I live in London
Jan. 20th, 2006 01:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kniteracyI live in London.
Can you believe that? I live in London. I got up this morning, looked out my window, across the park to the pub they’re still not finished turning into flats, and that was a London park, ringed by London trees spreading their branches against the London sky. When I leave my house in the morning, I wait for a bus that takes me to Canada Water tube station, near Surrey Quays, part of the old London Docklands. In fact, one of the streets we pass on our bus ride to Canada Water was once a canal. Canada Water is a modern-looking station. You’d almost think you were in a modern city. And you’d be right--and wrong. This morning, I descended to the train with Emmylou Harris’ beautiful rendition of Barbara Allen in my head, and I thought about the dichotomy of a modern station, a modern train, a Jubilee Line train, and fifteen minutes, three sock rounds, and just the end of The Bad Touch later, Baker Street. Baker Street with its illustrations from Sherlock Holmes stories and the little Sherlock Holmes silhouettes on the walls and the tourists snapping photographs of the silhouettes and the pictures, and the escalator ride up and up again to street level, and the Sherlock Holmes Museum across the street, and the Lost Property Office for London Transit, and bus after bus until the modern pedestrian signal says it’s OK to cross the street and pass the Turkish market with all the beautiful fresh vegetables and fruits (including, incidentally, lovely pineapples). Across the street, the tall block of flats and offices is being cleaned and is covered with scaffolding. It’s a relatively new building: the carving on the top proclaims that it was built in 1909. I think about the men who worked on that building, how just seven years later many of them would have been in Normandy, wishing more than anything to be back a stone’s throw from Baker Street, putting roof tiles on a block of flats. On the top of the building I’m walking past, a huge block of flats, the ground floor level all stores including the Turkish grocery, a little arcade of shops, a Tesco, newsagents, and the like, there is a garden with evergreen trees in it. I wonder who uses that garden. I wonder who keeps it. I wonder what it looks like. My route to the second bus takes me past the original Lord’s Cricket Grounds, which are small and lovely and look like a garden now, with benches. The bus ride takes me round Regents Park and skirts the London Zoo, and I get off the bus at Primrose Hill. And just as Nic Jones comes on the mp3 player and the bright sun is making shadows of the London Plane Tree branches against the brightly painted house fronts, just as I’m crossing the canal and imagining the people living on the little canal boats, a bell cuts through the headphones, because it’s about time for the onion man. The onion man has a cart with a dog (in a red sweater) on it, and he walks his cart up and down the street, selling onions. Today he has a box with STAR WARS insignia in addition to the onions. You never know what could be in that box. Just a few more steps and I’m at the House. The other House, the one I work at, a stark brick building, remarkable for a number of lovely spaces inside but most valuable for its library. People greet me and tell me what’s going on. I greet them back and tell them what a beautiful day it is.
The sun is streaming through the windows from another perfect London sky. London, and England in general, is all the colours of all the picture-books I ever read as a child. It’s all the streets and little old ladies and friendly dogs and onion men and great old trees and brick buildings that stay and are built to stay for hundreds of years. It’s the rosy remembered childhood of Western civilisation.
London is a city with its own personality. London is an entity. London knows where you are going and has a good idea where you’ve come from. You can be infatuated with London, but London waits until you commit before she kisses you. You can count the skyscrapers, the tower blocks rising over the uniform smokestacks of Primrose Hill bordering other people’s green-because-grass-is-native-to-this-country back gardens, but there is no way to know how many people have wondered at that skyline, how many people have admired the bare branches against a sky that really is sky blue and clouds that really are white above grass that really is green. Really is greener. Really doesn't go brown. Really doesn't need tanks full of water to keep it alive. Greener.
I live in a city that has a nearly-thousand-year-old fortress and the biggest ferris wheel in the world. And you can just about see one from the other. (Well, you can always see the Tower from the Eye, but you can only almost see the Eye from the Tower. Honest.)
I live in London. Can you believe that? I can hardly believe it. But it’s true. I live here.
