taken. We only just outnumbered the usherettes, but they still insisted on showing us to our correct three allocated seats in the centre of the main stalls. With 775 seats remaining to choose from, a Korean couple were then dumped into the seats immediately next to us. They talked too much and insisted on eating their giant one-hour-forty-minute box of popcorn all the way through the film, especially during the really quiet parts. It soon became apparent that we had accidentally stumbled upon the weekly screening of the film with subtitles for the hard of hearing, so we were forced to watch the whole film with words everywhere and each sound effect laboriously explained. Finally, with 773 seats still remaining, a 6-foot-plus gentleman chose to sit directly in front of me, blocking out the middle of the subtitles so that only the start and finish of each sentence remained.
As for the film, well, it wasn't bad, but I refuse to believe that an alien invasion of earth could be stopped by a glass of water.
Friday, November 01, 2002
Stratford - urban metropolis of the future
England is well known the world over for historic Stratford-on-Avon, home of Shakespeare and ye olde genuine tea shoppes. However, I live just down the road from the other Stratford, home of cheap market stalls and a gridlocked ring-road. Stratford straddles the Greenwich Meridian, with the newly renovated station in the Western hemisphere and the cavernous shopping centre just a pedestrian crossing away in the Eastern hemisphere. Stratford could not under any circumstances be described as a cultural centre, a decent retail centre or even a place worth visiting. However, plans are afoot to change all that...
The one thing that Stratford does have is excellent rail connections. Trains run from here to Liverpool Street, Docklands, East Anglia, Neasden, Ruislip and, when the Channel Tunnel Rail Link arrives in 2007, Paris. It may not be the greatest place to live, but it is definitely a great place to travel away from. Property prices round have risen so quickly that, had I bought a flat in Stratford last year, I could probably sell it today at a profit exceeding the gross national product of a small African country.
Stratford's new Eurostar station is planned to be at the heart of a billion pound regeneration scheme, bringing new homes and a huge metropolitan, business and retail centre to the area. It's got to be a huge improvement on one Woolworths, one Argos and a Pizza Hut, which is as good as it gets at the moment.
Today a report has suggested that Stratford should be at the centre of a UK bid for the Olympics in 2012. In ten years time the whole international world of sport and athletics could be arriving on my doorstep, although quite frankly we have a big enough drug problem round here as it is.
Sydney, Athens, Beijing... Stratford? I'm really looking forward to living somewhere potentially bigger than Shakespeare.
Saturday, October 12, 2002
Dead centre
My Dad came down from East Anglia for the day (yes, I'm afraid his shoes lived down to all my expectations) and we spent most of the day amongst the dead.
First on our list was Paddington Cemetery (which is of course 3 miles away from Paddington) on a hunt for my great grandfather's grave. Edward was born the son of a tailor in South Molton Street, just round the corner from Bond Street tube station. He later moved out north-westwards to Maida Vale, but ended up being gassed on the battlefields of Belgium as a soldier in World War One, dying of respiratory problems two years later. We searched round the cemetery trying to find the right inscription on the right grave, but alas with no success. Knowing the family interest in horticulture, his was probably that grave with the small shrub planted on it 80 years ago, now grown into an enormous unkempt thorny weed, obscuring the entire plot and that of the two graves on either side.
Later in the day we visited Highgate Cemetery, the final resting place of, amongst others, Karl Marx and hordes of European student vistors. The twin cemeteries were dark, mysterious and silent, crowded full of ostentatious Victorian monuments and featuring an amazing Egyptian mausoleum cut into the hillside. The whole place is now seemingly run by a crowd of ageing volunteer lesbians, no doubt drawn there by the body of Radclyffe Hall, early 20th century dyke icon authoress.
We rounded off our day with a trip to Body Worlds in Brick Lane, an anatomical exhibition of real human bodies, preserved after death by the mysterious German scientic process of 'plastination'. It was disconcerting to come face-to-skull with what I look like underneath, alarming to realise how much good meat I have inside me, and particularly unnerving to see how testicles dangle from the pelvis like a couple of deeley-boppers. On emerging from the exhibition the restauranteurs of Brick Lane stood in their doorways trying to invite us into their curry houses, but strangely enough we were no longer feeling hungry.
