London Places: End

Right, I think I'll knock that on the head. It's been fun, and there are, I do believe, a few other places in London, but I think I'll move on to something else. I wish I could write about structures better. I have found with this, more than almost anything else I've ever written, a frustrating inability to quite find the right word.

I wonder if my favourite place in London, all in, in terms of positioning, the feeling it gives me, the outside, and the inside, and what went on there, is Brixton Academy. I loved seeing it there, lit up with the name of a band I loved, back from the main street, on its corner, touts and t-shirt sellers, queues and like-minded friends, I loved the sticky, sloping floor, the sound of it, the ersatz grandeur. I used to get lost in the decor halfway through gigs. I guess I saw Super Furry Animals there four times, maybe five, and they were all great gigs. I estimate I spent, say, 100 hours in total at Brixton Academy, and every single one was a good one.

And I think the section of London most ingrained in me is the Piccadilly between Northfields and Hammersmith, where I did nothing but look at the same stretch of world, without a book, without headphones, for 10-15 minutes one way and back every day for 10 years and beyond.

I did that journey (at least the Hammersmith to Acton Town bit) for the first time in a couple of years, a month or so ago, whizzing past Ravenscroft Park, Stamford Brook, Turnham Green, Chiswick Park, and I thought about how much everything around the tube line has changed since 1986 but the tube line itself has stayed the same.

London Place 30: South Bank

Right, let's cheer it up a bit. Obviously, there are a lots of places on the South Bank and there are a few different definitions of the South Bank - I guess I mean the right angle between Westminster Bridge and Blackfriars Bridge - all that bit. So the Anchor and Hope, the Cut, the Young Vic, The Old Vic and the pubs near it, the Eye, Waterloo, but most of all, the actual bits on the river - The Hayward, Queen Elizabeth Hall, BFI, Royal Festival Hall and National Theatre.

Foot for foot, maybe the best bit of London? Maybe? If you like all that stuff? The plays and the films? The heritage gigs and the art? The dirty old river, the dirty old trains ... the skateboarders. Of course.

I was taken to the South Bank for plays like Waiting for Godot and One-Way Pendulum when I was little. For weird art and ballets, too. I did think it was a bit grimy. It was a bit grimy back them. They have tidied it up a lot, without disguising the brutalism.

After I went back to London after university in the summer of 2001, I was there all the time. I remember, a couple of days after 9/11, going to, of all things, a slightly stilted tribute show to Tim Buckley there, walking back across the Jubilee Bridge, there was a security alert near Leicester Square, a city on standby.

Brian Wilson, Dexys, Super Furry Animals, smaller stuff at QEH, so many plays at the National and the Old Vic. I remember walking up to the Old Vic from Clapham South at Christmas 2007 for a pantomime. Then there was the reassuringly average upstairs backstage bar in the National, like a school canteen. 

Every year around Christmas, I meet a couple of old school friends and we go to one of the pubs behind the Old Vic and then the Thames Tandoori underneath Waterloo East. It's nice to have rituals. I have a yearly appointment at St Thomas's, too. Good vibes, man.

None of it is wildly beautiful, it's not that, is it? It's just what you hope a city will be like. Pleasant and bustling, full of incidents and memories.

Sorry, I've got a cold. There isn't going to be a point to this. I had a cold when Juliette and I first went to the Hayward. It was some kind of interactive exhibition, there was swinging on ropes. I was struggling. Then the Anchor and Hope, a pretty good pub.

Two different Hamlets. Who would I put myself through that? But, yes, basically, The South Bank, the most reliably enjoyable part of London. That's what it is.

London Place 29: Tottenham Hotspur Stadium

Last month, I went to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium to watch the NFL game between New York Jets and Atlanta Falcons. It was the first time I'd been there since this new, state-of-the-art colossus opened a couple of years ago, and it was a great experience. The show was good, the game was patchy but fun, the facilities tremendous, the beer decent. Added to which, it was strangely powerful, in and of itself, to be among so many people again. 

My friend explained where the old stadium would have been. We'd been to White Hart Lane together in 2010 to watch Spurs-Fulham - only the second time, in fact, that I'd been there, despite being a lifelong Spurs fan. There are few longer journeys in London than South Ealing to Tottenham, after all. It's actually easier to get there from Ashford, where I live now.

I recalled the first time I went, in 1989, and that took me down the path I'm going to go down now.

I went, along with a couple of other boys, with a schoolteacher, a man who committed suicide last year faced with renewed charges of historical child abuse. 

When I heard that news, I told a friend of mine who'd been in the same class, and we both agreed to mixed feelings, that it was sad, that, despite everything, we had fond memories of that year.

When stories about my school were first in the national news, almost a decade ago, I saw his name amongst several others, in the context of being investigated but not charged with grooming. At that stage, I confess, part of me went to defend him, to wonder if he'd been misinterpreted, if rumour and malice had implicated him amongst other, more exploitative men.

When charges were later brought once, then again, and further details emerged, I was not naive enough to imagine that he was an innocent in the crossfire.

And yet, my feelings remain complex. I cannot speak for his mentality and actions, I cannot speak for the victims who came forward against him, I can only interrogate my own experience.

Like countless children of my generation, generations before and after, there were no shortage of predators around when I was young. Nor is he the only one that seemed to take, for a period of time, a particular interest in me. There were three. The other two I have no complex feelings about. I can see them for what they were.

Nothing happened to me, to the depth of my recall. As I've got older, I've doubly investigated my memory - have I missed something, hidden something? But I don't think so.

He was the first male form teacher we'd had, after five years of kind, nurturing women. The year he taught us was the last time I enjoyed school, indeed, didn't dread it, perhaps until the final few months of the final year, eight years later.

