England Oh England

I guess I was away for five months. 

Slightly more.

I thought that the biggest shock I would face would be the weather. I had, essentially, lived in summer from April 2014 until January 2015. Al Khobar and England are incredibly different in February. I’d watched the weather change on the weather websites with a sense of foreboding.

I didn't fancy the cold at all.

But the cold is just something that you get used to.

And it wasn’t too bad. I was expecting to be near foetal when I walked out of Terminal 4 without a coat to jump my lift back to Oxfordshire. It was dawn. It was a suitably uninspiring grey day. Damp. Dank. But not so cold. It was OK.

Somewhere on the M40. Cold. Grey. Damp. Dank. England Oh England.

I accept that the cold eventually got to me a few days later. There was a moment around 10pm one Tuesday. I walked up to Hornsey from Crouch End in the frost and ice with a shiver that was on the edge of turning into dance and teeth chattering to the point where conversation was uncontrollably retarded. This was the point where I stopped dead and demanded Lukey tell me why people accepted living in such ridiculous and uninviting cold environments. Beyond that and a moment where I had to duck into a Costa Coffee to grab a hot chocolate to thaw on the north side of Kew Bridge, the cold never really got to me.

What shocked me most was the dog shit.

It is everywhere.

I noticed it in Bloxham, where I holed up for a few days before heading back to London. Then Hornsey and Peckerwell seemed to be covered in it. Later in my trip, the area around Deptford Bridge seemed to be even worse.

You don’t get it in Al Khobar. You don’t get dogs.

Well, you do… but the dogs you see are semi-wild and they stay away from you as much as you stay away from them. Dogs are not kept as pets over here. No one walks them around town so there is no shite to clear up.

Don’t get me wrong, Al Khobar is untidy. In parts, it’s filthy. But not with excrement. Give me food waste and building materials any day. Dog shit is – well –is  just shit.

It annoyed me. Irrationally.

After a few days, I was becoming used to it. I moved on. I found other things to prickle; to aggravate.

Victoria, for instance.

I’ve never been keen on that part of town. I’d guess, because it is purely functional. It is not a destination, is it? How many times have you dreamed up a great night out in Victoria? How many times have you thought… “Oh. I fancy meeting a friend for lunch. Victoria. That sounds like an exciting Central London location to meet.”?

NB - See the little note at the bottom, where I admit to arranging to meet someone in Victoria.

Exactly!

You pass through. You move on.

But I seemed to find myself there, all too often. Dragging my luggage down Buckingham Palace Road to renew my Saudi visa; dragging my luggage up from Peckham to meet friends in the John Lewis Head Office bar (don’t get excited… it feels like a Travelodge); dragging my luggage across the station to grab a cab to St James Park; waiting for a friend at the end of platform one as a cold started to form; fighting my way into Boots to get medicine to fight said cold and; finally, battling crowds to retrieve my passport from Buckingham Palace Road, again.

I was away for close on three weeks. I swear that I spent two of them trying to find my way around Victoria’s road works.

I see that the road works will be in place until 2018. I wouldn’t have noticed, except I stopped to take a picture of two Italians in front of the hoardings in the bus station. No idea why they wanted to pose there; I had neither the language skills nor desire to know. But it did get me thinking. Perhaps they are regulars and they need something constant to measure themselves as they age. It is plausible and quite possible that, if I had wasted more time there, I would have seen families arriving from Burgess Hill, Whyteleafe and East Grinstead to measure their kid’s heights. The hoardings around the “walk way” near the bus station having been in situ so long that they have been using them over the past years to record their children’s growth spurts in the same way that the door frame to the kitchen was marked in my childhood home.

As an aside. As I was typing that, I began to wonder when all the dates and marks labelled “Alex” and “Sir” on the kitchen door frame showing our growth rates were removed. My head says that we must have redecorated while I still lived there and that they were lost many, many years before we moved out. But, my heart hopes that they were still visible when the next home owners arrived. If it was the latter, I regret not adding two final measures to record “Sir, age 19” and “Alex, age 23”.

