The big smoke

So, dear readers, to London, to give a talk to some PR types which was cancelled at the last minute. The train tickets were, however, paid for, so here I am in the city which I called home for 11 years until the Fall. As is my preference, I used Grand Central, and I have to say yet again that their service is very good. All right, you stop at every hole in the hedge in Teesside and North Yorkshire (I remember once alighting at Eaglescliffe, visiting Middlesbrough for work, and someone had written the graffito on the footbridge: “Welcome to Eaglescliffe – it’s shit”, which was a warm welcome back to the county of my birth), and on Thursday the wifi was refusing to play ball. Get beyond York, though, and you have a fast, efficient and comfortable service.

Anyway, I digress. There is much I miss about London, mostly the people, with whom I do my best to stay in contact through electronic means. Like many residents of the great city, though, I neglected the cultural highlights in my decade and more here. I rarely went to the British Museum, never to the British Library, and Sir John Soane and the Wallace Collection remain closed books to me. Shameful, I know, but I suspect I am not alone. I once went to the Royal Academy to see a collection of mid-20^th century Hungarian photography, and, my, how smug and pleased with self I felt.

What I do not miss is the experience of commuting. I arrived at King’s Cross at about 4.00 pm on Thursday, bound for my great friend Peter Murray’s pad in Clapham, and in theory it is a pretty easy journey – Victoria Line to Victoria, overground train to Clapham Junction, bus up the Northcote Road. I was lucky with timings, catching each leg within a few minutes of arrival. But, oh, the horror, the horror, as Colonel Kurtz says. Other people, my dear. They are awful. Sartre was right. But it’s not just that: there’s a herd mentality. Everyone develops a kind of monomania, a tunnel vision that turns them into barging, lumbering oafs with only their destination in mind. If I muttered the c-word once, I muttered it a dozen times.

Still, and all, public transport in London is pretty efficient (I know that’s not always the case for people who commute from the suburbs or further afield). If my journey was not pleasant, it was short, and not ruinously expensive (though, with tapping in and out, the final cost will await my bank statement). My first port of call was the Falcon on St John’s Hill for a quick pit-stop to meet my sister, who was no more than usually busy, skipping between one social engagement and the next. I am grateful to be fitted in. It’s an unremarkable pub, but there’s nothing wrong with that; acceptable wines and beers, comfy chairs, not too busy. Friends tell me that the clientele can be a bit iffy. I just hope they’re not talking about me. Anyway, thereafter a quiet night. I tried to watch Question Time, but it’s just too hideous these days, both panellists and audience. It reminds me of going to work, only with more stupid people.

So here I am, back in the city I loved. To say I have mixed emotions would be an understatement. The frenetic rush to do everything I do not miss. The sense of isolation, of everyone being in his or her own bubble, often sealed off by headphones or a mobile. The expense, of course: one pub in Clapham is flogging 500 ml bottles of Thistly Cross Whisky Cask (a very nice cider, as it goes) for £6.50, which is laughable. Then we won’t even get started on property prices; the Hotel Murray, where I am lodged, is a lovely, smart one-bedroom flat, and Pete has done a lot to it, but the cost to him has been in fantasy territory. (I am in one sense lucky; I am childless and firmly intend to remain so, so there is no urge to buy and develop heritable property.) How people with families manage, I simply do not know.

For all that, London remains the greatest city on Earth. I really believe that. Nowhere else is there such richness, such diversity, from the curry houses of Brick Lane to the wonderful Seven Stars on Carey Street, from the leafy suburbs of Orpington to the Victorian triumphalism of the Palace of Westminster. It is a cliché that London is a collection of villages, but isn’t that wonderful? I could go from my former lodgings in genteel Chiswick to the vibrancy of Soho in half an hour. There is much of London I don’t know well or even at all (much of it, dear readers, south of the river), but I know second-hand that there are still delights to be explored. Hopefully, one day, I’ll get the chance.

At the moment, I’m living the young middle-class dream and having a beer in the Draft House on the Northcote Road in Clapham. There are a lot of hipster beards, and those revolting earrings which stretch the lobe open (they make me feel quite ill, if I’m honest). Sunglasses abound, though it’s only May. Some heavy-duty pushchairs are in evidence. If I threw a brick (I won’t) I’d probably hit someone wearing Converse. It is time to order my thoughts, and to do some writing; but also to revel being back in the great metropolis, however briefly.