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Visiting London-4

During my first ever visit to England I didn’t even go to London, to the great subsequent surprise of my Russian friends. It must indeed be surprising, but in truth it simply manifests this unconscious arrogance of capital citizens for whom no life exists outside the central city of a country. I also noted that some Mancunians were not particularly eager to go “down south”. I suppose with some of them it was the arrogance of somebody who lives well outside the country’s central city and thus wants to downplay the capital’s importance. So I joked: ‘when you’ve got Pall Mall and Albert Sq in your own city, what’s the point of visiting them elsewhere?’

In spring 2004 I went to London to research in the British Library and the National Archives. Since September 2003 I’d been living in Manchester, and by April 2004 the differences in lifestyles and perceptions (that would inevitably come to surface eventually) began to take the best out of me. Most frustratingly, I felt like I couldn’t write. It wasn’t quite true. I’ve always been writing wherever I had an idea or a line to build upon. During the day, this could happen at the lecture, on the bus, on the tube, in the cafe, in the park. At night I usually worked in the kitchen.

What happened when I arrived to England is hard to boil down in one or two sentences, however long. After all these years I realise that the main difference wasn’t so much between England and Russia, but between the “contexts” in which I lived here and there. The context in which I lived for the first seven months since my arrival to England was stiffening for me as a writer.

The context into which I migrated for two weeks in April 2004 was liberating. In every sense of the word (except strictly geographical), it was my homecoming. I no longer felt unfitting or dreamy. I understood that I was losing time and strength trying to adopt values and habits I didn’t want to have, or trying to persuade others to make changes.

Understanding this didn’t make my life easier, but the burden of feeling oneself strangely different was left behind for good. Spending a fortnight in London made me crave for space, motion and freedom in Manchester, which I was able to find.

I lived in LSE’s Carr-Saunders Hall, in a small room on the 4th floor. I took a bus to the British Library, or a tube to Kew. In the weekends I did a lot of walking. On my first Sunday in London I took a wrong turn from Fitzroy St and ended up in Soho instead of the British Museum. During Easter, I walked in the early morning from my hotel through Holborn to the Tower.

And at night I wrote. In those two weeks I perhaps wrote more than in the previous seven months. One of the poems has already appeared in Notebooks; because there is no actual rhyme, it was easy to translate. The very first one I wrote in London is called ‘Looking for You’. Despite the title and content, it is not actually dedicated to anybody, even obliquely. I interpret it as a poem about the search for somebody who shares your views, ideas; somebody inspiring; yet somebody who is very difficult to recognise.

Я ищу тебя в городе этом,
Не надеясь когда-то найти.
Ты, как Муза, бросаешь Поэта,
И расходятся наши пути.

Я ищу тебя в книгах старинных,
Где виньетка – разгадка судьбы.
В переулках, на улицах длинных
Чутко слушаю чьи-то шаги.

Я ищу… я ищу тебя всюду,
Даже там, где не стоит искать,
Но я верю, я верю и буду,
Не надеясь, но все-таки ждать,

Чтобы в день, когда ты будешь рядом,
Не заметив, пройти. И тогда
Снова ждать и искать тебя взглядом…
Я искать тебя буду всегда.

04-05 апреля 2004 г.

© Julia Shuvalova, 2004

(I am looking for you in this town
With no hope to ever find you.
Like a Muse, you abandon the Poet,
And our roads part.

I am looking for you in the old books,
Where a vignette unveils the fate.
In the lanes and in the long streets
I am heeding somebody’s pace.

I am looking… I look everywhere,
In the places you’re never to be.
A believer, I’m waiting forever,
Without hope, to find you here,

So that once when you’re only near,
I would then pass you by. And again
I’ll start looking for you everywhere…
I will always be looking for you
© Julia Shuvalova, 4-5 April 2004).

[The English text is an almost verbatim translation; however, the second and third stanzas give a very good idea of the poem’s original foot and rhythm].

Visiting London-3

Football Matters

I’ve been told recently that to be an Italian and not to like football is almost a crime. You’re being watched with suspicion. The person who enlightened me on this is, obviously, himself Italian, and he doesn’t like football, so I have no reason not to believe him. As for me, I haven’t really been interested in football until 2002, when first there was the World Cup and then Locomotive Moscow had won the Russian Premier League. The second fact was of more importance for Locomotive’s supporters (my grandmother and my parents in my case); the first had had a universal impact. For the rest of the summer season teenage boys and middle-aged men had been playing football. I remembered about this now because I’m writing this post in my hotel lounge, and the TV on the wall is showing highlights of the match between Chelsea and Blackburn. The highlights have just ended, with the reporter going totally ecstatic at every goal opportunity. Other highlights are still going on. It’s fun to listen to such enthusiastic commentary. And it’s fun when the match is actually engaging. But when watching the match is the same as watching the paint dry, then football indeed becomes one of the silliest, most miserable games out there.