I bought a danish pastry at Liverpool Street station this morning. Three questions struck me:
• Why, when I asked for a danish pastry, did they insist on giving me a danish pastry, a paper bag and three serviettes?
• Why, when I'd finished my danish pastry, did I discover that there are no litter bins anywhere on Liverpool Street station into which to dispose of my paper bag and three serviettes?
• Exactly how many years ago was the last time that a terrorist organisation actually placed a bomb in a litter bin in London, and how many more years will it be before anyone in London dares to put all the litter bins back? Please.
Wednesday, October 09, 2002
Takeaway
When you've spent nearly twelve hours in the office for the third day in a row, the last thing you want to do on getting home is cook, so the local fish and chip shop is a real saviour. I now have the luxury of two fish and chip shops located within two minutes walk from my flat. This is a big improvement on Suffolk, where it was probably quicker to drive to the coast and catch a fish myself, rather than wait til Monday for the chip van to turn up in the neighbouring village. One of my two local chippies is run by the mysterious 'Mam', a woman with over-starched red hair and a permanent bemused smirk on her face. Unfortunately on my last visit Mam kindly served me up with a newspaper full of food poisoning, which helps to explain why that was my last visit. So, tonight I visited chippie number two instead, which is basically one bleak white room next to the post office with a fish frier in the corner. I was served by an old trout (which I guess is only to be expected in a fish shop), who looked even older than the bottles of own-brand ketchup and no-brand vinegar substitute stacked on the shelves behind. Meanwhile her teenage son lounged menacingly at the end of the counter, no doubt ready to mug me of my change on the walk home. Most frightening of all, however - the menu board announced the sale of 'donor kebabs'. I shall definitely avoid the steak and kidney pies there in future, just in case they're from the same source, and stick to cod and chips instead.
Thursday, October 03, 2002
How the other half live
After yesterday's journey into the parallel universe surrounding my local post office, I decided to experience the other end of the social spectrum by visiting the new Waitrose that's just opened up at Canary Wharf. It's huge. It's on three floors. The food mall sells every ingredient that Delia Smith ever put in one of her recipes. The select band of shoppers carry shiny new green baskets filled with aubergines, balsamic vinegar and organic vitamin supplements. Local business types can grab a quick lunch at the in-store sushi bar, or maybe dine out on steak and oysters instead. For anyone who's planning a dinner party for the boss and her husband there's a complete set of bone china and designer cutlery on sale, as well as a huge selection of quality Indian and Chinese gourmet ready meals. The lovely Jessica is on hand to pamper you with a manicure in the nail bar if the stress of shopping gets all too much to bear. It's dead posh, even for a Waitrose. But I bet not one person who uses my local post office will ever set foot in there.
Wednesday, October 02, 2002
Another tube strike
Week-day-world: Being at home today, it seemed a good idea to pop out at lunchtime to see what the world round here looks like during the daytime. I risked a trip to the post office across the road, in what used to be the local high street until post-war planners concreted it over. It clearly wasn't a normal day out there, with big queues at the bus stops and unusually heavy traffic, all courtesy of the tube strike. However, normal life was still going on for all the people round here who don't have anywhere to commute to. Our three local alcoholics sat on the brick wall by the shops, well into their third hour of lager drinking, heckling the passers by. An old man who hadn't washed either himself or his clothes recently walked past, just too close for comfort. A large group of spotty schoolchildren stood around outside the kebab shop eating their nutritionally balanced lunch of chips and more chips. In the post office an old lady in fully knitted costume spent unfeasibly long sorting out her pension in front of me, savouring her one social contact of the day before dragging her shopping basket back to the nearby block of flats. And when I finally got to the front of the queue the man behind the counter looked at me as if I was speaking in a foreign language, which of course I was, and I walked away empty-handed. Back home I was glad to be able to get on with some work - it's a different world out there for those who can't.
