29 June 2008
London
On Friday, following our Edinburgh visit, I had an afternoon off by myself in town, and left The Olds at home to clean my oven and do all my ironing. (Well, I didn't ask them to do it, but I didn't exactly complain when they did. I'm going to miss this!)
By the time I got home, Mum was rearing to go, as she'd been in the house for most of the day, other than a trip to the supermarket, and I suspect she wanted to be doing something a little more energetic, like water-skiing down the Thames and power-walking through Hampton Court Palace. The old girl is, I think, at the stage where she realises the holiday is coming to an end, and wants to pack in as much as she can before they go, bless her. Dad, on the other hand, seemed pleased to have the day at home. We had dinner, and settled in to watch some mediocre Friday night British television - a fairly awful one-off "reunion" episode of
To The Manor Born, and some of Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday concert which was being televised from just across the river in Hyde Park. I had the priceless experience of watching Mum and Dad trying to make sense of Amy Winehouse, who now looks like a tattooed skeleton being operated by puppet strings.
I packed them off to bed, promising Mum that we would have a big power walking weekend after which they'd be so tired and over-stimulated that they wouldn't be able to speak, let alone walk. She seemed happy, and Dad didn't say anything and just gritted his jaw in preparation for a weekend of walking behind Mum and I, poor old sausage.
We didn't quite get that exhausted, but we did have a fantastic weekend. On Saturday, which was a gloriously sunny day with just a breath of wind to taking the scorching heat off, we headed again to Borough Market, where Mum and Dad marvelled at the displays of fantastic gourmet meats, fruits, vegetables and a seemingly endless array of cheese. As it was their second visit, they got more into the swing of things, merrily trying free samples of food everywhere.
Mum got a bit carried away at one point and wanted us to start buying cheese to take home, until I explained that we'd be carrying it around in our bags for five hours until we got home, by which time it would probably be melted (well, to be more specific, that I'D be carrying it around in MY bag for five hours, as I was the only one with a big enough bag).
I felt a little mean, as I didn't want to cramp her style, especially as it's so rare to see them getting enthusiastic about buying things. We did settle on getting a pottle of very tasty green olives flavoured with basil and garlic, which we've been nibbling on for the last day or two. And here's a very nice picture of some artichokes, which look far nicer than they taste.
We took a stroll along the South Bank to see St Pauls, and into the Tate Modern Cafe for a sit down and a coffee.
Then we walked down following the Thames Path to Gabriels Wharf and to the Royal Festival Hall complex, where we met my friend Stephen for lunch at a groovy little French patisserie built under the arch of one of the Waterloo railway bridges. There was an interesting sculpture installation outside the Hall, with long steel bars which changed colour and emitted strange music when people walked around them, which Dad rather liked, so here we are standing in front of it. I've strategically cropped this photo to not show my potbelly, which I blame on a month of afternoon teas with Mum and Dad.
It was a beautiful afternoon, with hundreds of people strolling around in the sun - so naturally we went home for a mid-afternoon nap. Here's an action shot of Mum and I power-walking ahead on the way back to the Tube. Under the arch are some very persistent Peruvian buskers who play
Girl From Ipanema on the piano-accordian every time we walk past.
Once at home, Mum needed walking again, so while Dad had a snooze, Mum and I took a great mid-afternoon stroll through a couple of the commons (parks) around my neighbourhood, which was swarming with yuppies, pushchairs and expensively dressed children.
In the evening, we went back to the South Bank to go and see another George Bernard Shaw play,
Major Barbara, at the National Theatre. I saw it a few months ago and loved it, and it's been one of the hits of this year's London theatre season. It's a political comedy about the daughter of a wealthy Victorian family who renounces her wealth to go and work with the Salvation Army, only to discover that her estranged father, a wealthy arms manufacturer, is one of the Salvation Army's chief sponsors. It sounds rather dry, I know, but it's incredibly funny, and Mum and Dad loved it, and are still talking about it. Here's the three of us looking very glamorous as we walked down the South Bank on the way to the theatre.