Be Nice to Your Waiter

It may sound commonsensical. Or, on the contrary, absolutely unacceptable. But a visit to a pub in Central London has just proved that, although the waiter is there to take your orders, he is not be ordered around. This waiter was working on his own when I walked into a pleasantly decorated dining room and asked for a table for myself. He offered me a seat and a menu. I made the order. Soon after two women came in. I think I know the language they’ve been speaking between themselves. One of them said to the waiter: ‘There are two of us, can you find us a table?’

The waiter apologised and said that he couldn’t currently accept anybody, since he was working on his own. Undeterred, the woman pointed to the table at the window and said: ‘Well, we’ll take that table’. Again, he explained he wouldn’t be able to serve them. Women went and sat at the table. The waiter was now really displeased. He was now speaking loudly so that everyone could hear: ‘I’m sorry, ladies, but I will not be able to serve you’. The ladies eventually had to leave. There is no doubt all of them understood each other perfectly well.

Soon after, other people began to come in, and the waiter did not refuse them, although he did ask for extra help. And he turned out to be a really nice guy to those who showed some respect to the fact that his job is not the easiest one. Someone may think the waiter went too far with those women. For my part, I think he simply had dignity to demand respect to his pub and to himself.

Time Goes, People Change

Many black cab drivers in Manchester are not British. Not that I mind, and one of them was very kind to drive me from Manchester to Liverpool in just half an hour. But what is good about London cab drivers is that most of them are Londoners, have been living in the capital all their lives, and can therefore tell something interesting about the changes that have occurred in the city over the years.

I have done lots of walking today, and by the time I finished my lovely evening meal I was too tired to take the tube and to do more walking up and down stairs and in the street. So I took this black cab. The driver was really nice, and has always been living in North and North-Eastern London. Now in his fifties, he’d certainly seen a lot of London. He claimed he could tell the person from New York easily by their arrogant manner and hasty finger-clicking. So he seemed fit for the question I asked him.

‘How have people in London changed, would you say?’

‘That’s a good question’, he replied. ‘You know, I think people have become less polite. You used to be proud that you were British and that you were so well-known for your good manners. But these days people just don’t care’.

Regrettably, I feel this decline in manners is happening on the universal, rather than strictly British, scale. I must admit that when I was a student in Moscow, I would sometimes get so tired at the end of the long day at the lectures and in the libraries that all I ‘d arrive to my station. So I didn’t give a seat to quite a few people on such occasions, I suppose, but I will use my studies as an excuse because on other occasions I was one of the first to offer a seat to a disabled or a senior.

These days I’m being told that things have changed there. One of my old university friends had had a motorbike accident several years ago and now walks on crutches. When she visited Moscow last year, she was very rarely given a seat on the public transport. When I told this to my taxi driver, he said that if it was your “lucky” day then a situation like this could occur to you in London. I remembered a couple of similar occasions in Manchester. Then I remembered the tube this morning, when people were rushing into the carriage and not paying attention to those who wanted to alight. And we all know that the same kind of scene now and again happens at the bus stop.

It is the decline in manners, but, to my mind, it is caused by the growing decline in people’s ability to empathise. I know I use this word a lot, but it is really very important to put oneself in another person’s shoes at least once every so often, if one cannot organise themselves to do it regularly. To let another person off the train will be much easier if you imagine yourself being the person who tries to alight. To give up a seat on the bus to a disabled person will be easy if we allow for a thought that years down the line we or our friends or relatives may be in this person’s place.

This is all commonsensical; and, like all commonsensical things, it is just being forgotten.

Visiting London-2

As for where I’m writing this – I’m sitting in this souvenir shop in Southampton Row, just across the corner from Russell Square and the British Museum. I discovered it back in 2004, but I think it wasn’t in spring, but in autumn. 1 hour costs £1, which is much cheaper than to use a laptop in my hotel.

My hotel… My room reminds me of the one depicted by Fyodor Dostoevsky in Crime and Punishment. This is where Raskolnikov lived in St Petersburg:

His garret was under the roof of a high, five-storied house and was more like a cupboard than a room.

OK, my room is actually in the basement. I didn’t ask for it to be there, in case you’re wondering. I go there by lift. When I was leaving this morning, I tried to find a staircase to go upstairs, but all I saw were the rooms, with their doors open ajar, and the personnel already starting their daily cleaning routine. But it IS like a cupboard. It is by far the smallest room I’ve ever stayed in. Thankfully, it’s en suite. Also, the canteen where I’ve got to have breakfast between 7.30 and 9am is just a couple of steps away from my room, which again is hugely convenient. But I’ve also got the neighbours who slam the door every time they go in or out of the room.

I could be winging here about such experiences, but hey, what would I write about then? Besides, having neighbours, as I have already written previously, is very important.