Tuesday, October 01, 2002
Splat
Unlikely as it may seem, in the year I've been in London I have yet to see one single traffic accident. I can't understand why I haven't, given that most car drivers in London appear to have a deathwish, and most pedestrians in London appear to have a deathwish too. Car drivers in London are speed-obsessed. This is odd, given that most of London has a 30mph speed limit, and even then drivers are lucky if they ever reach even 10mph in all the jams. Nevertheless, most drivers still love nothing more than to prove that that their car can still do 70mph, even if it means accelerating and braking like a maniac between two red traffic lights fifty yards apart. Pedestrians in London don't seem to have noticed this, however, and love nothing more than walking straight out into the traffic to avoid a thirty second detour via the nearest pelican crossing. Hence my disbelief that, so far, I have yet to see one of these blinkered pedestrians get mown down by one of those grand prix boy racers.
So, this morning, there I am crossing the busy red route just outside my flat - admittedly only thirty seconds from a pelican crossing, but there was nothing coming, honest. And then, following me across the road, came a little squirrel. It was a bit of a shock to see wildlife on the streets of the capital, but I hoped I wasn't about to see it flat on the streets instead. The squirrel scampered across the road, then stopped and turned to face the number 25 bus suddenly bearing down upon it. Time stood still - as did the squirrel. Then, at the very last moment, the little rodent turned and ran, alas right under the wheels of the the blue car now doing 70mph up the outside lane. Were I ever to witness a car accident, I suspect the police would be very disappointed at my descriptive powers when it comes to cars. "Make and model please sir?" "It was, er, blue, officer, and it had four wheels." There was another heart-stopping moment - for the squirrel, if not for me. And then, unexpectedly, a flash of grey sped out from under the chassis and into the nearby churchyard, back to safety. So, that's yet another accident I haven't seen in London, but I do hope my luck holds out longer than that squirrel will.
Sunday, September 29, 2002
Last Train To Epping
It's not quite the last train to Clarksville that The Monkees sang about, but it's still one of the world's great epic journeys. People gather, drunk, on the platforms at Oxford Circus, Tottenham Court Road and Holborn. They wait for ages, because there's a huge gap between trains at this time of night, trying hard in the meantime not to stagger off the platform onto the live rail. Then they crowd into the Cental Line carriages, in cattle-truck conditions reminiscent of the weekday rush hour. Some are still finishing off chips and kebabs, much to disgust of the nostrils of the majority. People try to grab a glimpse of the front of the early editions of the Sunday papers, disbelieving that John Major ever had a sex life, let alone with Edwina Currie. Around Bank the more inebriated passengers grab onto whatever or whoever they can, as the train careers violently from side to side round curves resembling a theme park thrill ride. A group of lads shout loudly across the carriage at each other in a foreign language - which might well have been English earlier in the evening. And at Mile End I escape across the platform to the waiting District Line train, happy to abandon the drunken revellers safe in the knowledge that I won't be ending up back in Essex with them by mistake.
Saturday, September 28, 2002
Welcome to the modern village
Guy Browning has written an article in the Guardian which sums up the whole nightmare and nothingness of village life.
"The modern village is defined as a small group of houses, none of which can get pizza delivered. Many urban dwellers have a secret dream of living in a beautiful collection of rose-covered cottages nestled around a wide village green and overlooked by the church spire and village pub. Many people who live in real villages also have this dream."
That's exactly how I felt about living in a village. That's exactly why I left one a year ago.
The Guardian article is magnificent. It's very accurate, it's very long, you can read it here and I wish I'd written it.
Thursday, September 26, 2002
Sniffle: On Monday morning I sat on the tube next to a 12-year old schoolboy who insisted on coughing and spluttering all over the surrounding carriage. When I went to work this morning, I was feeling fine, so I thought. Around mid-morning I started sneezing rather a lot. Around lunchtime my left nostril started to feel a little bit runny. By early afternoon I was getting my handkerchief out for the first time in months. Late afternoon and I was filling that handkerchief at regular intervals. On returning home I tried to track down the supply of clean handkerchieves I know have at the back of a drawer somewhere. Tomorrow I expect to wake up with a blocked nose, breathing like Darth Vader. No doubt I'll spend the weekend laid up in bed with a gallon of Beecham's. And, come Monday morning, I'm sure I'll be just well enough to go back to work, despite still feeling sub-standard. However, it'll be worth it just to cough all over that bloody 12-year old on the tube journey in again.