The switch at the start of the following year was pretty much instant. Teachers were intimidating, strict, uninspirational. The odd one would try to be inspirational but it felt two-faced. School was an eight-year trial after that, where I steadily fell away from top standards, did not feel I was highly regarded, valued or liked.

So, what's to make of that year? With the benefit of various levels of hindsight. In the years that followed, there were whispers about him, innuendo. For older, street-smarter but also meaner boys, he became, along with a few other teachers, a byword for something negative. But, even at that time, I think I thought it was all talk, that they didn't know anything I didn't know, that perhaps they were even a bit jealous, but perhaps they did know something specific, perhaps they weren't throwing cruel rumours and stereotypes about, but honing in with righteous fury.

He was funny, in that trendy vicar kind of way (he was a Christian), played guitar, told stories, had in-jokes and well-honed systems for getting the best in people. Everything seemed fun, and he rarely got angry. He gave us Mars bars for improving our times in his weekly times tables competitions. I broke records, week on week, the star of the class. I performed in plays we put on for assembly. He made me captain of the year's football team that year, one of the few times I ever had the chance to captain. I played rugby for the year above, performed in the school musical. I felt capable of anything and genuinely loved being at school.

He took me, and other boys, to the David Lloyd Club, where we played tennis, badminton, squash. pool. He took the football team to the Richmond Slides, then back to his flat to watch the FA Cup final. He took me, with other boys, to Plough Lane to see Wimbledon, Loftus Road to see QPR-Spurs and, as I've said, to White Hart Lane. That summer and the summer after, he took a group of us on walking holidays in the Peak District. 

But, there's the thing, I don't remember being alone with him. We were always in groups, large or small. Was I being groomed, I who received all that favour? Or was I party to someone else being groomed?

The answer feels more complex. I said I wouldn't try to answer it, but I'll say a few things. I think he loved teaching and was a good teacher, I think he had kindness in him, I think he certainly enjoyed the company of boys, and that was capable of being in a non-exploitative way. But, I suppose, if there was ever any exploitation, any misdeed, then it was all exploitation. He was tactile, there were innuendos, that I do remember. And, like I say, I'm not a fool. This story's played out many times in many contexts. I'm not going to be anyone's apologist, even in death.

My mixed feelings don't really matter, I know. My sense of sadness at his death. Yet it remains.

London Place 28: St Barnabas Church

As much as last time I thought "I should write about a gallery", this time I thought "I should do a church", though, in this case, rather than not really having an angle, I have too many angles when it comes to churches. The three churches I attended regularly at any point were Ealing Abbey (bad monks angle!), St Mary's Acton (losing faith angle!) and St Michael's Barnes (all kinds of bittersweet good vibes angles!).

But I'll leave those for now, because I'm thinking about Ealing and not in a bad way. I'm from Ealing, distinct world that it was, as much as I'm from London. 

So to Pitshanger, perhaps the Ealingest of Ealing. I don't think I've been to Pitshanger in more than 25 years, but I doubt it's changed much. Why would it change?

Just looking at Googlemaps to remind myself of how it all fitted together, it gave me a strange feeling - so many places of interest within a small place, some much closer as the crow flies than I imagined them to be - "was that really there? That felt like it was in a different timezone."

Roughly speaking, Pitshanger is North Ealing, the part just beneath the A40. There's a connected area of different green spaces, which the River Brent runs through, incorporating sites like Hanwell Town Football Club, St Benedict's School sports ground, Scotch Common, Cleveland Park, Gurnell Leisure Centre, Brentham Cricket Club, Ealing Hockey Club, Ealing Golf Club and Pitshanger Park itself. My first home, until I was 5, was just to the southwest of Cleveland Park.

Some of it is quite historic, like St Mary's Church Perivale (13th century), and Pitshanger Village itself.

To the village's north was Pitshanger Park, to its south Notting Hill & Ealing High School, where my sisters went, & St Benedict's School, where my brother and I went when we were young.

As I remember there was a row of shops on Pitshanger Lane, including a fishmonger, greengrocer, toy shop, shoe shop, amongst others. At the eastern end on the left was St Barnabas Church and its church hall.

St Barnabas figures prominently in my memories as, above all, a place I couldn't sit still. My three older siblings were in Ealing Youth Orchestra, which rehearsed in the church hall (where I also remember my sisters having ballet lessons).

They'd rehearse on a Friday evening and often go to the Kent pub, along the road, afterwards. I remember being jealous of this social life which my musical incompetence would never allow me to partake in.

So I'd regularly be dragged along to concerts which took place in the church. doing my best (I thought) to not let my wrigliness show too much. It would be unfair to entirely blame my chronic indifference to classical music on these childhood trials, but this was not my natural element.

Yet now, there's a stillness and beauty in those memories. There were concerts, there were carol services, they're terribly evocative evenings now. What's more, I think those memories help me place my siblings as teenagers, which is sometimes something I find tricky, since I myself was so sollipsistic at that age, and they, somewhat older, were living more expansive lives where it sometimrs felt they'd become strangers to me.

It also reminds me, on a similar line, of how often, as the youngest, it was just me and my mother, and those are memories I treasure too.

I remember one time (and this might have been one of the last EYO concerts I attended) they were bold enough to plan an outdoor summer concert in Cleveland Park - they had a stage, a tent, it was the social event of the season. Needless to say, the day saw the worst weather of the summer. Not just rain, which they were prepared to deal with, but torrential, impossible, swirling rain. So everyone was forced to take the picnic back into St Barnabas. I have this sharp memory of eating potato salad and drinking lemonade listening to the orchestra playing the music from Raiders of the Lost Ark, finally free to wriggle just a little. I think I'd have enjoyed the concerts more if they'd all been like that.

