Introduction

*Note, this was written on June 22nd 2009*

It’s approaching 10 PM on a Monday night and, despite the time of year it hasn’t been what you would describe as an exceptional summer’s day. It has been warm enough to mean that leaving home that morning without a coat or jumper isn’t being regretted at this late stage in the day, even by the Thames which can be a degree or two cooler. With the longest day of the year a mere 24 hours earlier, the last knockings of daylight are fading into a very pleasant London night and I’m walking along by the river, on my way back to Waterloo train station after a visit to the
Shakespeare’s Globe on the Southbank. Although my latest career digression has taken me into the world of arts marketing, this is a rare, non-work related theatre visit for me, and my first ever to the world-famous Globe.

It’s busy here, but not packed, although the bars and restaurants appear to have had another good night, the credit crunch which left a cloud of doom over the city just a mile or so downstream doesn’t seem to be having much of a negative impact on the Southbank. There’s a fresh breeze coming off a tidal Thames turning what could have been a rather stuffy night into one with a very comfortable atmosphere. The blue and white lights strung from the trees coupled with the dying embers of daytime and the London Eye lit up in green added to a backdrop of buildings old and new creates a setting that makes my group of three think, were we tourists we’d probably be saying what a fantastic place London is on a night like this. We certainly enjoy the moment, but keep on walking, keep on walking back to Waterloo, one of the busiest train stations in Britain, the place where a matter of ours earlier the relaxed vibe would have been totally obliterated by another London rush hour, Waterloo is carnage at 6 O’clock on a week night!

Such franticness returns to my world a matter of hours later as I join the rat race once again, I would point out though that frantic isn’t something I partake in, I refuse to run for a tube or bus when there’s another along in a few minutes. I don’t understand why people work up a sweat before they’ve even got onto one of those lovely tubes with no air con. For a lucky few that will soon be something of the past though, as it’s announced today that London Underground are to begin engineering trials for nearly 200 air conditioned trains.

Among the other headlines Londoners are going to work to on this particular morning are that at least 81 conservation areas in the Capital are at risk of losing their unique characteristics, so say
English Heritage. Meanwhile the
London Assembly bring us the happy thought that new businesses in London are more likely to fail than anywhere else in England, with that kind of stress awaiting them, you’d think people would prefer to be a little more calm on their commute, truth be told, most are programmed to do the same thing, at the same time, in the same order, five days a week, which is why tempers go walkies so quickly. Yet this is the same city which, a matter of hours earlier, at the end of the day, seemed so appealing. Maybe it was the organic cider with an alcohol content of 6.5 per cent which made the difference, or maybe, it’s all about doing something which will be encouraged in work places across London today, one of those horrible business speak phrases “thinking outside the box”.

During the day I check the
Time Out website to see what they recommend for a Tuesday night out. I could have gone to see
The Low Anthem at Union Chapel, I confess I wasn’t especially familiar with their work but the blurb enthuses “pastoral, bucolic, rootsily countrified Americana for Fleet Foxes fans with this waves-making trio from Providence, Rhode Island” – clear as mud as they say. Alternatively I could have taken in a
Guy Bourdin exhibition titled 'Unseen' which “comprises over 30 images from the late fashion photographer's estate, including shoe campaign shoots and Vogue covers” … not really my cup of tea if I’m honest, I could have gone back to the Globe to see ‘As You Like It’ in the outdoor theatre (which did look rather appealing the previous evening) or there was the option of ‘Comedy Camp’ which was held in “this straight-friendly gay club”: just another varied night in the UK’s biggest city where anything’s possible. In reality I was late leaving work and endured a partly suspended District line due to a “passenger incident”, not that I had any intention of venturing out two school nights in a row. At least I had the memory of that cool breeze blowing off the tidal Thames, the fading light even at 10 O’clock at night, the walk in what was surprisingly fresh air for London and that organic cider to keep me company, something which I suspect most on my train couldn’t say, instead having to enjoy the journalistic talents of those employed by one of the many free newspapers which, until the demise of all but the Metro and the
Evening Standard’s revised business plan, would get forced into your hand, whether you already had one or not. Newspapers that paint a range of pictures of the city we live in, the everyday ups and downs of working and living, alongside the removed world of the celeb culture which dominates the media: who’s been seen where, doing what, with whom, wearing what (or what they’re not wearing), living “the life” which, apparently, the average working person is fascinated by as a form of escapism from their own world, assuming that is they’re lucky enough to have work in their world at all.

And there’s a question to consider, certainly needing more than a twenty-minute suspension on the tube to do justice to. Their world, the world in which the people around me live, be that the tangible, locational stuff, buildings, communities, boroughs, or the world they create for themselves given the cards they’re dealt. There’s a multitude of questions, topics and issues that can be thrown into the air, beginning with words like what, when, where, why, who and how, many more can be added with the addition of the word ‘not’. All provoked by the starting point of one, small, six letter word: London.

For all that those questions are interesting, and at times I hope to find some answers, the most interesting question is in fact not a question at all, but merely a word, that six letter word in fact. Gaining a greater appreciation and understanding of that will, I hope, be the really interesting bit.