More England… And a Teaser

A few weeks ago I wrote about my trip back to my home city. Aside the dog shit – that other Londoner’s have told me that they agree and is one of their main bug bares – I wrote about vistas and views across the city.

There was a story that I couldn’t fit in. That didn’t fit quite in place.

So here it is…

More England

Not speaking to other’s only reaches number five of a Time Out tube etiquette.

Time Out - Tube Etiquette

Don’t talk to anyone. We are not here for fun. We travel.

The same can be said of London buses.

Or London.

This may explain the nervousness of the voice that piped up on a 78 bus from Peckham Library to Liverpool Street station one Wednesday afternoon.

I was with Toe. We were heading to Shoreditch.

Yeah… It’s true. I was back in London for less than 24 hours and heading to Shoreditch. You couldn't make it up, could you? 

I was a bloody tourist. Just shoot me!

Linking back to my recent post “England Oh England”, we were taking in the views and discussing how incredible the City can look.

England Oh England

Heading up the Old Kent Road, we were discussing the relative (minimal) merits of The Shard, Cheese Grater and Walkie Talkie (“Talkie Walkie”… for any French readers). I’m not keen on any but would plump for The Shard if I had to. Just based on its blunt scale and fact that the view from the top would be incredible; but even so I do not believe it has any elegance, or style. It is just a shard of steel and glass. Nothing more.

Ignoring the square mile, I was far more excited by the clear view of The BT Tower you get as you head up the Old Kent Road. I’d never seen it from here before. Completely separate to the rest of London’s skyline it still stands isolated, alone and beautiful.

And this is where a sheepish, fellow passenger waded in to agree with me.

His voice stammered, slightly, as he stated that he also thought that the BT Tower was the greatest building in London. 

Which it is. Obviously. 

Our fellow passenger was so shocked at his own interjection and breaching of the most basic bus rules, he immediately rang the bell, stood up and - rightly - alighted the bus. I mean, where did he think he was? Yorkshire? 

"This is London. Keep your eyes to the grounds and mush shut and everyone will ignore you."

I imagine that he tore his soul apart as he waited for the next bus and continued his journey. Punishing himself before the City could punish him for his inexcusable social faux par (or "gaffe"… for any English readers).

Anyway. I digress.

The BT Tower is fifty years old but it still looks like the future. It looks more alien and futuristic than any of the other buildings that have popped up across London through the intervening years. Canary Wharf, Tower 42, The Shard, the bloody Walkie Talkie.

I guess that the only competition would be The Gherkin. But that has been drowned and near obliterated by the “size” and “height” of more recent developments and now seems lost. It is, also, beautiful but I feel that it less unique. I cannot think of a tower elsewhere to rival the BT Tower’s design whereas the Torre Agbar down near Las Glorias in Barcelona always feels so similar to “The Gherkin” that they feel like cousins. To me, it lessens its impact and originality.

Yes. The BT Tower. That will always stand out to me as the “one”.

To me… It is London.

…

…

…

But this is where it all fades out and comes to nothing. It doesn't go anywhere.

But I want it to.

My PC is getting filled up with false starts about the BT Tower and how it’s impact on me from childhood to date. I have so many ideas, so many disassociated events that seem to link back to it directly or indirectly. I have so much to share but I cannot get down.

This is one of the key reasons that I didn't post for so many weeks across January. I was stuck in an epic with no start, no middle and definitely no end. I had sleepless nights with it rattling around my head. I kid you not. I could not sleep thinking about the BT Tower!

I need inspiration. I need to find a way to get through it.

So this sits as a teaser of sorts. Something that is out there. Something public. Something that will make me complete my task.

Alternatively, this will amount to the straw that broke the camel’s back and I will drown in an abyss of BT Towerness… of nonsense.

One day.

Soon. Or later. Time will tell.

I know it sounds painfully pretentious but hope it’s interesting. Perhaps it'll be funny, too. I hope. I truly do.

Stay tuned.

Engage

Upon my return to the Kingdom, a degree of reintegration was required. A degree of relearning.

Of re-engaging.

Routines and patterns were soon re-established. I’m paid to be here. You do what you do. Get up, go to work, make time for the gym, shop, cook and eat. Easy.

Life.

