A London Love Affair

Just saw this fantastic film on HBO about a simple love story between two people in two cities – New York and London. I don’t even know the title of the film, but I was just drawn to it. It’s not the love story that’s engaging; that’s so stale and predictable. I was more captivated by the juxtaposition of similar settings or similar places and happenings in New York and London. It this whimsical contrast brought across by the camera that engages.

Well, I have only been in London, not New York, and I do love hearing the British accent – so ‘Lundoon’ and so ‘classik’, if one is to be naughty. I like that British sense of honour, propriety and humour, and tempered with an air of no-nonsense that could only come from a nation of shopkeepers, as Churchill would put it. It’s this sense of ‘shan’t complain, have a cup of tea, and we shall be fine’ that saw Britain through the Blitz. Most of all, I love the excitement of the city itself, the pomp, the heritage, and also the modern, the bohemian and avant-grade.

London for the average tourist would simply be Buckingham Palace, Changing of Guards, Big Ben, St. Paui’s, the Tower, Tower Bridge, and the London Eye. They would pack in a West End musical, go off to Covent Garden and visit the Opera, and say hello to Lord Nelson and the pigeons in Trafalgar Square. The slightly more adventurous would venture into Greenwich, far out in the east, or Richmond and Hampton Court, farther out in the west, and the more arty people would visit the Tate, Tate Modern and the British Museum.

But London is more than that for me. I have always read about London since young, and I have always followed British news with interest. London is beyond the pomp and heritage. London is a living organism in itself. I last visited London some 5 years ago. I enjoyed traversing London on foot, and on the Tube. That’s the best way to experience London – its people and its life. For a mere few pounds, you could get a single-day inner zones multiple-trips ticket for the Underground, the Tube. Of course, you might have to endure the disruption to service on particular lines, and that used to be quite frequent. Londoners are quite used to it actually. Anyway, you would make your way across the grubby entry gates, or the modern automated ones in the newer lines, and then, upon hearing the trains coming in, rush down many flights of stairs in the older stations, making many odd turns along the way, before you emerge onto the underground platform full of pleasant Londoners who keep to themselves, focused on the incoming train, ignoring the loud colourful billboards that line the platform walls. Most classic would be the constant reminder from the announcement system at every stop, articulated in a low deep voice – ‘Mind The Gap’. It has become an iconic statement of the London Underground, that there are souvenirs bearing this tagline. I really love station hoping, or visiting – each time you emerge from a station, you encounter a different world altogether – the character of these places are distinct in pace, clothes and environments, many of them individual villages or small towns before being absorbed by the arrival of trains into greater London.

Most brilliant would be the last trains of the day, when the driver would himself make the announcement in a jolly voice asking all to pack in so that all can get home. And it would be delivered in typical British humour – one driver asked our train passengers to ‘please move in – if you think that this train is packed, the next one will be running on flat tires!’ That elicited many chuckles from the passengers, and all of us gamely and collegially packed ourselves in further. There was this sense of camaraderie between fellow passengers on the same ship, or train, helping each other out. It’s this sense of practicality with that dry British humour at work. No wonder they could stoically continue with their lives through the wars, and through the recent terrorist attacks. And this humour and sense of jolly good fun is everywhere. If you were to walk the distance, as I did from Russell Square past Holborn all the way down to the Strand, you could drop into one of the bakeries and grab some bread and muffins, and the waitress at the counter would again rattle off on a conversation with you, including many witty lines along the way.

London also has a great sense of respect for the individual and for privacy. I guess this comes from its heritage of being a royal city with centuries of traditions and order. You see the same sense of order in the quiet patience at queuing, the sense of decorum at service, the sense of respecting each other’s private space. So even in the busiest of places, whether be it at bohemian Camden Market, Portobello, or at the upscale South Kensington, Knightsbridge, Oxford Street, or the bustling Piccadily Circus area, or academic Bloomsbury borough, everyone is quietly going about their one businesses, leaving space for each other – no pushing or shoving. I guess the rowdy behaviour only comes out at night after many drinks in the pubs, and that’s a minority. What’s more common a sight are the vagrants and tramps that emerge at night all across London, because they simply don’t have a home. Quite a pitiful sight, and they would be asking passersby if they have ‘got some change’. But many of them would squander whatever money they have away, and be still on the streets many years down.

