Summer comes in London

                                    Summer comes in London

After so long a winter with its cold and grey London begins to wake up. All the signs of summer appear as the weather begins to improve. The heat brings out a different sense in people. Soon all the winter clothes are discarded and the world begins to live in the haze of summer. The parks suddenly fill with people and they can be seen sitting in groups and talking, sitting on the grass.

Outside the cafes and bars seats that had been unused for the long winter suddenly fill up with people as all start to enjoy the summer weather. It is as if a whole curtain has been lifted and everybody starts to feel better. Life outside begins to  take on a new meaning. Sociability is enhanced and all are about meeting and speaking.

The summer speaks in the times of barbecues. These are a more recent British invention as they always used to be put off because of the uncertainty of the British weather. However in London the presence of a large expatriate community  has ensured that the barbecue is top of the agenda for the summer.

Summer is mostly about ensuring that life goes on in the spaces and the parks of London. Places like Hampstead Heath and Clapham Common regain a life of their own. The long evenings ensure that all around the word is waiting the joy of summer evenings for the chance to socialize in the great outdoors.

Summer for us of course is punctuated with days of rain and the uncertainty of the weather means a lot of plans can change at the last moment. Prolonged spells of summer heat bring out more and more people on the streets . All the summer clothes come out and people in the parks are exposing more and more flesh to the sweet sun. It is time for Britain’s love affair with the sun to start again.

Soon gardens fill up with people drinking beer and in some cases the alcoholic cocktail of Pimms number one. That of course reflects the class system as the latter is more an affectation of the upper classes. In the heady rush of socializing the warm weather speaks one of the feast times of the year in which plans are made for summer holidays. It is also as if all are finally getting their finances together again after the late winter spent paying off the Christmas splurge!

A cat adrift

                                                A cat adrift

One of the great places to walk in London is along the regent's canal. This is place that was very bound up with transport in the days past. Now no barges work their way up the canal only houseboats stand where people live their lives in the ways close to nature. Now it is a glorious place to walk ad watch life go by almost an oasis of something natural in London's streets. Coots and moorhen swim there in addition to Canada geese and mallard in a small natural oasis.

Walking along the canal today I came upon quite a scene. A cat belonging to one of the barge owners had contrived to crawl along the side of the canal being interested in the coots that were swimming in the water below. All of a sudden being a rather plump and well cared for cat she lost her footing. The next thing she was in the canal. Suddenly she was frantically swimming about loudly mewing. She seemed to get the direction wrong and started swimming towards the opposite bank. I noticed a passerby stop and watch the drama. Round and round she swam veering towards the centre.

I wondered myself about getting a mobile phone out only to find that I did not have mine on me. I was about to ask the other passerby if he could call the fire brigade as the cat was obviously very frightened and was suffering.

Just then the owner appeared round the barge

“Have you seen my cat anywhere?” He called out

“She is in the water “we replied. He took one glance and saw the cat frantically mewing while trying to swim in the water. The barge was on the opposite bank to us which was a problem. Immediately her owner jumped in fully clothed and swam up to her. He got hold off her and pushed her forward to the bank before helping her up the steep step out on to the bank The cat proceeded to get out and shoot onto the barge while he climbed up after her

She won't be trying that again” He joked with us.

All order having been restored, the other passerby departed.”Rather him than me” was his parting shot. It was actually very strange to see this as I have rarely seen a cat lose its footing in this sort of environment. Of course I wonder if she will learn her lesson and stop the interest in the local birds. That remains to be seen.

The Thatcher Divide

                                                            The Thatcher Divide

On the eighth of April 2013 Margaret Thatcher died. Barely had the news flown off the stands  than a whole controversy was created. Questions focussed on the legacy she would leave and how history would view her time in power.

The legacy she made in Britain is actually hard to assess. In some ways she is credited with reinventing the greatness of Britain and making Britain again an influential power. This however is open to interpretation.

At work today I asked the question as to what my colleagues thought.

“It was so long ago” said one “I cannot really have an opinion. “

Certainly in the end there was less national mourning however there is quite a legacy of polarization which reflects to some extent Britain’s own political divides.  To the right she was a cherished icon, a lady who made the country great again. The myth of the “Iron Lady” who took on the unions gained some credence. The prime minister who fought the Falklands war and won three elections is somebody to celebrate.

To the left she is symbol of everything that is wrong in Britain today. Her legacy was divisive and served merely to entrench the privileges of the rich while her policies of deregulation contributed directly to the banking crisis. She is considered socially divisive to the extent that street parties were organized to celebrate her demise. Stories about a party to celebrate her death were common knowledge in alternative circles years ago. To many people she was a hated figure!

How she will be remembered is very much dependent on the standpoint of the viewer and among huge sections of the British population the memories are not so fond. There are memories of the destruction of the manufacturing base of the country. This of course is a decision that is coming back to haunt us and her government along with almost all the succeeding governments put their faith in the service industries to bring future prosperity. The banking crash has of course now put paid to that.

One of the features often remarked on is the youth of a lot of the protesters who came out to hold street parties to celebrate her death. Many of those interviewed by the press could not have been more than about two years old at the time she left office. However, soon delegations of miners whose towns were destroyed by her policies are likely to be joining in these protests. However there is a feeling that her rule took place over twenty years ago. To a lot of the generation who were around at that time there is little wish to celebrate, only to forget her.  While they do not like her legacy they could just not really be bothered to hold street parties as they have enough trouble sorting out their own lives.