London Place 27: National Galleries

I've wanted to mix it up and makes sure all bases are covered in terms of the kinds of places I recall, and so a museum or gallery seemed an obvious place, but I've found it oddly hard to know what to say. When I think of other major cities I've been to, whether it's New York, Paris, Chicago or Stockholm, it's the museums I think of. MoMa has been pretty much my No.1 spot in New York, the Musee D'Orsay in Paris. 

It's not that I don't like, or haven't spent time in, London's many great museums, big or small. I just can't quite find an angle. I suppose I could have gone with the time I kept on being told off, wherever I went, the Wallace, or Knole House, or the Tate, wherever, for doing nothing, just looking a bit scruffy. That was pretty fun. Scruffy in London was very much my thing. Not artfully scruffy, I'm proud to say. Clumsily, hopelessly scruffy.

But anyway, I'm going to go with the two big siblings, The National Gallery and The National Portrait Gallery. They're pretty fabulous places. The fact they're free is an endless blessing.

Just the ability, as I used to do when I was regularly round there, to pop in for a quick quarter of an hour's browsing. Oh yeah, look, there's Sunflowers ...

Perhaps that's why I haven't got much to say. I've nearly always done them both in small chunks - half an hour, a bit, safe in the knowledge I could come back and have another look soon.

 Portraits of the year, quick looks at Titians, odd little Bob Dylan art showings, all in passing, all on the way somewhere else, as if I'm embarrassed to be there.

I surveyed them both for disabled access, which was pretty arduous, as there are lots of escalators and mezzanines and bits which are hard to explain in writing. I did the Sainsbury Wing soon after it opened - that was easier. I remember a school trip to the Portrait Gallery when I was 8 and remember drawing a portrait of Francis Drake which, though you'd think any effort by an 8 year old to draw a portrait of Francis Drake is commendable, was not a commendable effort.

I've met various family members in the cafes and restaurants, complacent with the glorious London-ness of it. Genuinely, the most memorable visit was a family get-together at the cafe in the Portrait Gallery in 2011 or 2012 where we were told by one of the waiters that David Cameron and some foreign dignitaries would be joining us in the building, so we spent the whole meal thinking about what we'd do/say and my cousin saying "We really ought to shout something like, I don't know ... "A disgrace!" ... since when "A disgrace!" has been a catchphrase in this house ... but that disgrace Cameron never showed in that cafe. I think he could see we had a bit too much edge.

Anyway, there we have it the National Galleries and the Trafalgar Square, where we've all been an awful lot, for various reasons. I do remember another fun moment when I was walking down Duncannon St behind a group of Brummy lads, and Nelson's Column was under scaffolding at the time and one of them said (insert accent) "I dunno, you come to London to see Nelson's Column in all its glory and you see.... that!" and it was both very funny and entirely understandable at the same time.

Also, I remember a busker in the Charing Cross subway playing She's Got Spies by the Super Furry Animals. Now, that was a work of art I paid good money for.

London Place 26: Richmond Park

Richmond Park, the centrepiece of the green space, interspersed with small fancy towns, that is southwest London. Every direction you go, there's an entrance for Richmond Park. There's no escaping it.

Of course, it's when I look back at how integral it was to my childhood that I realise how lucky I was. We'd run the dog there, we'd go with friends to climb trees there, we'd amble through the Isabella Plantation and gaze way across at the as yet relatively prominent St Paul's Cathedral. My mother's great friend lived just off it, as did school friends of mine. We'd drive past the Richmond Gate, the Star and Garter Home, on the way to my grandmother's, drive through the park sometimes too, spotting deer from afar.

I'm going to remember three sponsored walks I did there, when I was 9, 11 and 13. I was just a running boy. Always running. Really, until I was about 12, just always running, needing to run, sad if I wasn't, with a football, with a rugby ball, with a cricket bat, but always running.

I cannot tell you how much I looked forward to the sponsored walk. The prep school's version was every two years, so I'd already worked out, to my disappointment, that I'd only get to do two, in 2nd and 4th year.

It was in spring. I don't actually remember too much of the first one except that my mum provided me with a great picnic but the thing I was looking forward to the most, her cupcakes with chocolate icing and Cadburys mini eggs on top, weren't in my bag went I went looking for them at lunchtime. Then my friend Colin's mother was driving us back to Ealing and he said to her "thanks for lunch, I particularly loved those cupcakes with mini eggs on top."

I did 21 miles that time, which seemed solid. I didn't overextend myself.

I knew my big shot would come a couple of years later.

It was laps of 3 miles, not all of the park, just a lovely inner section, up a couple of hills, through a couple of woods. I still remember sections of it pretty well. I sometimes wondered if it was a full three miles or if it was a bit less, to increase the amount of sponsorship money. but I don't suppose that would have happened.

So, yeah, here comes two years later. A good tale about what an odd little fucker I was.

John W and me were the two top distance runners in the year, swapping first places in the school cross countries and 1500ms. With a couple of other boys, we even started a running club, and went round the reservoirs, towpaths and bridges with a teacher at lunchbreak.

Before the sponsored walk, I was told it was traditional for someone from Leonard Cheshire homes to sponsor, per mile, a boy who was going to walk/run a long way, and this year it would be me, which seemed a great honour. I was set for a pretty big amount if I went as far as I thought I could.

John and I agreed to run together. The walk was from 10 til 4 on a Sunday in the Easter holiday. Another Ealing mother agreed with mine that she'd give me and her son a lift, and my mum would pick up.