On Sunday, we slept in a little, and then rolled up the hill to go and visit my old haunts in the East End of London. I had some fun telling Mum and Dad not to wear flash clothes, and for Mum to take off her gold jewellery and Dad to leave his camera at home. Dad suggested that we take a baton or a kitchen knife with us just in case.
The East End has traditionally been one of London's poorest areas: it started as an industrial area outside the walled old city of London, and factories were usually located here as the English winds tend to blow west, blowing chimney smoke away from posh West London houses and into the poorer East. Being located close to London's docks, it's always been the home of generations of immigrants who've settled here. In the eighteenth century, it was the French Protestants escaping from persecution in Catholic France, who set themselves up as weavers and textilists. In the 19th century came Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, and in the 1950s and 1960s, Bengali communities, making Brick Lane the unofficial capital of Indian and Pakistani London.
The East End still isn't as flash as other parts of London, or as obvious a tourist destination as the British Museum or Kew Gardens, but it's a great melting pot of London life, and an interesting place to explore layers of local history.
We started at Whitechapel tube station, took a quick look at the Royal London Hospital (one-time stomping ground of nurses Florence Nightingale and Edith Cavell, and the final home of Joseph Merrick, better known as the Elephant Man). We then walked (rather tentatively, in Mum and Dad's case) down Whitechapel Road, where I pointed out a pub called the Grave Maurice, which we thought was hilarious, and Dad dutifully posed for a photo, not looking at all grave.
Mum and Dad's eyes grew larger and rounder as I explained that Whitechapel was gangland in the 1960s, ruled over most famously by twin brothers Ronnie and Reggie Kray, who lived on Vallance Road (just off Whitechapel Road). I think it's fair to say that many Londoners, young and old, romanticise the days of 60s gangland, and the Krays are fancifully remembered as nice boys in sharp Saville Row suits who helped old ladies across the road, hung out with film stars (Reggie once dated Barbara Windsor and Diana Dors), and were folk heroes.
I think the evidence points more towards the Krays being brutal psychopaths who terrorised East London, but who needs truth to come in the way of a good legend, right? Something of that rough history is still on display, usually at the Sunday morning markets on Cheshire Street, where cockney traders with two teeth attempt to flog you merchandise that you suspect was probably acquired off the back of a van the night before, and (if you listen carefully) you can hear negotiations between tough sinewy men with big gold chains to arrange for someone's neighbour to be roughed up.
Just on the corner of Whitechapel Road and Mile End Road is The Blind Beggar, where the Krays shot and killed a member of a rival gang in 1966. The Krays blackmailed a cabinet minister of Harold Macmillan's Conservative government, which more or less gave them immunity from police prosecution until 1968, when they were finally convicted of murder and extortion and sentenced to life imprisonment.
We turned left at the hospital into New Road, which aint new any more, and mostly filled with old brick social housing blocks. At the end of the road, there's a plaque commemorating the house where the Salvation Army had their first meeting. (They also gave their first sermons outside the Blind Beggar, too). Then we went up Fieldgate Street, where I used to live in an old workhouse. Well, not quite.
On Fieldgate Street still sits the old Rowton House, an imposing looking red brick building which was built by Lord Rowton in 1905 as a workingman's boarding house. The author George Orwell lived there while he was a young struggling writer, and wrote about it in his memoir
Down and Out in Paris and London, and Lenin and Stalin lodged there while they were planning the Russian Revolution. Now, of course, it's been turned into swanky apartments for rich white city lawyers, and Lenin, Stalin and their kind are probably clawing on the lids of their coffins in disgust. The red brick exterior of the building has been restored, but the building has a lingering smell of fried chicken from the Indian restaurant next door. Our apartment was on the fifth floor, which gave us a great view of the class struggle below. Next door is the East London Mosque, wedged right up next to an old synagogue.
Around the corner on Whitechapel Road is the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, the oldest continuing manufacturing company in Great Britain. Bell makers have been around in Whitechapel in one guise or other since 1420, and the current building is based on premises that have been around since 1670. The Liberty Bell was made here (although the original one cracked, and the bell makers made another two versions before they got it right), as well as Big Ben.
