Paying Ready Attention

London slips away behind us as we head north and east.   Back out through suburbs served and invented by the tube.   Slow traffic.   Red light disappointment.   Green light anticipation. Creeping past houses with small gardens and smart cars.   Paused before shops with ghost signs, showing generations of economic change; markers of waves of migration that has made this place what it is today.    How easy would it be to map the history of London by looking at the names of shop owners and the brands of the products they sell? Post war migration, postcolonial economics, suburban decay and gentrification told through shop fronts and label fonts.   We move out past the ring fence of the M25:   a boundary in both directions.   How many of those inside look beyond the pale to greener lands – an escape to the country – and how many outside look inwards towards activity, jobs and mythically lined streets.   Sitting in st...

Destination. As a kid I would visit London once a year.   Leaving in the dark of a Friday evening and returning in the similar gloom of Sunday afternoon.   Always in the winter, always in a coach packed to the brim with bags and boy scouts.   We would sleep in loose friendship groups on the floor of a large hall and eat at long shared tables.   On Saturday afternoon, most of the other kids when to watch a game – Arsenal, Spurs, maybe even Chelsea.   In those days Division One was the highest league, and most games were still played on a Saturday. Later we would play five-a-side deep into the evening in a building, which for want of money had a roof, but no walls, and as a result was called The Lid.    I joined in under a kind of resigned sufferance. Given the chance I played solitaire.   Card after card.   Hand after hand.   Today, such behaviour would be labelled odd, and intervention or diagnosis would follow.   ...