I was waiting by the door from 9. No sign. Nor at 9.10, 9.20 or 9.30. I'm getting nervous. I persuaded my mum to give her a ring at about 9.40. They were still at home, just ambling about, completely unaware how central to my whole life this was. I was picked up, inconsolable, at 9.55 and arrived at the park at about 25 past 10. John and the leading group were, of course, nowhere to be seen. Indeed, as I'd find out, they were already about a lap and a half ahead of me. 

I set off full speed, which is not the best thing to do if you're planning to run for six hours, flying past assorted joggers and walkers. I remember my relief when I caught up with John and a couple of others towards the end of my first/their second lap. I ran that first lap in 17/18 minutes.

We settled in. It was a hot day, I remember John and a couple of others running with their tops off, and I remember a guy with a camera tried to get us to pose for him. Gross. We told a teacher.

Gradually, John and I dropped everyone else. We started fast and our pace slowed a fair bit, but we were, no lie, a pair of really good little runners. I'd got to 21 (meaning John had done 24) by 1.30ish. But then, of course, as it always does with me on a hot day, cramp set in. I laboured on but much more slowly and I felt bad because I thought I was slowing John down. 

At 3ish, I had to call it a day, having done 27 miles. John pushed on for one more, meaning he managed a mighty 33 miles. I was super upset and disappointed.  I also think I never ran quite so freely and joyfully ever again. I finished a miserable 3rd in the cross country the following year. Too many chocolate buns with mini eggs.

The weird part (if that wasn't weird enough) was, having collected all my sponsorship, including a really sizeable amount from both the Leonard Cheshire guy and my mother, I was given a cheque to hand in. But I lost it. Not sure where. I was messy and careless and always losing stuff. I didn't really understand how cheques worked, that you could simply replace them, and, I don't know, I told my mother I'd handed the cheque in, and I was caught in a lie I didn't go back on.

The class teacher began asking for all the sponsorship not yet received, and I was pretty much the last one. I kept on saying I'd forgotten the cheque, or was waiting for one more sponsorship, or something.

Eventually, to resolve the situation in the way only a moronic, embarrassed, proud 11 year old would, I went to the post office and withdrew all the money in my little account. which was about £30, which was a lot, lot less than I'd been sponsored, and I took that £30 in to school and gave it to my teacher, and he looked a bit puzzled, but accepted it.

I mean, I was really fucking weird for a few years then, there are lots of examples but that's a pretty good one.

Oh yeah, and the last sponsored walk I did in Richmond Park, first year of the big school - the lap was basically the whole park, so close to 7 miles. The whole event was not a big deal like it had been at the prep school, but I rolled up, I remember it was a nice day, bumped into some nice guys, did 20 miles, then went to the Sunday CU meeting. 

But I guess what's important is that it didn't matter anymore. I was no longer an obsessed, desperate runner. It was just a Sunday stroll. I didn't think much of it. And yet, even there, I had an easy strolling 20 miles in 4 and a half hours in my legs. I wish I could take some of those miles back.

London Place 25: Tap East

Sometimes there are new connections. Like Westfield Stratford City, where I've spent more time than I ever expected to, half-connected.

2012 wasn't the first time I'd been to Stratford, Stratford had existed for a long long time before that, but it was, in a way, a new place that I, and hundreds of thousands of others, went to in the summer of 2012, shuffling through one-way systems, warmly greeted by volunteers, a bit disoriented but getting to where we needed.

I went to the Stratford site three times that summer, but only began to get a good sense of the layout during the Paralympics, when there was space to move around freely and go to whichever events one chose.

In that context, it certainly seemed a beautiful place - sunset in the stadium, the new landscaping, the sense of achievement.

I was still a bit suspicious of that big old Westfield looming though. I kept a wide berth. But we moved to Ashford in late 2013 and Westfield became a necessary.

It's HS1 man, it's high speed. You whizz through east Kent, sometimes close to the M20, there are a few tunnels, then the first really striking moment is crossing the Medway on high, a lovely line of boats to the left and, to the right, the estuary, look down to Chatham and Rochester. Soon after that, you're at the internationalest of the internationals, Ebbsfleet International, where you kind of hope no one gets on. Then pretty soon, plunged into darkness, under the Thames, and you're in Essex and to your left are lots of big boats and  and grids of trucks and the Dartford Bridge. In the distance, if you look, you can make out the towers of Canary Wharf. It's very flat, marshy, round there. Kind of Dickensian and murderous. Then you're plunged into a greater darkness and you're under London for a long time (I mean, 5 minutes or so). You emerge, somewhat, though still well below the surface, and Westfield and the casino hang over you and you're at Stratford (not actually) International.

Though it's more often St Pancras, I've made my way in and out of London many times through Stratford, which often means you have to walk through Westfield to the Stratford station which doesn't falsely claim to be international. I don't mind the vibes. I mean, I know it's a monster and I also know it has its incidents, but generally the vibes are good, young, young Londony, groups of bouncing children and young adults hanging out or on their way.

In summer, in the outside bits, with the countless mid-price chain restaurants that have come to dominate the landscape, the vibes can be genuinely good.

We know this is soulless, we know that, but soul isn't the only thing. An outside seat at Wahaca and one of their spicy beers is also a thing. London became this. There's no point complaining.

And the first place, the first place you come to and the first place I spotted, is this oddity at the International exit, this open plan craft beer bar/brewery called Tap East. You just wallk right in, walk walk walk right in.