London is so predictable, yet it’s so full of contrasts, dichotomy and life. The famed Barbican Centre was a maze to navigate – I had to really follow the coloured lines on the floor. Then out on the road, I could just turn the corner, and suddenly be confronted with Bush House, the BBC World Service headquarters. And while on the topic of BBC, I came across some BBC audio CDs at … gasp … Camden, where I had a most measly KFC meal as well. I could emerge at Green Park station, expecting to see something like Hyde Park, but it’s just a small little green square of lined trees; oh it’s beside the Ritz. I came out of Bank station one night, in the City of London, that financial district like our Shenton Way, all silent at night, but suddenly saw a few skateboarders. In the daytime, the City bustles with sound and life. You have to shout to be heard in the City. But there are quite squares of respite as well – the churches, so many of them designed by Wren after the Great Fire, and the Law Courts and Inns. I enjoyed one morning walk around Lincoln’s Field and Inns of Courts. I could not really gain access to that privileged private grounds of course, but I could peer from the gateway into the large garden quadrangle of Lincoln’s.

When I was in London, there was this snow ring set up at Somerset House, and the Londoners were excited all bout it because it had not snowed in London for years. There were many children having fun on the snow ring. Somerset House is no longer a government office or the Registry of Marriages, Births and Deaths; it’s now an art gallery and museum. Then, you could walk across to the other side of the Thames, and visit Southwark, with its Cathedral and the more medieval streets. I came across this old grammar school there, in red brick buildings, a bit worn. Or you could walk across to Festival Hall and the second-hand book stalls below it, I got quite a number of books there which were so heavy to lug back to Singapore. And while on the topics of books – I tried to search for 84 Charing Cross Road, that bookstore made famous in that 1970 book by Helen Hanff about her love affair with England. It was nowhere to be found by now; it’s all modern huge concept stores and mega bookstores there now.

One most memorable day of that visit to London for me would be that morning that I dragged all my friends with me to walk in the park. It was really cold in winter, and kudos to my friends for gamely and selflessly walking with me in Hyde Park. We encountered the mount guards in the park, doing their morning rounds. The towers of Bayswater buildings could be glimpsed through the lovely trees of the park, some trees with the last colours of autumn, the rest already in barren winter, and slowly made our way towards the Serpentine that links it to Kensington Gardens, ending at Kensington Palace. Crossing Kensington Road leads to museumland, where the Royal Albert Hall holds court, but the gem of that land is somewhere in the sidestreets behind – where the Royal College of Organists is.

There are numerous arts colleges, many of them with Royal charters, there, the most prominent being the Royal College of Music in its own castle-like buildings. Down the area, much further away, is the V&A, or the Victoria and Albert Museum, a most handsome set of buildings which house a spectrum of art and craft, including ancient musical instruments. That was memorable for me, because I bravely decided to visit the sculptures and stones in the basement. Being evening in the winter, it was practically dark and sparse as I walked alone amongst those stones, many of them more suited for the churchyard. I gave up halfway and quickly made my way up back up to the comforts of South Kensington.

There are many aspects of London yet to discover. I have not really visited the East End as yet, though I visited the new developments at Canary Wharf. But I am talking about the East End of the real Londoners, the docklands. The West End and Central London are the well-off portions of London, while East London are the more communual districts. Then there’s the outskirt little suburban towns and boroughs, with all the quaint names like Chalk Town, Oak Wood, etc. There are so many of these, that the most interesting way to see experience the daily lives would be to hope onto which ever Line of the Tube that’s at hand, and let it take you to whichever station stop that you suddenly take a fancy to. That’s the real way to see London, and I am going to do that the next visit.

Interesting Links:
84 Charing Cross Road: http://www.enotes.com/84-charing/28450
London Underground Blog: http://london-underground.blogspot.com/
London Tube Website: http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tube/
London Tube Map: http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tube/downloads/pdf/maps/large_print_map.pdf
See This: http://www.wakemeupat.com/