I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with London. On the one hand, it has a certain vibrancy and buzz about it, on the other hand it can be a very cruel city. Sometimes I have to travel to London in connection with work. It is usually an incredibly busy day, with a hop off the train, onto the tube, get the work done and a mad dash to get the train back home, late at night. This week I've had a few days in London, with a little more time to observe.
It is the cultural divide between city and village that is most remarkable to me, as an 'outsider' looking in. Where I live, the total village population is circa 150, the residents are made up of a variety of ages and professions. My friends in the village, who are of a similar age to me, come from a variety of backgrounds and we all get along great 'despite' our differences. If we each chose to only mix with people from similar professions or backgrounds as ourselves, we'd have no friends, simply because people are thin on the ground around here, so you take each person as you find them. But it appears to be quite different in the City. Go into a pub and you find a certain 'type' of people gathered together, all from the same profession. In short, London is quite cliquey. In other ways London is friendly, for instance whenever I get my battered A-Z out, someone will always stop and ask if they can help me find my way, but when travelling on the tube, people stare, God, how they stare, unsmiling and cold, particularly on the escalators.
Coming home on Thursday night, a man seated opposite me on the tube, hadn't noticed that his phone had slipped out of his pocket. His reaction to being told about the 'loss', was completely OTT, I could see the amazement on his face, that someone wasn't out to fleece him. He was still saying thankyou to Barman when he got up to leave several minutes later.
This week, I've had reason to meet people who really have had a raw deal 'London style' and was busy telling Barman all about it. Barman works in London regularly and is more used to the poverty than me, but when he came home Friday night, he told me that he'd walked past a homeless man, turned around, had a brief chat with him and had then given him some money. It seems that Barmaid's advocacy is improving, she actually persuaded her better half to part with some cash :-)
19 comments:
Would have thought that a country girl would be inured to suffering and cruelty, unlike the soft townies. Oops! You're not onto "i" yet.
I'm surprised when you say people stare on the Tube - I find more that it's unfocussed blank looks. I think when you're all shoved into a smelly tiny space like canned fish, you have to retreat into yourself in order to maintain limited privacy when there isn't any actual physical space. I find people rarely make eye contact on the Tube.
I think there's much less in the way of homeslessness than there used to be - or maybe I just see it less, but it's easy to understand why it happens - London is impossibly expensive.
Hello Mel, I didn't realise you were 'a girl walks into a bar' until today, I love your blog.
I've got problems with my email at the mo, but will get back to you.
Probably because London is a little out of my comfort zone, I take it all a bit personally. I suppose I'm used to everyone saying hello around here, but I guess if that happened in London, one would never get home, there'd be just too many hello's to do.
Barmaid, I completely agree with your observations between rural and city life. I have only been to London about 10 times and on each occasion been overwelmed with the different attitude folk have, the fast pace of everything and the heat. I am assured by friends who already live and work there that this is something you get used to. I am also always bemused by those who get on the tube and take out a novel to read, only to put it away again 2 minutes later to get off. The lengths these people seem to go to in order to avoid looking around and taking everything in!
PB
London is an expensive, miserable city a lot of the time - where it can be quite hard to just go for day to day with crappy transport, huge council tax, etc etc. I think that explains lack of friendliness a lot of the time - and keeping a low profile helps you avoid the crazies.
I used to smile at people in the street, on the tube etc but it causes more trouble than it's worth - only the crazies respond, non crazies think you are crazy! It must be nice to live somewhere where you don't have to be so guarded all the time.
Thanks by the way! I started commenting as 'Mel' then started a blog and it seemed a bit strange to switch to 'girl' although maybe that would have been clearer!
From Rab C nesbitt:
Shug: There are more people in the greater London than there is in the whole of Scotland.
Rab: but I mean, for goodness sake, it's quality that counts, not quantity.
PS - Pupil bean - trust me, if you've been on the same route, day in, day out, for months or years, you start to take every op to mix it up a bit and distract yourself from thinking about how you're spending a sizeable amount of your day in a tube/bus!!
BM, I hope you're not wearing brown shoes on your forays to the smoke. If you are, then no wonder people are staring. We townies have rules, you know.
London is the most anonymous of places. I have more people in my apartment block than you have in the entirety of your village but, yet, in accordance with London conventions, I don't know any of my neighbours.