Probably, in the last 8 years, that and the Parcelyard in King's Cross (where I have work meetings, amongst other things) are the London pubs I've spent most time in, which says everything about my relationship with London now. I can still do a day, do a night out, but even pre-Covid, I'd be looking for the places from which I could make a quick escape.

Tap East is fine, it's no one's dream spot, but they have a wide selection of IPAs and NEIPAs and Pale Ale and sprarkly citrussy whatevers, served by slightly offhand staff, they have big windows to the world going past, they have stools and a sofa, somewhere to sit if you've missed your train. It's not really a place for a big night, for settling in and feeling home, but it'll do for a couple and then home to bed within an hour.

For me, it's where London starts and ends now, the first place I see, and there are worse places.

London Place 24: Serpentine

Like, I presume, many people, there are significant moments in my life at every corner of the Hyde Park/Kensington Gardens green space.

My life and related lives.

The first Hyde Park memory I'll share is so trivial. I can't remember what the exact point in my life was, but it was definitely a point where I was free of something and time was my own again. I bought a pack of 10, entered at Hyde Park Corner, walked towards the Serpentine, sat on a bench, opened the pack, took one out, lit it, determined to luxuriate in it, probably taking exaggeratedly satisfied puffs. An old lady, who had, I suppose, watched some or all of the scene, walked past and gave me the biggest, most approving smile. I loved that.

I know Hyde Park is meant to be rubbish for concerts, but the Dylan concert I saw there was the best Dylan I've seen and the Blur concert in 2009 was quite likely my very favourite show ever.

I broke my leg in Kensington Gardens. I think I've mentioned that.

I worked those months at the Mount Royal, by Marble Arch, often walking up through the park from Hyde Park Corner tube to get there. Then a taxi back at 2.30 (or 7) am, usually going to the north of the park, down Bayswater, back to West London, but sometimes going south via Knightsbridge.

I walked through the park with my sister, after visiting St Mary's, in a bright spring day in 2010, with such a sense of clarity about the next few months. That's an oddly happy memory.

We were there a lot as children. Maybe just walking off a lunch, watching horses, boating, all sorts. We were always there. I think it was my father's favourite place.

So, here's the funny thing. I was reading, a year or so, I think via one of Tim Burgess' Listening Parties, about a guy called Finbarr Donnelly, a post-punk frontman from Cork, who led a band called Five Go Down to the Sea?, a bit of a force of nature, so I read. I was stopped in my tracks to realise that he drowned in the Serpentine on 18th June, 1989, a lovely summer's day, just going for a swim with a mate. Those summer's weekend days in the late 80s were very much the days we were there. I can practically feel the horror of the moment.

Also, it was part of my family folklore that my Cork father was hauled out of the Serpentine by the coppers on the day in September 1972 he was out gallivanting with his chums and was informed, to his delight, that his first daughter had been born, prompting his midnight dip.

So, sorry, I wrote a little poem about it a few months ago.

Summers 1972 and 1989: Hyde Park/Cork

And he was oh just messing around;

the newborn girl was crying

and he was high on life itself

 

the ambulance comes flying

through currents to the undergrowth

a swirling, bombing hunger

 

the summer of a second love

when we were so much younger,

and roll and spin,

you’re free from sin

 

you’ve found your own great harbour.

you’ve sung your air to blazing June

And danced your danse macabre

 

the serpent’s tongue will clean her young

and sting them out of sorrow

you jumped for joy, you foolish boy,

for now, to no tomorrow.

London Place 23: London City Airport

I had cause to travel from London City Airport once. It came up as one of the options for my destination, and I thought "that'll be a fun thing to do, go from London City Airport, in the heart of the city of London, or fairly near it".

I'd read it was an excellent, hassle-free, fast airport, the airline I was travelling with rarely had delays. Ideal.

But it was a heavily foggy London day in December 2009, and we heard that no planes would be leaving the airport for the foreseeable future.

And in that circumstance, you don't want a London City Airport, you want a Heathrow, which, though hardly a palace of delight, at least has a few ways to pass the time and a few metres to walk.

There were lots of people looking frantic and agitated. It was frantic and agitable people who went to London City Airport to ease their troubled minds, after all

It being late 2009, I didn't have a smartphone. I think I had a book (I think it was The Suspicions of Mr Whicher). I suppose I had my ipod. But, simply this; that's the last time I remember truly owning boredom. I'm not sure I've ever been totally, satisfactorily bored since.

But, there, sitting in one plastic seat at London City Airport for four hours, I let the time pass with almost no stimuli, no brainwaves, no communications, no games, no checking of the news, no twitter, no facebook, no connections.

I'm not saying it was a golden age. I'm not saying those four hours taught me valuable life lessons. It just was. I haven't been bored quite like that since, and boredom's an important skill to have.

I realise this is a tremendously boring piece of writing. I hoped to write something interesting about boredom, which is certainly possible, but it's not this. I feel I should mention the time I woke up on a night bus which had reached its final destination at Heathrow, but that would only be a fun story if I'd then caught the first plane out of there. But I didn't. I took a bus back to Ealing, feeling stupid and bored.

London Place 22: Hampstead Garden Suburb

Here was a funny turn in a road not taken.

Hampstead Garden Suburb is a noteworthy name for a small area of London, isn't? A triple lock. Not only is this HAMPSTEAD but it's a GARDEN and not only is it a GARDEN in HAMPSTEAD but it's a fucking SUBURB, right? You get it? It's nice round here!

Let me say, I was no stranger to the "garden suburb". Ealing's Brentham's has its own Garden Suburb. Arguably, Ealing's Brentham Garden Suburb could have been the most suburbanly pleasant name of all time. Missed a trick there.