A little further up Whitechapel Road, we turned into Brick Lane, one of the main drags of the area, and now known for its burry houses, where little Indian men with big moustaches stand outside and invite you to come inside for free poppadoms and warm Thai beer. Despite the garishness of some of the restaurants (my favourite one has a velvet painting of Princess Diana on one of the walls), Brick Lane is the heart of the Bengali community, and on weekends is a strange mix of old Muslim men walking around in pyjamas, women in head-to-toe veils somehow speaking into cellphones, cool college kids, tourists and the occasional toothless drunk trying to sell copies of
The Big Issue. As Mum pointed out, it's also one of the few areas of London where you see older members of the community interacting with the young. It's true that London is a young person's city, and mostly pretty uninviting and unaccommodating for the elderly, so maybe the Brick Lane locals are onto something.
From Brick Lane, we turned left into Fournier Street. On the corner is one of my favourite buildings in London - the Jamme Masjid or Great London Mosque, which has been a holy building for almost 400 years, but changed to accommodate each wave of immigrant community in the area.
Originally founded in 1743 as a Protestant church for French Hugenots, it was later used by Methodists. In the late 19th century, when Whitechapel became the centre of the Jewish East End, it became the Spitalfields Great Synagogue. With the dispersal of the Jewish community and a new influx of Bengali immigrants, it became the Great London Mosque in 1976. Some stained glass from the synagogue remains, and on the south side of the building, there's a sundial set into the top of the exterior wall with an inscription in Latin that seems to speak to the transience of human existence: "Umbra sumus", meaning "All are shadows."
On Fournier Street itself, there's an almost complete row of original 18th century Hugenot houses: tall thin brick and wooden four storied buildings, which would have once had a shop on the ground floor, with underaged seamstresses working in sweat shop conditions in the lofts above. Twenty years ago, the area was a dump and inhabited mostly by hookers and the homeless - much as it was in Victorian times. Then the artists moved in (including Gilbert & George, two artists who are only ever seen in public together wearing matching 1950s suits), and then suddenly it became cool to live in the street. Since the rapid gentrification of the area, it's now one of the most expensive parts of real estate in London, and lived in by celebrity artists and bankers. GIlbert & George are still around, and we saw them walking back to their flat at No 12 this morning. (Their house doesn't contain a kitchen, so they walk to the same greasy spoon restaurant to eat every day). When Gilbert spotted us, they went inside their house and locked the door.
The street's peaceful sense of privilege obscures its racy history. At the end of the street, intersecting with Commercial Street, the Ten Bells pub still stands, where Jack the Ripper met two of his working girl victims.
Across the road, the truly glorious Christ Church at Spitalfields, designed by Nicolas Hawksmoor was once the hang out of prostitutes, who loitered outside, no doubt hoping to pick up a man of the cloth. The church has now been restored and has a beautiful interior, and is now a popular venue for music recitals and weddings.
From there, we headed across the road to the Old Spitalfields Market, which was heaving with hippies selling bead purses and handmade paper and joss sticks. I tried in vain to get Mum and Dad to buy (me) a nice rosewood coffee table, and to butter them up, took them to lunch at Patisserie Valerie, a cute little French restaurant that does a great Eggs Benedict, some very good coffee and some killer strawberry custard tarts.
After lunch, we wandered through a few dark Victorian nooks and crannies, with a quick whistle stop tour of a few old workhouses for derelicts, an old soup kitchen for the Jewish poor, and Petticoat Lane Market (where, so the story goes, you can enter the market at one end, have the petticoat fleeced off your back and have it sold back to you at the other end).
After all this history, poverty and diversity, we headed back to the comforting blandness of nice leafy green Clapham, where Mum and Dad congratulated me of moving out of Whitechapel. Nonetheless, we enjoyed the day, and spent the late afternoon (after Dad's nap and Mum's walk) watching Neil Diamond rock the crowd at the Glastonbury Festival. A truly great day, and a fun (final) weekend.