Don’t get me wrong, though. I didn’t spend three weeks in England in a state of depression. I saved that for the days following my return to Saudi Arabia. Three weeks was long enough that it allowed me to realise just how much I miss my family and friends but short enough that it flew. It absolutely flew.

England inspired me. England is beautiful.

It was wonderful to allow myself to visit London as a tourist. All be it a really well informed and “cool” tourist, but a tourist just the same. I was blessed. Friends, intentionally or unintentionally, were able to show me things that I had never seen. Places that I had never visited or never knew. My mental maps of the city were challenged. I explored places on foot that I had never had time to find.

I took in a few places that I don’t really know. Crouch End, Camberwell and Blackheath. I got to revisit places from my past, like Upper Street, Bethnal Green Road and Hanwell. And old favourites like Barnes and Brentford and Hammersmith. I even got a few minutes in Harrow to be told all about hypertension and discuss my hopeless caffeine habit.

What sticks with me most, though, were the skylines.

Now, I can wax lyrical about the impressive nature of the Dubai skyline forever. Regardless of how I feel about Dubai generally – I’m not it’s greatest fan… I don’t like really like plastic – I cannot deny it’s sheer scale and audacity. 

Wow. Wow Squared. Not taken from an aeroplane.

A view I once caught of it from an aeroplane taking off over the sea will remain one of the most awe inspiring and remarkable sights I have ever seen. Dubai really does just appear out of a desert… Mile upon mile of nothing and, then “Bang!”, there it is, just “there”. Jagged, angular and huge. Wow. Wow squared.

But London is my home. London cannot be beaten.

You can get pulled into the classic views. Of Waterloo Bridge, Hungerford Bridge and the stunning vista’s that you can get from the South Bank. And you should. They live up to everything that has been written about them in poem, prose or song. 

I spent a wonderful Sunday afternoon with my brother and Rosie poking around between Tower and Westminster Bridges in glorious winter sunshine. Art, shopping, life, living and a really expensive gin cocktail to die for. I will level with you. I’ve visited a fair few cities that have captured my imagination, heart or soul but that part of London on its day – Southwark… pronounced “Suth-uck”… - is damned hard to beat.

Picture Postcard London

Gull

Gin with a homemade lime cordial that made you squint.
All infused with hops for extra "floweryness".
Heavenly.

But what I really loved to find again, were the views that creep up on you. The ones that are not expected. The view from the railway viaduct between Kilburn and West Hampstead on the Metropolitan line or the view of the planes heading into Heathrow you get on Barnes Bridge station. They are the views I crave and that I love. The ones that are known by the locals and are missed from the guide books. Those are the ones that I miss. And, by venturing into parts of town that I don’t really know, I got to see some more.

There are too many to single out, so I will note the luck I had with my accommodation.

Jodie’s flat up in Hornsey that allowed me to look out over the old church at Hornsey and Alexandra Palace rising up above.

Toe’s spare room that allowed a view of the city and – if you know what to look for – the top of Tower Bridge. All from Peckham/Camberwell borders.

My brother’s spare room overlooking London Bridge’s railway tracks with the awful Walkie Talkie and Cheese Grater over the river.

And Alex’s living room over Deptford Creek and DLR with a vista right across the city, Elephant & Castle, Stockwell and - if you pay close attention - the beautiful BT Tower.

Over Deptford Creek

Back in Al Khobar, I am left with memories that are gold, or oil or whatever commodity hasn’t had the arse fall out of its value yet. I was born in London. I have lived most of my life within its boundaries. I love and loathe the place with equal measure. It has treated me well and badly. And I know it will always be there for me. At the end of a three thousand mile plane ride, it will welcome me.

I shall be back. Quite soon. And I will fall in love with it all over again.

But first...

First, I shall be visiting Bristol.

My future home.

Note – OK. Admission time...

I do remember a really enjoyable lunch date that I had in Victoria, once. And I chose the venue. And it was in living memory, too. There is/was a really good little, independent café down on Wilton Road (?) where I waited an age for someone in a scarlet red coat and shared parsnip cake. Or courgette cake. Or something that wasn’t carrot cake. Whatever it was, it was good but it doesn’t really matter. In truth, I was only there for the company. xx