I think I've been to Hampstead Garden Suburb twice. I think I went there for a play in the middle of a wood once. Was it 'A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum?' ... something like that. I noted, on that visit, that Hampstead Garden Suburb was quite a fair bit of travelling from South London.

Yet that did not deter me, in 2005, from applying for a job in a school there. I can't remember the name of the school.

Of all my adult life, that's really the most dreamlike period, most disconnected from reality. On paper, the plan was "finish PGCE, qualify as teacher, get job in North London, move from South to North London, probably buy house in North London, on with life".

But, in truth, none of that was a viable reality. I knew full well I was entirely on the wrong track. My placement in Peckham was going terribly, I couldn't teach, I didn't want to teach. I was meant to be buying a house with a friend, which is a cock-eyed idea anyway, but I was being completely flaky about it, and I'd say I'm not usually flaky.

Because it was what I was supposed to be doing, I applied for a couple of jobs, got a couple of interviews. It was, at the very least, a good excuse not to be in my school for half a day. 

The first one was ok, I actually can't remember anything about it, I don't think it went well or badly. The second one, I think it may have been the next day, was at this very nice primary school in Hampstead Garden Suburb, and I dressed up, took the tube up from Clapham North, did an interview, which went fine, took a lesson as part of the process, and I remember thinking halfway through, "aah, this is how it's meant to be, I'm actually teaching".

I went back to my school in Peckham for the afternoon, went home, I got a phone call, the headteacher of the school I'd interviewed said she was so sorry, I was a whisker away from the job, she'd really loved my interview and my lesson, but in the end, they'd gone for a someone else on the basis that she had a great idea about starting up a conservation club, or something. 

Well, thank god for that conservation club.

It hardly ever crosses my mind that's there's an alternative reality where I get that job, I finish my PGCE, I move to North London, I become a teacher and after a few teething problems, I make a good fist of it. Maybe there's a tiny chance that might have happened. Maybe I'd be the king of Hampstead Garden Suburb by now.

London Place 21: Earls Court

I had a friend at my first school called Niall. He was probably my best friend for a couple of years, in what would be Years 2 and 3. He had two older brothers and a baby brother.

They lived, to start with, in a fair-sized house in Ealing. They had an au pair, which was quite a thing to have. The dad was an Irish businessman. I remember Niall and I, two Anglo-Irish boys, found it funny that his baby brother had a bit of an Irish accent.

I remember us singing "Satsumas, robots in disguise" and that being hilarious, and playing our own version of "The Adventure Game" (Doogy rev) in the snowy school playground.

We went to The Royal Tournament at Earl's Court twice, some peculiar piece of military triumphalism which was pretty entertaining and where no one died. First in 1985, then in 1986. In 1985, we travelled there and back from Ealing. By June 1986, Niall and his family had moved to Kensington.

Now, look, I went to posh schools and friends had big houses. But there's big and big. My family had moved, post-divorce in 1983, into a terraced two-up two-down in South Ealing, then my mum got a loft conversion in 84 which meant all four children had their own bedroom. Niall definitely came to stay a few times at ours. Our house was a good house; certainly it felt full when there were five in it, fuller when there were more than five.

For a lot of friends with well-to-do parents, all through my childhood, in London, you could tell their houses were fine and fancy, but there was nothing disproportionately spectacular compared to ours. There's only so much space in London after all. Maybe they were detached, maybe they had three floors, maybe a basement, but mostly, they weren't a whole thrill in themselves.

Niall's house in Kensington, though ... that was something. I think it was Kensington Church Street, in that ridiculously wealthy rectangle between Notting Hill, Holland Park, High Street Ken and Kensington Gardens.

It was white, I think, and was on 5 or 6 floors. All those floors. And it had a roof garden of sorts. You get the picture. 

So, one weekend in June 1986, I went to stay there for, I think, two nights. The thing about staying with Niall is I don't remember his parents being there. There was the au pair, brothers passing through, but mostly it felt like we had the run of the place.

The Saturday, which was the 21st of June, we went to the Royal Tournament at Earl's Court, watched the soldiers and the sailors and the pilots doing spectacular battle in which no one died, then had a meal at Tootsie's, that fancy burger place on Holland Park Avenue which used to have a  couple of other branches, but endures in its original location.

So far, so excellent. Then we went back to Niall's to catch the end of the Brazil-France World Cup quarter-final (which had an epic penalty shoot-out), then we went to the park and played football, on the longest day of the year, til the sun went down and I still remember that game of football, all the disparate kids in the park, young and old, joining in, how it felt like it went on for ever, then we went back and watched the Germany-Mexico QF, which began at 10pm UK time, can you imagine, and we just watched all of it, probably with a couple of beers, who knows, we felt so grown up.

I've always had in my memory that that's the last time I saw Niall, but that can't quite be true. It was the 21st June (the evening of the 22nd I remember being at home to watch the England-Argentina QF, a little-talked about game of football that no one remembers) so there'd still have been a couple more weeks of school.

But I left that school then, and never saw him after that, and have no idea what happened to him. I saw lots of other boys from that school down the years, maybe just around Ealing, or at Ealing Cricket Club, or when my new school played that school at sport. But I didn't see Niall. I remembered that day, for a very long time, as just the best that a day could possibly be, the longest day of the year, out and about in London like grown-ups, staying up past midnight in this huge mansion of a townhouse. And I missed him the most of my old friends, and always assumed I'd see him again some day. Maybe, since he'd moved to Kensington, he left that Ealing school as well. I must have asked someone. I must have known at some point.

There's a name that pops up on twitter occasionally that is similar, but the surname is one letter different from what I remember, and, anyway, it's not that uncommon a name, really. 