In terms of living under her rule I can remember it well. She certainly had a talent for manipulating the tides of public opinion and I would certainly say it was true that half the country loved her and half hated her. I can still remember the day when the news came out. It was a strange feeling to see people almost strolling around like headless chickens. In some ways the appeal was that of a strong woman to save us! The feelings aroused were different in that some were very enthusiastic about her demise. Others complained she had had a bad time because she was a woman.

On the television screens her presence seemed often distant. Many people described her as prissy and not a person who cared about the people she represented. That was a view shared by quite a few of her party supporters as well. As with all politicians, when at first breakneck growth built on credit came she was lionized. When the recession started she was demonized. The moment it became obvious that her policies were not working the calls for her to resign became more and more strident. Until they reached the final point and she was deposed by her own party

Old London syndrome

                                                Old London Syndrome

London has become in the past few years increasingly a multicultural city. Most parts of the city are home to many people of various cultures having absorbed several waves of immigration, the most recent being the waves of Eastern European immigrants mainly Polish people who came with the old European Union expansion.

Thos however has not been achieve without some cost as has been borne out by the rapidly changing fortunes of various parts of London.

A good case of this is Bermondsey where up till about twenty five years ago it was very difficult to survive if you came from anywhere outside. The local people were very clannish and distinctly did not welcome outsides to their domain.

Their resistance to incomers was legendary and there was often a problem even for people from England who were not born behind a biscuit factory in Bermondsey. In the mid eighties I remember visiting a pub in that area with an Irish friend  who complained about the distinctly unwelcoming atmosphere in there. At the time a spokesman for the local authority has visited a tenants meeting and complained about the overtly racist tone of many of the residents complaints. This was the land of the traditional pie and mash shop, The so called Cockney culture (They were not born within the sound of Bow Bells) and an absolute resistance to anything or anybody who has come from outside.

To its credit the local authority persisted in its policy of allocating housing to other people not of this group ad would not be dissuaded. Hat these people had to however endure was something else. Stories of threats and excrement pushed through letter boxes were legion. Everything was seen as a cultural attack by the majority there. Anybody from outside was distinctly unwelcome particularly people of a different colour.

In some ways this was a last stand because today the area is as multicultural as any other in London. In fact places that were racist haunts at that time have completely changed and now welcome everyone. In one of the great seismic shifts that has happened in London integration became the norm.

As the old working class culture was pushed aside and more people moved in helped by the government at that time trying to develop the docks and attracting private money a wave of gentrification happened. While it did not spread everywhere the culture changed somewhat and the older people became somewhat dispersed, many joining the flight to the suburbs and commuter towns beyond. Bermondsey became a multicultural area just like all the rest.

Today intolerance is restricted to a few old people who mutter about being in a minority to anybody who will listen. Chinese and Indian restaurants are legion and the area is no longer the white Londoner preserve that it was. People from all over the world and all over the country come to live in Bermondsey. The old racist and xenophobic intolerance is just a memory!

fast food at night

                                                            Fast food at night

London in the early morning is a rather different place. So many bars and clubs more or less make a mockery of the old licensing laws that used to decree that pubs shut on certain hours. When the laws were liberalized there were many dire warnings of what would happen but in general the level of drunkenness did not rose particularly, that is not more than it had already.

London in the small hours particularly on Friday ad Saturday nights is the domain of the drunk. So many people get together to drink in bars and go on to their clubs usually with music provided. The night is long and mostly there is a favourite food, the Doner kebab

This food is made of meat specially placed on a grill from which slices are cut. With the addition of salad it is placed n a special thin pitta bread, Sauces are added the usual repertoire being chilli sauce or garlic sauce.

This has become one of the foods of choice after a heavy night’s drinking. Britain tends to have the custom of an evening spent downing pints of beer and then going for a kebab to absorb some of the alcohol. The Spanish custom for instance, of eating along with the drink is not much in evidence in the pub culture here.

However doner kebab is something the British public have taken to their hearts. The places in London are usually run buy immigrants from Turkey who stay open all hours of the night. Their work is admirable as they work long and hard and have to put up with a lot of abuse from drunken customers who seem to think they can vent all their frustrations on them

Most other people in this society would give up on this enterprise but this does not faze the shop owners who carry on with the job regardless.

So much is actually made in this trade and in a way they suffer less from the clientele that the chicken and chips shops also ubiquitous who mostly have to shut much earlier.  Fish and chips shops of the traditional kind tend to close much earlier. The shops that have chicken and chips usually sell cheaper products so instead they usually have troublesome adolescents who are more likely to have got their highs from illegal drugs such as cannabis and then plan quite nasty violence instead!

The drunkenness in London and other towns has usually raised a lot of concerns about the alcohol fuelled crime that occurs in city centres at night. Various solutions have been proposed such as a minimum price for drinks. However at the real centre of the problem is the fact that most people in these situations feel they have no other outlets for their frustrations apart from getting roaring drunk. Until this is addressed London and other cities will continue to experience this sort of drunken and drug fuelled behavior!