Last week we went back to London. It was a work thing and a flying visit. Friday night stay over followed by an exhibition on Saturday. It’s been nearly seven years since we lived in London, longer than the time we spent there. I’ll always have a soft spot for the place and at times, when there is a lack of plays to be seen or when the departures board in Piccadilly Station spins round just when I’ve found Levenshulme, I’ll wish I was back there.
And so last Friday afternoon I found myself on a Virgin Pendolino train, on my way back to London. I remember the first time I visited London. It was the day of my interview at SOAS. My second visit was to find a place to live. The first thing that struck me was the shabbiness of the approach to Euston Station. I mean this is our capital city and that’s not a great first impression. The same thought struck me again last week as I arrived just in time for rush hour. Incidentally, I love the approach to Manchester Oxford Road Station. As you come out of the main entrance and walk towards Oxford Road, you have that wonderful view of the Palace Hotel. But I digress.
Back to London. Because of the exhibition luggage I was carrying with me, I decided to take a cab to the hotel in Belsize Park. I never took cabs when I lived there. I always took the tube. But you miss things that way and it gives you a slightly warped view of where everything is. So we trundled through the traffic through Chalk Farm, Camden and Mornington Crescent and on to Belsize Park. It’s like being in a different country. There are people everywhere. Walking in the street, meandering in and out of shops, in cars, in buses, underground in the tubes. It’s either a real buzz or extremely claustrophobic, depending on your mood. The houses are different too. Not as much red brick.
It was a tiring weekend. We went out for a meal to a Moroccan place in Hampstead on Friday night and then Saturday was taken up with the exhibition. By the time we made it home late on Saturday I was shattered.
I miss London. I do. I miss the shops in Muswell Hill, the theatres, the pubs in Hampstead, the ferry across to Canary Wharf and Greenwich, our old back garden with the crab apple tree and flat roofed sheds. Mostly I miss the choice. Yes, I’ll always have a soft spot for London. But that’s all it is. A soft spot. Manchester is ingrained in me. It’s in my blood and bones. Samuel Johnson once wrote, ‘when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life’. But I expect a week of taking the Docklands Light Railway from Bank Station to Canary Wharf may have changed his mind.
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