Anyone who has traveled knows that it’s hard to predict how you’ll feel about a place until you’re there. You can swoon over photos and vlogs, savoring the feelings conjured by golden-hour cobblestone streets or mysterious neon-lit night cities or lush green forests, but those feelings belong to photos and vlogs alone. Once you arrive at your destination, it will be different — and you’ll realize it’s not something you could ever preview, or capture.
It’s equally hard to predict the feeling of revisiting a place you’ve been. Every time I visit Dublin, the foreign city in which I have spent the most time, it feels different than I think it will. For it is changing and I am changing, always. And the subtleties of these changes are only felt through the process of exploring the city anew. When returning, I often flash back to my first impressions of Dublin as a study abroad student. In these memories, the city is upside-down and backwards, a blur of second-rate pubs and shoe stores and cold-rainy gray-ness, the places I was thrust into when I had no understanding of its geography, people, and culture. Through the changes I encounter with each visit, those earlier versions are always still with me.
Which brings me to travel in London, a city I wrote about on this blog years ago. When my husband received a grant to conduct research there this summer, I was happy but not sure how I would spend my time. I’d been to London a few times in the past, so I felt not quite like a tourist. But the city was still somewhat upside-down and backwards to me, like Dublin in those early days, and I wasn’t sure if I would take to it.
But because these things never turn out as one expects, of course I was wrong. My travel in London ended up being immensely enjoyable in a way I almost can’t put my finger on. It was a rather nebulous idyll, made up of potent moments. I spent a lot of time out and about not doing much of anything, and therefore was able to soak up the charm of the London scene and its people (When did they become so friendly? I frequently wondered). A town I’d dipped in and out of in the past became, over the course of ten June days, a city of friends and kindred spirits.
It wasn’t the kind of experience one can capture in a travelogue or typical list of highlights, so instead I’ve written up a series of moments which, linked together, have come to summarize my understanding of this city, one which seems to glow with greater warmth (both literally and figuratively) each time I visit.
Fragments of a City
Out in the World
First, I immerse in the leafy stillness of Highgate Cemetery. The dark cool of the vaults. Two inquisitive ladies in linen, a gentle guide with a David Brent accent and boat shoes. He likes the grave of Michael Faraday best. Implies others, which go unnamed, are overrated.
George Michael is buried here. People didn’t know that until recently, in part because his grave is labeled appropriately with his real name, Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou. Everyone takes pictures while our guide holds in a sigh. I’m not sure why we take photos of graves.
On a Sunday, walking across Millennium Bridge with jangly playlist pumping into headphones, I feel the cool wind off the Thames and take in the splendor (and constant construction) of monumental London. As a teen, this was the kind of thing I always envisioned doing as an adult. And it’s the rare thing that’s just the way you envisioned it, every time. Am I uncool for loving this? I wonder, surrounded by strollers and selfie-takers and souvenir-buyers. The Thames whispers back: Maybe.
I walk though the National Gallery in a half-daze on my first day in London; some of it is deja vu and some of it isn’t. Turner’s Rain, Steam and Speed strikes me while his paintings of ships leave me cold. Toulouse-Lautrec’s Woman Seated in a Garden is so refreshing — his dance-hall portraits get all the hype. Plus his portrait of Emile Bernard never goes unnoticed. Young Emile was really my type — he was also quite well-adjusted considering the company he kept.
Later, I visit British Museum, nestled in Bloomsbury, one of my favorite London neighborhoods. The thing is: I can’t enjoy the British Museum. I’ve tried twice and failed. Colonialism looms; the Empire is unappealing to me. The collection is amazing, but it’s like Epcot Center — a showcase of conquered cultures. I creep upstairs to the nearly empty drawing and prints gallery (most of the others are downstairs with the mummies) and have a nice time looking at drawings by “emerging British artists” and some inscrutable Czech prints.