Wednesday, September 25, 2002
Tube strike: It only takes two hours to get back from Leeds to London by train - I was well impressed. However, it then takes roughly as long to get from Kings Cross home to East London, thanks to the tube strike they kindly put on to celebrate my return. I've stood in bus queues for buses that either didn't arrive or were full and didn't stop. I've stood like a sardine in a variety of jam-packed stations and train carriages. I've walked overground across London carrying incredibly heavy luggage. I've travelled miles out of my way just to get on board a train that still exists. I suspect I've just lost all the weight I put on while having those two stodgy hotel breakfasts. But it is so good to be home.
Sunday, September 22, 2002
22 September - the Countryside comes to London
It's exactly a year today since I packed up all my belongings and moved from a small village in Suffolk to the East End of London. To celebrate this anniversary, the Countryside Alliance kindly arranged for quarter of a million country folk to come up to London just to remind me exactly what I'm missing. Nothing.
The streets of London were filled with red-faced protesters, converging on Whitehall via Hyde Park and the Embankment, demanding Liberty and Livelihood. Most were wearing that dull shade of green that only people who live in the country ever dare to wear in public, usually a Barbour jacket or something disturbingly tweedy. They wore flat caps, sensible brogues and sideburns - it was as if last week's London Fashion Week had never happened. They dutifully waved their placards, some lovingly laminated from a poster in the Daily Mail, others insulting the Prime Minister, but most just admitting that they enjoyed murdering animals for fun.
Some marchers looked so rich, in an in-bred landed-gentry sort-of-a-way, that it was obvious they were only there for the Liberty of shooting a few foxes rather than the Livelihood of a few genuine farmers. Many had dragged their children along and given them a whistle to blow and a political statement to make. I thought there were far too many marchers from Essex, which in my opinion is barely the countryside at all. However, I suspect many of the more bemused-looking country folk had never been to London before in their lives. I fully expected to see some of them in Pret attempting to barter a prize sheep in exchange for a sandwich.
The march went on, and on, and on, in much the same way that the countryside does. At the Cenotaph the protestors marched past in silence, which might have been powerfully impressive were it not for the racket being created by the helicopter hovering overhead. Then after Big Ben everyone dispersed, either to the clubs of Pall Mall, which appeared to be doing brisk business, or back to the Landrovers and home to rural Hampstead.
I know that the moaning marchers have all missed the most obvious way to improve their lives - sell up and move to a town. I found my Liberty and Livelihood by escaping the countryside and moving to London, and I have no intention of ever going back. More buses pass my front door in an hour now than used to serve my old village in a week. If I want a pint of milk today I can buy some in a shop one minute's walk away rather than have to get in the car and drive for miles. If I want a life I have one on my doorstep, rather than just the possibility of village hall bingo every third Thursday. So, I'll happily leave the countryside in the capable hands of the Barbour brigade. The rest of us will carry on living.
Saturday, September 21, 2002
40 things I love about... London
Life, nightlife, the sense of history, the Underground, the view from Greenwich Park, the fact there's always somewhere new to discover, Oxford Street, the sound of Big Ben, nightbuses, sunlight on the Thames, buying your Sunday paper on Saturday evening, the museums in South Kensington, the wobbly Millennium bridge, being able to choose from more than two local radio stations, Tate Modern, not needing a car, the view from Hampstead Heath, Arsenal shirts, Trafalgar Square, the top pod on the London Eye, St Pancras station, decent mobile phone reception, Routemasters, the East End, 24 hour bagel shops, culture on your doorstep, Hungerford Bridge, Old Compton Street, deckchairs in Green Park, the DLR, 0° longitude, the City, Covent Garden, decent record shops, St Paul's Cathedral, walking faster than the traffic, crossing Westminster Bridge at night on the back of a bike, the sheer variety of Theatreland, the British Museum, just living here.
