London then and now
I first lived in London when I was 20. I was floundering at my university level studies in the US, not finding my happy place or knowing what it was I wanted to study. When I was given a chance to take a year off from my studies to work for family relatives as a nanny outside London, I was immensely relieved. Why yes I will, thank you very much.
I was exhausted from the hamster wheel of education; another kind of experience and a break from rote learning seemed exactly what I needed. Eventually I figured out what I wanted to study, (which I wrote about here), but it was my year outside of school, living in the world of London that helped me find my way.
My child-care responsibilities were first thing in the morning and after school each day; during the long English school day, I was on my own. We lived outside London near Richmond, so to get into London I would walk across the Thames River, through the town to the tube station. I loved the walk along the river, across Richmond Green near Richmond palace, threading the colourful lanes surrounded by lovely well-known antique shop and gallery windows. This was decades before television’s Ted Lasso1 brought Richmond another kind of fame.
I always enjoyed riding the tube, looking out the window at the old brick buildings, the leafy affluent neighbourhoods we sped through with glimpses of their lush gardens. As we got closer to town, the leafy suburbs changed to more densely packed-in social housing. I peered through dusty windows to see snapshots of life inside stranger’s flats. Neighbourhood high streets flashed by with glimpses of greengrocer stalls, and weekly open-air markets selling kitchen gadgets and undergarments.
It was on the tube and walking the streets of London that I learned to avoid eye contact and certainly not to smile or start any conversations. I learned how to walk fluidly among crowds navigating people barriers like a salmon heading upstream to spawn.
London has always been a big tourist destination, and I learned the seasonal flows of which nationalities and age groups visit at different times of year. I secretly enjoyed when tourists would mistake me for a Londoner and ask me for directions; I almost always knew where to direct them. I learned to pick out which country people were from by their shoes and then their clothes before I heard a word of their accents.
Not only is London itself very international, due to the numbers of foreigners living there, but the family I lived with had a steady stream of visitors from around the globe, including from several countries in Africa. The whole world became very REAL to me for the first time that year, as I was meeting people and hearing their stories of places which had been only dots on a map before. World news was no longer an add-on like it was when I lived in the US. World news stories were now about people I knew and cared about, and the places they had grown up in or still lived.
My day off was Sunday, and on most Sundays I would go to one of the many museums with which London is blessed. I would pick just one gallery or wing of the museum to focus on, and I would immerse myself in that singular space, enjoying the time to ponder the art I was so privileged to be seeing. Other times I visited the newly built Southbank Centre to hang out in the comfortable chairs and couches in the Royal Festival Hall, as live impromptu musical concerts or other entertainers often popped up in the lobby.
No matter where I was, I enjoyed the very English habit of partaking of tea and a cake or some other baked treat in the museum cafe. Sometimes I would read part of the Sunday Newspaper, or one of the brochures from the exhibitions I picked up. And I also wrote voluminous pages of notes in my diary about my experiences.
During that year I continued my practice of writing as a way to understand and process my experiences, observations, and feelings. I wrote to myself, to friends, imagining long conversations between us. It was such a different way of living back then, wasn’t it? No WhatsApp or instant message option to actually HAVE those conversations. We relied on writing long letters with their lengthy one-sided discussions.
This week I was back in London for a day. I had some errands to do in Central London, the part that is mostly inhabited by tourists, and this day was no exception. By early afternoon the pavements (sidewalks) were filled with friends, small groups and families shopping, wandering slowly up and down the streets. The languages I heard the most this time, this year, were mainly Italian, with some French and Spanish accents as well. There were Americans, as always.
No one asked me for directions. Everyone has a phone now, and can find out for themselves where they are.
As I have always done in London, I walked and walked and walked until my feet ached. It is always more enjoyable to walk from place to place than take the tube or a bus except when the distances are more than a few miles. And as I have always done, I did stop for ‘tea breaks’, only this time I had coffee in the morning and ginger ‘beer’ (non-alcoholic spicy carbonated water) with my soup in the afternoon. No cakes this time.
And as I sat enjoying my refreshments in the middle of Central London, where people come to see “London”, I mused about what it was they were seeing. What they see are all the tourists like themselves who are part of what makes it such an international city. There is hardly a native around, except working in the shops on these streets, anyway; locals are at work or avoiding the crush of tourists who congregate here.
Yet they come still, as I did this day, to enjoy the few shops that can be found nowhere else, and the beautiful brick buildings and graceful streets that enclose the spaces making up the bustling metropolis that is London. And as I wrote in my journal, I was thankful that this city had once been my home, and had enabled the world to come alive to me—then and now—in a very visceral way.
Thank you for reading along this week!
Have you ever been to or lived in London? Do YOU think it is a very international city? I’d love to know!
Wishing you a happy March (YAY!!!!) and sunny days ahead!
xoxo Sabrina
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Lasso
I love your photos, as always, Sabrina ❤️ How thrilling (with a tinge of nostalgia as well, perhaps?) to be able to compare these two versions of the city and over a period of time in which so much has changed too. Wow, it must have felt like stepping into a time machine.
My sister lives in central London and when I visit her I'm always struck by the difference between London and Madrid - both capitals cities but so different. Madrid feels like a friendly village in comparison! 😂
A wonderful piece, Sabrina.
Do you know, in the very late 1960's, after travelling through Europe and Asia on the way to London, I can remember flying into Heathrow and I felt like I was home. My lovely and very small non-boutique hotel was in Knightsbridge in a street that was later to become THE very swisho Beauchamp Place - a very la di da, tickety boo kind of street later but not then.
I felt at home, walking sightseeing, talking, everything was familiar in the weirdest kind of way. I doubt I'd find it like that now. My son travelled to London on his first ever trip away, he was maybe 19 (40 now) and he hated it. Cities explode and vibes change.