Pubs and Clubs
We watch the drunken hordes in Saturday Soho, sunburned and in woozy search of a toilet at the Dog & Duck pub. We stare at a misspelled homage to George Orwell on the wall. Someone has tried (and failed) to scrub out an extra “l” in “allegorical.”
We find a pub, The Betsey Trotwood, that proves to be “our place.” It is plunked down in the middle of the road on a strange jutting median. They are dead polite and have chips and a stereo softly playing Brinsley Schwartz.
The Betsey Trotwood advertises a music night called Oh Trotwood, Up Yours!! Featuring the music of X-Ray Specs, Wire, Patti Smith, Television Personalities and more. We go to the basement and found a small cluster of people in their fifties (with one clump of younger men, possibly someone’s nephews). No way out now, we pay our 10 pounds for raffle tickets. “Number 14 for you,” announces a gent in a bowler hat brandishing a paper number, “which appears to be your age, my dear.” I am well at home in the company of aged hipsters. We win the raffle, of course we do. The prize is a mirror bearing the likenesses of Laurel and Hardy.
The DJ, who might be over 60, is prickly when I make requests. They always are. But he asked me to pose with his Patti Smith LP for a toothy photo that’s now in the universe, somewhere.
On our last night in town we go to a Jon Spencer show in Hackney. Before the band even plays, the fashion show of aging rockabilly couples, mods, and people who wear sunglasses at night indoors is well worth the price of admission. The opening band is a trio of college lads dressed in frightening costumes who fiddle with their instruments and produce squeaky, pseudo-experimental noise. The crowd applauds politely, and it reminds me of a band in an amazing book I’m reading called This is Memorial Device that positions mannequins onstage while tape plays behind a curtain.
Home Base
We stay in King’s Cross, a distinctly unglamorous crossroads of international travelers, and possibly the noisiest place in the world. There is trash and sweat and urine and there are charming cafes and perfect Vietnamese food and converted old churches and fashionably dressed youth. In a clammy Mailboxes Etc., fully expecting to be treated harshly, I am helped by a lovely man and sent out into the street with a cheerful exhortation to “enjoy the beautiful weather!”
The English breakfast is so satisfying with its hash browns fried into neat triangles and beans poured into a round, orderly crock. I order a vegetarian version with a fried halloumi that is nothing short of amazing. Halloumi is undervalued in the states. We prefer gooey cheese that stretches out everywhere and soaks greasily through bread.
Sometimes you put a load of towels in a British washing machine and select “economy,” which has a leaf next to it implying environment considerations. And then there’s nothing to do but wait four hours for it to finish.
Just streets away from our incredibly loud accommodations on King’s Cross Road is a startlingly peaceful neighborhood. It seems its rows of soft brick buildings somehow block out all the motorcycles and trucks and ambient shouting. We gather on a golden evening in front of McGlynn’s pub and feel like we’ve done something right, on accident.
Books and Records
I had a daydream of going to Gay’s the Word bookstore in Bloomsbury and buying volume one of Alice Oseman’s Heartstopper comic and immediately reading the whole thing on a bench in Russell Square. This dream came true. I also bought the uncensored version of The Picture of Dorian Gray and a tiny Pocket Penguin containing Truman Capote’s profile of Marlon Brando and the clerk could not have been more charming.
I spend a day trailing after Robert to record stores. We’re both aware that buying records and getting them home is nearly impossible and yet we do it anyway. I find a Creation Compilation from 1984 and Cherry Red one from 1987 with daisies all over the cover. They both feature the softest, most raggedy dreamy northern indie pop a person could stand. Pale youths with fluffy hair and oversized blazers gaze out of fields in the liner notes.
While we’re in Sounds of the Universe I spot a flyer advertising a indie-pop dance night featuring a leaf-framed photo of the young members of Orange Juice in mod attire. I’ve never wanted to be part of something more, but alas it’s held on the third Saturday. We leave on the third Friday.