Can you believe that? I live in London. I got up this morning, looked out my window, across the park to the pub they’re still not finished turning into flats, and that was a London park, ringed by London trees spreading their branches against the London sky. When I leave my house in the morning, I wait for a bus that takes me to Canada Water tube station, near Surrey Quays, part of the old London Docklands. In fact, one of the streets we pass on our bus ride to Canada Water was once a canal. Canada Water is a modern-looking station. You’d almost think you were in a modern city. And you’d be right--and wrong. This morning, I descended to the train with Emmylou Harris’ beautiful rendition of Barbara Allen in my head, and I thought about the dichotomy of a modern station, a modern train, a Jubilee Line train, and fifteen minutes, three sock rounds, and just the end of The Bad Touch later, Baker Street. Baker Street with its illustrations from Sherlock Holmes stories and the little Sherlock Holmes silhouettes on the walls and the tourists snapping photographs of the silhouettes and the pictures, and the escalator ride up and up again to street level, and the Sherlock Holmes Museum across the street, and the Lost Property Office for London Transit, and bus after bus until the modern pedestrian signal says it’s OK to cross the street and pass the Turkish market with all the beautiful fresh vegetables and fruits (including, incidentally, lovely pineapples). Across the street, the tall block of flats and offices is being cleaned and is covered with scaffolding. It’s a relatively new building: the carving on the top proclaims that it was built in 1909. I think about the men who worked on that building, how just seven years later many of them would have been in Normandy, wishing more than anything to be back a stone’s throw from Baker Street, putting roof tiles on a block of flats. On the top of the building I’m walking past, a huge block of flats, the ground floor level all stores including the Turkish grocery, a little arcade of shops, a Tesco, newsagents, and the like, there is a garden with evergreen trees in it. I wonder who uses that garden. I wonder who keeps it. I wonder what it looks like. My route to the second bus takes me past the original Lord’s Cricket Grounds, which are small and lovely and look like a garden now, with benches. The bus ride takes me round Regents Park and skirts the London Zoo, and I get off the bus at Primrose Hill. And just as Nic Jones comes on the mp3 player and the bright sun is making shadows of the London Plane Tree branches against the brightly painted house fronts, just as I’m crossing the canal and imagining the people living on the little canal boats, a bell cuts through the headphones, because it’s about time for the onion man. The onion man has a cart with a dog (in a red sweater) on it, and he walks his cart up and down the street, selling onions. Today he has a box with STAR WARS insignia in addition to the onions. You never know what could be in that box. Just a few more steps and I’m at the House. The other House, the one I work at, a stark brick building, remarkable for a number of lovely spaces inside but most valuable for its library. People greet me and tell me what’s going on. I greet them back and tell them what a beautiful day it is.
The sun is streaming through the windows from another perfect London sky. London, and England in general, is all the colours of all the picture-books I ever read as a child. It’s all the streets and little old ladies and friendly dogs and onion men and great old trees and brick buildings that stay and are built to stay for hundreds of years. It’s the rosy remembered childhood of Western civilisation.
London is a city with its own personality. London is an entity. London knows where you are going and has a good idea where you’ve come from. You can be infatuated with London, but London waits until you commit before she kisses you. You can count the skyscrapers, the tower blocks rising over the uniform smokestacks of Primrose Hill bordering other people’s green-because-grass-is-native-to-this-country back gardens, but there is no way to know how many people have wondered at that skyline, how many people have admired the bare branches against a sky that really is sky blue and clouds that really are white above grass that really is green. Really is greener. Really doesn't go brown. Really doesn't need tanks full of water to keep it alive. Greener.
I live in a city that has a nearly-thousand-year-old fortress and the biggest ferris wheel in the world. And you can just about see one from the other. (Well, you can always see the Tower from the Eye, but you can only almost see the Eye from the Tower. Honest.)
I live in London. Can you believe that? I can hardly believe it. But it’s true. I live here.