I just noticed that two of these blogs, this and London Place 13 are about 21st April and 21st June 1986, and I remember both days in precise detail, which is a weird feat even for me. I looked up to see if I could continue the series, and yes, 21st August, I remember it well, I was watching test cricket all day, Ian Botham breaking the test wicket record.

For days that were half a lifetime ago, they sometimes seem pretty close.

* A few days later now, something was bugging me up, I looked up the 1986 Royal Tournament and I realise I got this wrong. It took place in July, not June. So the Royal Tournament was not on the same day as the football. Makes sense now. I had definitely thought there'd been more than one sleepover, and I'd definitely thought that one of them was the last time I ever saw Niall. So I was right in some sense. There we go. My memory's not what it ever was.

London Place 20: The Shard

I actually love skyscrapers. I don't know if that counts as a guilty secret. A lot of people don't, they find them an obscene symbol of this world gone wrong, but, heyho there we go.

I don't think London's been ruined by its skyscrapers, or defaced by them. When I was young, the tallest buildings were the Post Office Tower (now BT Tower) and the NatWest Tower, which are now pretty low in the pecking order, but London's hardly gone skyscraper crazy.

I find it a rather comforting, exciting thing every time I come in on the fast or slow train from Kent, or Essex, capturing that first glimpse of the small cluster at Canary Wharf, then the small cluster in the city. That's it, those are the clusters, of medium-size, somewhat eccentric cloud-grazers. It's hardly Hong Kong. 

I remember One Canada Square being built, but I didn't see it first hand. I did see The Shard being built first hand. I went into Guys Hospital for INR level blood checks every few weeks, first for a few months in 2007, then from early 2009 to mid-2012, those three years pretty much the exact timespan of The Shard being built.

I'd come out of London Bridge station then cross a walkway directly passing the construction site, which took you to the first floor of the hospital. I didn't know, and wasn't curious, what it was for quite a while. Just a big building site. But then, I thought, jeez, they're not getting anywhere fast with that, so I realised it was a pretty big project, and found out it was going to be Britain's tallest building.

I'd sometimes stop and watch for a few minutes - hardly very exciting. As I say, not much seemed to be happening for quite a long time, then when it started to go up up, it went up fast.

It would generally be every six weeks or so I'd have the tests. They were a pain in the arse, caused by the fact warfarin is an unstable substance which reacts with various other things and can change the effect it has over a period of time, so it was about making sure your blood was thin but not too thin. A standard INR level is 1, and as a blood-thinned person you were looking for something between 2 and 3. Over 3 was a bit much and ran the risk of internal bleeding.

So, if I went out for a drink the night before, I might mess up my level and I'd need to come in again a week or so later, so I tried to make sure my levels would be ok. then it would only need to be every 6-8 weeks.

One time, early on in my treatment, when I was on an 8mg per day dosage (so I'd take 1 5 and 3 1's) I absent-mindedly took 3 5's. Realising my mistake and quite new to the game, I called NHS hotline and they said "well, we're not sure, but take yourself into A and E just in case". So I did, and the triage nurse, a nervous lady who failed to find my vein three times in a row, which was the last thing anyone needed, put down in my notes "DRUG OVERDOSE" which was one to tick off the old bucket list. Anyway, it was fine, was just advised not to headbutt any walls for a couple of days.

Anyway, at Guys, phlebotomy patients shared a waiting room with cancer patients, which was, for a guy in his early 30s who didn't really have much wrong with him, a sobering occurrence, espiecially, as happened occasionally, seeing people I recognised.

I'd stand at the back of the small waiting room with not enough chairs, try not to catch anyone's eyes, wait to hear my mispronounced name, hope not to miss it, hope my veins were popping and my blood was flowing. A real relief now to be on rivaroxaban, a more stable antocoagulant which doesn't require the regular tests.

Anyway, skyscrapers. I've not been up the Shard, but I like to have a good look at it from London Bridge station. It's a pretty sinister character. I went up the Empire State Building, as well as the Hancock Tower and Willis (Sears) Tower in Chicago and unshamed to say I found all those experiences very moving and thrilling.

I do get the anti-skyscrapers thing. In New York, a lot of the tall buildings are surprisingly mundane, Trumpian and dirty. If you're going to go big, go weird. And skyscrapers should not be oppressive and cut down space. They should increase the sense of travel and distance, of being to look and move beyond. 

London Place 19: Curzon Soho

To me, the Curzon Soho was the absolute heart of London, the calm at the centre of the storm. There was outrage, wasn't there, a few years ago when they said they were going to demolish it for Crossrail? Quite right too.  It's just one of those real good London places.

It looks quite forbidding from the outside, like it's a private members club, full of cool folk, which you won't be allowed to enter.

There's not much upfront, but I guess that's true of most cinemas. There's a ticket office to the right and a bar to the left (forgive me if any of this is wrong or has changed - I haven't been for a decade or so).

Then you go downstairs and there's another, larger, bar, and, what, three screens? On a couple of floors?

For a while it was a go-to place for meeting in London, even if not for a film. Just a cool place to start.

I can't even remember what I saw there ... bloody foreign films, most likely. Sneaky with its foreign films. Eating your wasabi peas while watching a film in, I don't know, Peruvian.

It's actually bugging me now. I'd like to remember the title of one film I saw there. Without being an absolute film fiend, I watched at a decent trot for a couple of decades. Darkened the door of most of the cinemas from Park Royal to Bethnal Green. I'm not a superfun person to go to the cinema with, to be honest. Not only do I hate talking before and during the film, I don't want to talk about the film afterwards either, not for at least half an hour. I want my own experience. I will growl and scowl at a hasty opinion. 