London Open House weekend: What a fantastic idea, to open up some of London's buildings to the public free for the weekend. I resisted the temptation to queue up for Broadcasting House, or the Victorian Sewage Works down the road, and instead headed up to Westminster. The queueing crowds were mostly either over 50 or gay, or both. And I got to see 5 places that I'd always wanted to see:
Westminster Hall: Now that the Queen Mother has moved on, there were hardly any queues. I stood on the spot where her artificial hip had lain in state, just out of respect you understand.
Portcullis House: The new office block for MPs, famous for its fig trees imported at a cost of £150,000. If you're a UK taxpayer, you'll be glad to know none of them look as if they need replacing yet.
Foreign and Commonwealth Office: Magnificent and opulent courtyards and staircases. I suspect we bled the Empire dry to pay for it all.
Cabinet Office: Had to queue for one and a half hours, but well worth it just to see the door that Sir Humphrey couldn't get through when his key was confiscated in Yes Prime Minister. It has a card swipe now, by the way.
Midland Hotel, St Pancras: Glorious old hotel, now fallen into serious disrepair. I suspect it never recovered after the Spice Girls recorded the video for Wannabe there. Zig-a-zig-ah.
Friday, September 20, 2002
3 things I hate about... pedestrians who get in my way
1) Mobile phone users: They are the new living dead. They walk the streets like zombies. They are totally absorbed in the text message they're typing into their mobile phone. They always walk right in front of me without looking. Not enough of them walk straight out into the road in front of cars.
2) Tourists: Us people who live in London are usually trying to get somewhere. Tourists, on the other hand, are happy to stay exactly where they are. Being ignorant of the ways of the capital, tourists will happily stop dead in the middle of a narrow pavement, just outside a station entrance or directly in front of a minor photo opportunity. Two tourists, if positioned carefully, can completely block a London pavement in seconds, causing pedestrian gridlock. Large groups of French schoolchildren, if left unattended, can suddenly seal off half of Central London. Mayor Ken would do well to consider the huge economic savings to be made by deploying tourists on strategic pedestrian crossings around the capital as a cheaper alternative to congestion charge technology.
3) People with bags: On Fridays, people take to the escalators of London with suitcases. They're obviously planning on rushing off somewhere after work for the weekend, maybe to Amsterdam, maybe to the second home in Wales, or maybe they just like carrying suitcases, I don't know. But these people are out there on Friday mornings stopping me from climbing the escalator and getting my daily exercise. Then of course there are all those people with rucksacks who are prone to turn round and smash their fat bag into you, ignorant of the carnage happening right behind them. And please don't even get me started on pushchairs.
Thursday, September 19, 2002
3 things I hate about... Travelcards
1) Buying them: My annual London Travelcard expires in three hours time. I went to my local tube station last week to try to renew it. "Oh no", they said, "you can't do that yet. Come back nearer the time." I returned at 10pm on Sunday evening when, after much protest, the staff finally agreed they were perhaps willing take £912 off me if I really insisted. It was clear that the man behind the counter had never used a computer before, as he attempted to work out what all the buttons were for and where on earth the letter 'E' was. Next year maybe I should buy my ticket at 8:00 on a Monday morning instead, just to see how long I can get the queue of irate passengers behind me.
2) Other people buying them: Don't you hate in when you're stuck waiting in the queue at the ticket office on a Monday morning, with some urgent travelling to do, and some idiot in front of you has decided to buy their annual travelcard by debit card, and the monkey behind the counter can't get the computer to work?
3) Other people selling them: It's become one of the most modern but most undesirable forms of begging in London. Shuffling grubby reprobates gather round the exits to tube stations during the early evening, asking if they can relieve you of your used Travelcard. Not mine mate, it cost me £912. There again, maybe tonight I should have flogged it. I have three hours left to find a buyer...
ND
