This Is London

  This Is London 
  Originally uploaded by ganching1

It was really cold in London today.  When I woke up and looked out of my curtainless bedroom window I couldn't work out if the mist I was seeing was condensation on the inside of the window or fog outside.  It was mist outside and it never properly lifted all day.

It is strange to think that London used to be regularly shrouded in fog and that still, in certain parts of the world, people think that this is how London is.  For most of us our mental geography of places is formed when we are very young and our imaginary cities remain very real and vivid even if, once we get to know the real places, they differ sharply from our fantasy locations.

My mental map of London was formed more from reading than from films or television.  I know that as this very moment there are parties of small children,  straw-hatted and accompanied by nannies, walking in a crocodile down the Cromwell Road on their way to visit the Natural History Museum,  in Australia there are fathers impressing their children by frying eggs on the bonnets of cars to demonstrate how hot it is and in Holland there is a stork nesting on top of every single chimney.

Before leaving the house this morning I got well happed up in a heavy coat and gloves and a scarf.  The scarf was tied, as is de rigueur today, in the style invented by Sloanes sometime in the early 90s for the wearing of pashminas.  (How it works is you fold the scarf so that it is half its length and place it round your neck - you then take the two ends and thread them through the loop creating a loose knot.)  There was something on the radio about this the other day.  Someone commented on the fact that suddenly everybody wears their scarves like this and it's true. Check it out. Everyone is at it. Traybake was telling me how even a friend of his, who lives in the wilds of Co Sligo, asked him to explain how to do "that trendy scarf knot."  This man is over 70 but not immune.  This trend is so subtle that we didn't even know that we had all adopted it.  I think there is a scientific explanation for this kind of thing but I do not what it is called.  I do know that it is still bloody freezing here and a scarf, whatever way it is worn, is essential if you are thinking of going out.

Comments

[fifi]

I thought I was being terribly fashionable wearing my scarf in that way. I hate the snowman way and the draped way, as I usually end up either with my arms bound to my sides or treading on the end of the scarf and choking myself.

My daughter had to start me off, mind you. I had no idea I was buying into Sloanyism.

[David]

I was wondering, with your interest in housing, if you've read Estates by Linsey Hanley? I'm halfway through it. Though I don't like everything about the way it's written, I am reading it with a kind of ecstatic feeling that someone has finally attempted to tackle one of the big topics that define Britain's social fabric.

[ganching]

I finished it on Saturday and have already passed it on to a friend! It's interesting and, I think amazing that no-one has already written something similar. Some of her conclusions on how to make things better are a bit simplistic but she's spot on in relation to class. I have decided that the fact that we use the term "chav" is something that a lot of us are going to be ashamed of in years to come. I also think her point that, of the three great planks of the welfare state, only living in council housing now marks people out as failures which is not the case in relation to using the NHS or state education.

Let me know what you think of it when you've finished it.

[Jayne]

I had read that the scarf thing was originally a Sex and the City invention, but I couldn't give you a reference. No matter - it must be a good idea because everyone's doing it.

And the chav thing - yes, people should be ashamed. It's just another way of making oneself feel better by putting someone else down, and it's one of the most depressing aspects of the UK at the moment (as seen by someone on the outside).

Did you know that the largest landlord in Europe is now Vienna city council? (In the 60s and 70s it would have been Sheffield I think). Most people who live in Vienna live in public housing and I haven't heard anyone calling them chavs. I'll have a look for that book.

Sorry for the hijack - I do love popping in to your blog every so often. Always something to think about, very well written and amusing. Thanks.

[ganching]

Jayne thank you for your comment and please don't consider it a hijack. I didn't know that about Vienna being the largest landlord in Europe. The largest landlord in the UK for a long time was, I think Birmingham Council, and in London it was Southwark. It is hard to predict what will happen over the next few years as more and more people here can no longer afford to buy. Nothing is ever quite how we predict.

I am rather obsessed by the scarf thing now and find myself counting them on the tube. Madness lies this way.

[David]

I’ve finished it now. Of course, my appreciation of it is a personal thing. I’m an estate boy, albeit from the home-owning side, but growing up in outer London and later in an Essex new town, estate life was the norm, as it must have been for huge sections of British society yet conversely there was hardly any reflection of that lifestyle in the media or public eye. I can’t recall a single Enid Blyton story set in a council house. So therefore it’s a great book just for opening the debate to a wider audience. I can identify with so much of what Linsey Hanley writes and I share her idealism that council housing was supposed to, and generally did, serve a good purpose. But I also completely identify with her loathing of the stupefying, monocultural lifestyle of many estates. That’s why I knew I had to leave, but unlike L.H., I sought out a different kind of environment that I actually liked, rather than another estate in another town. As one reviewer put it: why’s she being so hard on herself? Why doesn’t she look for a nice house in a village?
I can see that my assessment contains a lot of I’s. I can’t react to the book in any other way. Her portrayal of housing history, problems and future planning is plausible but I’ve no idea if it’s any good on an objective level. However, it was certainly interesting to compare her personal reminiscences to the Robert Elms’ book that you recommended to me. He solidly identifies with his council estate roots and portrays it as a vibrant community with its own culture and traditions. I’m sure he’d hate her aspirations to Guardian-reading enlightenment.
On a closing note: over here in oh-so-sophisticated mainland Europe that scarf-knot thing is on its way out. And Burberry is worn in blissful ignorance.

[ganching]

Thanks for your comment David. I think there is a lot to be said for personal experience. A few years ago I worked on a project with a couple of young architects who had grown up on estates in central London and their approach to dealing with residents was very different from a lot of the other "professionals" involved. One thing that both of them said was how much fun it was as a young child to play and mess around with other kids on the estate. I know as a child I was quite jealous of people who lived on council estates but thinking back the estates where I knew people were tiny and nothing like the frightening, intimidating places that estates became in the 80s and 90s (naturally I blame Thatcher for this).

I will be spending the weekend trying to think of a new way to wear my scarf.