My London - A Grand Tour

NEW LONDON QUARTERLY – ISSUE EIGHT

Monday 17 October, 2011

To step into a London space, as you exit from a front door and enter the public realm, for me is to accept that one is in a cinematic experience. Over time, I make the mistake that I really know the city, as I have grown up here, been educated here, and worked here, lived here, for most of my life, at one time or another, in most of its multi-faceted ‘villages’ . I will often forego my passion for the cinema, and wander through the city, pretending I don’t really know it, no, please no, not a flâneur, that surely is far too Parisian, but to looking for the friction and hum of the city.

My London is delightfully re-charged when a foreign friend visits, and I take a tour with them, better by car, allowing speed, but also to use the car’s windscreen as a projected screen, an observational frame, which allows subjective analysis. My London becomes alive when my passenger, the outsider, has little knowledge of London, so is happy to ask what would seem to be innocent questions, ‘why is it so?,’ and I have to reflect and answer. This is the opportunity to shake off my over-confidence of ‘knowing’ , and allow myself to see anew, to create new views.

I allow my route to be influenced by my guest, and just as they have been taken into a high-brow area, I turn the corner into its antithesis. Recently I crossed the Thames at the delightful Tower Bridge, I drove through colourful Brick Lane, doing the rounds in Hoxton Square, and diving back through the wealth-driven Liverpool Street, to rejoin the River and its respite of scale and gentle force. Entering the grandness of Trafalgar

Square and the axial Mall, connecting into Park Lane, and the rural Hyde Park. Entering the flamboyant Mayfair, turning into noisy and messy Soho, passing through to Fitzrovia and Marylebone High Street, and promenading up the Middle-Eastern Edgware Road, turning into the grandness of Bayswater, and cutting through the rural openness of Hyde Park, to be welcomed by a golden Prince into Albertopolis. Passing grand houses, and taking short cuts through unlikely country mews.

I am trying to convey that there are grand ‘front of house’ set pieces, but behind the curtain, it is just as intriguing. The advantages of an outsider’s view are that I see a new London. The city continually unravels, with generosity and incidental surprises. I delight to point out blue dots on buildings, real evidence that the city has been marked by people, often also ‘outsiders’ who made London their home, and in turn made it one of the few truly great cities in the world. I can see out of the corner of my eye that my passenger has been bewildered by my endless numerous cheek-by-jowl examples, and my picturesque meanderings. These are not contradictions, but are part of a great’ organism, which is a fractured and perfect whole, that make up my London. NL

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