I dreamt of this city, growing up, while watching BBC comedy and dramas on the ABC in Australia, and any other channel that would show them. I’d sign-up for an International Penfriends account specifically to get UK penpals (and specifically requested no USA ones; I kick myself now that I have a near-bordering-obsession with Americana).
I thought of London the way I thought of my hometown, Ipswich – as the town everything happened in. We had a small cinema which had old-style balconys; I figured that’s where the Queen – and the two old geezers from The Muppets – sat when they came to the pictures. When I would watch shows like _Open All Hours_, I assumed it was shot somewhere in London (it wasn’t; it was shot in Doncaster, way oop north).
I used to read a British BMX magazine, and British kid comics (Buster, Whizzer & Chips) just to get a sense of British life. When the first Gulf War broke out, I was glued to the TV not for the coverage, but because one of the channels in Australia would simply rebroadcast the BBC news every day for cheap coverage, and it always offered a glimpse of London life: delayed tubes, bus problems, and the like.
I first came here early 2000 for a brief work trip. I remember catching the tube from Heathrow, looking out over far-west London (then West London proper – Acton, etc) being a little disappointed but also excited when the first pale-faced, gaunt working class lad got on the train and slouched on a seat. _Just like they look on the telly!_
London was clean, dirty, old, new, classic, stylish, styleless, and full of people who didn’t seem to realise that they lived in LONDON.
My work colleague I spent the most time with here at first was Scottish, and somewhat dismissive of the city; she liked taking her scooter out for little jaunts through the small city streets, but I don’t think she ever enjoyed the London-ness of it. I loved it. I walked along the Thames, seeing Barnes across the water, from Chiswick to Hammersmith Bridge and thinking I could do that everyday.
By the time I went home two weeks later, I was really hoping I’d get a work permit to return properly. That didn’t pan out.
Time rolls on. Two years later, I had met and fallen in love with, and was now marrying, a Londoner. She was equally dismissive and head-over-heels with London. She introduced me to the shitty, dirty, crime-ridden aspects of living in London; and to the exciting, bouncy, anarchically joyful side.
That was about seven and a half years ago. I get jaded about London as well, now. I can walk past Big Ben in his clock tower without much of a glance other than to see the time. I look at the river as simply part of the view; the city skyline as something that surrounds the Gherkin. I hate the buses, the tube, the crowds, Oxford Street on a Saturday afternoon. But I am also equally defensive of it. There are aspects of living here that you miss when you’re just visiting, unless you’ve had the same bloke give you three different sob stories in hope for some change on three successive nights; of sitting on the upper deck of a night bus while an argument rages beneath you, and the driver switches everything off and tells us to change buses, and its 4am and we just want to go home.
It’s like any city; skin deep isn’t deep enough. Sometimes it’s too deep.
But, in the end, London is my home, for better or worse.