I did enjoy the experience of going to the cinema with friends, don't get me wrong, but it's the experience of being in your own head, together, that is part of what's good. There can be something great about that.

Because J is not a big fan of going to the cinema, I've mainly gone on my own since I've been in Ashford. When I say on my own, that can mean, if you're watching a somewhat leftfield film in Ashford in the middle of the day, you might well be entirely on your own. Which is rather marvellous.

Since Covid, I've only been to the cinema twice, to see The Paw Patrol Movie and Peter Rabbit 2. For those I was not on my own.

Me and You and Everyone We Know. There we go, that's one I saw at Curzon Soho. That was good. That was my kind of film. Early 2000s, when I was listening to Midlake and watching Thumbsucker. Early 2000s, when I was listening to Bright Eyes and watching The Squid and the Whale.

Oh yeah, that was me, a moment-in-time hipster, ignoring the extremely famous people at the Curzon Soho.

London Place 18: Brent Cross

Jewel of the northwest, they call it. 

I was taken to Brent Cross a fair bit when I was little. It was one of the regular expeditions a single mother of four children in west London in the 1980s made. For a long time I didn't really know if it was far away or not - the distance seemed to vary considerably. That's the North Circular for you. 

It elicited a strangely nuanced range of emotions - it was exciting to go there, it was a mesmerizing place, but I knew I'd also be mainly bored to my eyeballs.

Brent Cross was a big fucking deal back then, let's not forget. The first of its kind, an out-of-town, specialized, American-style shopping mall. It was a beast among pygmies, rearing up out of the asphalt pasta.

I need to say, hard as it may be to believe, I was a little nightmare to take anywhere, and needed to be kept on a tight leash. My recollection is of patiently waiting while my mother made her way meticulously through that gargantuan John Lewis. I suspect there was more rolling around on the floor amidst the textile aisles than I'd care to recall.

I remember it was hard to deal with all the beautiful televisions and items of sports equipment I wasn't allowed to touch, not to mention toys.

But still, if I made it through John Lewis, Brent Cross had its rewards. Kind of. There was the fountain, the eery lighting in the main walkway which made you feel like you were in a dystopian science fiction film. Fenwicks had a bit which seemed a bit like an aeroplane or a ferry. And I think my genuine reward would be a chicken drumstick and carton of orange juice from Marks and Spencer. Such glamorous days.

To be honest, I don't remember much else. The vibe, the lighting, that's about it, There were lots of other shops, but I don't really remember what they were. There were other people, but I couldn't say what the demographics were.

I was taken there on my birthday once, which strikes me as funny. Then again, I was taken to the newly-opened IKEA nearby (another biiiig deal) the next year. I feel like by that point I was the only one of us four that was, by necessity, dragged along.

My trips to Brent Cross by and large ended in about 1988. I guess I would not be compelled after that, and was usually busy on a Saturday. 

I did go again. I remember buying a stereo there in the 1990s and thinking that not much had changed. I also played in a summer football league across the big road in 2002. It defintely took longer to get there than it should have done, by car, bus or train.

It did not seem such a colossus by then. There were more big shops around. Nevertheless, it is, apparently, still one of the UK's biggest shopping centres and a a pioneer in something lots of people pretend to find repellent but secretly love.

It's all tied up in how much of my childhood is attached to the big west London roads. Brent Cross as the gateway to London, the start of the M1, the consumer dream.

London Place 17: Infernos

I kind of felt, writing one or two of these posts, that I was overly giving the impression that in my London youth I was a cool, chilled-out Londoner about town, one of the lads, a real social animal, whereas, of course, vast swathes of my London youth tell, as they do for so many people, a tale of profound loneliness and alienation. 

So, Infernos ... Burn. Baby. Burn.

I didn't go to Infernos often, maybe three or four times. It was never, as such, my choice to go. I think I fell asleep a couple of times. I may have enjoyed myself for a few minutes on one occasion.

What's Infernos? Infernos is/was the aptly named heart of Clapham High Street, if Clapham High Street is every bad thing you think Clapham is. It's probably where Dom Raab and Matty Hancock went on the pull in their glory days, where hundreds of young estate agents sing along to Livin' on a Prayer and the theme from Baywatch.

Let's not be too snobby. I wouldn't know how to run a successful club. I'm sure many many true romances have begun within its hallowed walls. I've never been a clubber and I don't know that Infernos was that much worse than that many other places.

But, for a person whose main settings are misanthropy and embarrassment, and whose main task is the concealing of the two, Infernos was the place where there was nowhere to hide.

I never had a tribe, but there were places which felt more like home than others. I liked pubs with friends, gigs, the cinema, I liked being part of football teams and cricket teams, going to football and cricket matches. That's plenty of places to blend in and feel at ease. I'm lucky. All the while, the main business was going on for most of the young folk elsewhere, in the bars and clubs, dressed up, hunting in packs, doing shots, asking if she wanted to dance, looking for a little romance, given half a chance.

I couldn't get to grips with any of it at university, when it was inescapable, I couldn't get to grips with it back in London, but there were usually ways to avoid it.

I thought I hated dancing and couldn't dance, but it turned out not to be that. For a few years I rather enjoyed dancing, in the right place, at the right time. But that was never somewhere like Infernos. That feeling when you know you're simultaneously more hung up, more repressed, and yet, in your own pathetic way, still a little cooler. I won't have been the only one on any given night, though it felt like it. Infernos is the kind of place that spawns a thousand monstrous Morrisseys, and that's no good thing. Panic. Burn.