No brown shoes, just wellies and a nice, comfy, local yokel smock, with straw hat, can't see what the problem is myself, no one bats an eyelid around here.
When travelling on the tube, I was always absolutely staggered by the hordes of gypsy families - mother father several small children plus babe-in-arms- roaming from one carriage to another, singing loudly and demanding handouts from the captive audicence even as the train hurtled along at speed. London can indeed be a VERY strange place.....
Maid
Give yourself a couple of years and you will be taking it all in your stride like the best of us.
When I first arrived in this town, I used to wait while three tube trains left me on the platform, as I was pushed out the way, poked by pointy handbags, huffed at (usually by someone incapable of wearing deodorant or brushing their teeth) and stepped on.
12 years later I get a seat if there is one to be had (even sometimes when there is not) :).
And yes at times I will STARE someone out. It's a shocking habit, but strangley satisfying. :(
Well, I must admit to doing a little tube crushing myself, I've quickly picked up the local custom of looking quite innocent and then at the last second hurling myself through the tube doors. The only problem is, the little space that I've spotted for myself is usually because some smelly person hasn't bathed for days, hence the 4ft clearance zone around him. I've tried putting Vic under my nose, but it makes my eyes water:-)
I must also admit to being able to do 'dog eye' quite well, you know the one where you go cross eyed, but then move just one eye back to the middle, it does seem to work quite well at putting off those who engage BM in a stare off.
OH BARMAID
That would completely encourage me - to the extent I would probably have to get off the train because I couldn’t stop gawking...
Minx (sorry to hijack Maid)
Whatever happened to the young gypsy chap who played Accordion with the short Pringles tube attached for coins? My friends and I often lament about him. And the Sylvester the cats that used to play the intro from “Wake me up before you go go” at Tottenham Court Road. (Now I’m really off topic)…
OK, then, as I understand the gist of this conversation, ones essential survival kit for the Underground consists of the following:
1: Posession of a body odour that encourages otherwise perfectly sane magic circle lawyers to fling themselves out of the window of their 102 storey office in the city.
2: Posession of the sort of breath odour that could fell a skunk at 27 paces.
3 A squint that renders the owner capable of outstaring several individuals at one and the same time.
4 A Kamikaze like desire to hurl onself through the automatic does at the very last minute, therby flinging oneself upon the mercy and not insubstantial body mass index of the harassed and sweaty assembly in the hopes that they will cushion ones sudden arrival with STAGGERING good grace.
There are probably more, but thinking about travelling on the underground with you lot is making me a bit scared, already......
Of course, the words 'ooh young man' should be shouted whilst hurling oneself on board the tube, as this does tend to do the trick with regards to securing ample space for ones own comfort.
I was thankful for the business of the morning Central line a while back when I realised that I would have ended up in the same carriage as a sortof-ex/old flame while I was at my most horrifically unmade up/ miserable looking/ glasses and bed hair state.
I was quite happy to stand by and let others squish on in that case!
I think I will need to be a little more wary next time I am on the tube.
I always thought that a girl returning your gaze was interested.
Now I know its a bunch of myopic wannabe lawyers playing games.
MYOPIC - A visual defect in which distant objects appear blurred because their images are focused in front of the retina rather than on it (Thats my word of the day)
DOG EYE - n - A phenomenon affecting the female of the species. One eye is fixed forward to avoid any oncoming dangers such as lampposts, whilst the other eye skews sidewards to eye up unsuitable spikey heels in outrageously expensive boutique.
Although the male of the species have been known to mimic this behaviour (usually when blondus tottius appears), it is usually unsuccessful and results in greasy forehead imprint on lamppost and the onset of toothless grinius.
I take back any defending I did of London and the Tube.
It's grey, miserable and no fun. I do not like playing sardines in the Tube with random strangers because the carriages are too narrow and the trains too infrequent. Especially when I'm paying over the odds for it!
It's hard going back to work :(
London has taken its revenge on me. Today I've got a temperature, a headache and a rotten sore throat, must have picked something up on the tube:-(
London makes me ill a lot of the time, dirty, dirty city.
I have a tiled floor, and some of my friends are soo rude as to not take off their shoes, and end up dragging all the piss and shit that they have walked through around London into my home.
Also found shit on my stairwell teh other day, nice one.
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