My visit to London so far has been a check on my patience in relations with public transport. Yesterday, when I arrived at Euston, everybody was leaving, and the shops in the station were closing rather quickly. The voice in the loudspeaker, which is impossible to hear in the big crowd anyway, was saying something about alerts and the necessity to leave the station. Apart from those indiscernible words, the virtually first thing I heard upon arriving to London was “Yes, this is Tony Blair’s Britain”, coming from an Englishman.

And today there was a security alert whereby the trains on Piccadilly line towards Cockforsters were delayed. Those who have been waiting for the train to arrive were so keen to get in that they ignored those who were keen to get out. The station worker shouted in the loudspeaker: ‘Let other passengers off the train first, it may then be easier to get on’. The lady who stood beside me giggled: ‘You know, we’re actually supposed to be the nation of queues’. I giggled back: ‘Yes, foreign tourists have spoiled you’.

I said that in full consciousness, for the described scene has reminded me of many similar occasions that I’ve seen and experienced on the Moscow underground. I must say, though: nothing can substitute the experience of being lifted up by people around you and brought into the carriage. Nothing can substitute the sensation of floating in the space when your feet are actually dangling in the air a few inches above the floor during the rush hour. It is a powerful experience – to stare directly into someone’s sweaty face or tortoise skin on the neck with no possibility to turn away because there is nowhere to turn. So, I do recommend to go through it at least once, unless you live in Moscow or London or any other big city and such experience is hence a part of your daily routine.

As a matter of fact, I always let other passengers off first.

Visiting London -1

Since I’ve arrived in England, I almost never failed to visit London in spring. I visited the capital in early April in 2004, then in late March in 2005, I skipped 2006 for personal reasons, but now it’s April 2007, and I’m in London again. There must be, I feel, some kind of force in the working that brings me to London every year in spring.

Invariably, as well, every time I visit it, I experience a powerful feeling of being liberated. I know you’re already thinking that I feel being liberated from Manchester, but it’s not true. I still like Manchester a lot, not least because, as I said many times, I don’t suffer from hay fever in the North West. I don’t exactly suffer from it in London, but I do have to take medication.

This feeling of freedom comes simply from the fact that London possesses much more space than Manchester. It is the fact, and there is little sense to try and pretend that the vastness and grandeur of London can be substituted for something else. It can’t, and it will never be. London is not a desert, it’s the same kind of city of steel, and concrete, and brick, like Manchester, and indeed, like many other modern cities. It is its space that people like me love and miss. More than that, it is the space in the city centre that I personally miss a lot.

With me, it all comes from personal experience, of course. In Moscow, I used to lose myself in those endless serpentine boulevards, just strolling down old slopy streets with buildings of different periods and colours, or walking across bridges, stumbling accidentally into previously unnoticed little architectural gems, or revisiting the places that I have long discovered and fallen in love with. Moscow, in a way, is like Venice in Henry James’s Italian Hours that I am currently reading. So much has become known about it since the uplift of the Iron Curtain, so many people have visited it and are planning to visit in future, that it is hardly possible to say something totally new.

Same goes for London. But the fact that all hidden gems of this city have already been discovered and categorised doesn’t diminish the allure of the place. I most certainly don’t feel intimidated by it. The reason why I like going there and why now I am writing about it is the same that made James write about Venice, as he explains in this short introduction to the chapter on his reflections on this city.

It is a great pleasure to write the word; but I am not sure
there is not a certain impudence in pretending to add anything
to it. Venice has been painted and described many thousands of
times, and of all the cities of the world is the easiest to
visit without going there. Open the first book and you will find
a rhapsody about it; step into the first picture-dealer's and
you will find three or four high-coloured "views" of it. There
is notoriously nothing more to be said on the subject. Every one
has been there, and every one has brought back a collection of
photographs. There is as little mystery about the Grand Canal as
about our local thoroughfare, and the name of St. Mark is as
familiar as the postman's ring. It is not forbidden, however, to
speak of familiar things, and I hold that for the true Venice-
lover Venice is always in order. There is nothing new to be said
about her certainly, but the old is better than any novelty. It
would be a sad day indeed when there should be something new to
say. I write these lines with the full consciousness of having
no information whatever to offer. I do not pretend to enlighten
the reader; I pretend only to give a fillip to his memory; and I
hold any writer sufficiently justified who is himself in love
with his theme.

Henry James, Italian Hours (a full text at Project Gutenberg).

Unless you have already read it, this book by the late Prof Roy Porter is a great introduction to the history of London’s growth. I bought London: A Social History back in 2002, at Waterstones in either Bolton or Blackpool, and it was one of the most interesting semi-academic readings I’ve ever come across. The rich vocabulary of a Londoner who also happened to be a seasoned and versatile academic made up for a vivid and engaging reconstruction of London’s history from the times immemorial to the present day. It doesn’t contain many illustrations, and those that were included in the book are black-and-white. But I shall once more underline his style and language; together, they provide you with all colours and detail you need to paint a picture of London’s history.

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