But something was missing. Something wasn't feeling right.

Not living.

On a Wednesday evening, I realised what it was. I’d stopped exploring. I’d stopped learning about the town that I was living in. I was falling into a rut. It had been so, since earlier in the year. One of the key reasons to make the step over to this part of the World was to see something different, somewhere alien to me. To be excited by it. To learn.

Thankfully, the realisation didn't occur while lying bored, tired, lazy and depressed on my sofa but while strolling into town to go shopping. I’d forgotten how the town changes after dark.

The crowds. The noise. The bustle. The light. The colour.

It’s a different World. People come out to play. The souks, shopping centres and side markets are full. People peruse the lines of shirts that stretch for blocks in the open air. 90% polyester, they crackle and crack as they are pushed, pulled and pawed. Illegal stalls hawk wares from carpets and cloths set out on the roadside. The restaurants – so many restaurants – fill and fight for custom. Traffic fills the street. Mostly static, the sound of horns fills the air and it takes a degree of bravery and/blind stupidity to weave across the roads.

And this is multiplied by ten on a Friday.

And I love it.

As usual, no photos can really do it justice. But I do try…

Coffee

There is a café on The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques Road. The night I caught it, there was no-one there. On a night when football is showing, they set up a giant screen in the street behind and lay out plastic patio furniture. It’s never mobbed but always busy. A sea of faces staring at a TV screen that is invisible from the main street.

Bathing in Blue

I stumbled over this residential building bathed in blue light. It called from afar, partially covered and concealed by trees further down the road. As I got close, I realised that it is just a standard block of apartments and that the blue light has nothing to do with it. A hotel/apartment block opposite has blue neon advertising on its roof. The basking blue light on the residential block is just light pollution. All the shutters were closed shut. I’m not surprised. I used to live on Hounslow High Street one Christmas. We had no curtains. The multi-purpose Diwali and Christmas lights were a menace for three months.

Neon Wonderland.
For Sale. Anything. Everything!

Old Concrete

Street lighting is far from ideal. The streets are quite dark. Much of the glow comes from the heavy handed signage carried by many retailers and from lights from private residential blocks. It works. It looks good.

Watch & Light

There is an obsession with watches.

The Souks are full of watch shops and stalls who are always keen to talk to me. I’d suggest that they notice that I never have a watch on my bare arms and see me as a likely customer, but I am a realist. They see me as an American or European with more money than sense, so want me to share.

I’ve worn a watch once since 2006. I was told to in the Spring of 2007. I’d been late for a couple of meetings at work and it was noted that I didn’t have a watch.

I listened to the advice but it stopped. It was a sign. I was vindicated. I never intend to wear a watch again.

Red Light Spells Danger.
Money will be spent here!

The reason I was out on a Wednesday night.

Some people will recall that I have an obsession with stationery items. It’s as if, somewhere deep inside my psyche, there is a teenage girl trapped. Her voice can only be heard in Paperchase or Staples or Rymans.

Jarir Bookstore is just as dangerous.

I may go there to buy computer supplies and stuff, but I will always leave with a new pen… and some colourful post it notes… or something. Anything!

So I have tried to get out and explore, more. Retracing my steps of the evening in daylight on a deathly quiet Friday morning as the population geared up for midday prayers.

American School Buses.
When they are past their "use by" date in the US they are shipped off around the World.
Khobar is full of them. Owned and used to transport labour from accommodation blocks to workplaces.
On a Friday, they rest.

Prince Faisal Bin Fahd Road
From old to new.

Prince Faisal Too...
A view from a colleagues office looking back down toward the old Pepsi Cola factory, The Meridian Hotel and sea beyond.

Flowers and traffic on Prince Turki Street

The road names mean little to me. I know them because they are listed on Google Maps. No-one appears to navigate by road names. Everything is decided by their closeness to landmarks; the older the better. Most people know “Silver Tower”. If they don’t, I drop back to the “Old Pepsi Cola Factory”. It’ll get me on the right road…

Pepsi Cola were one of the first American giants to invest and fund development in the town.
This is the remnants of the advertising on their old factory.
It remains a landmark.

The local Tamimi Market store has a series of old photographs of the town taken over the past thirty or forty years showing Khobar’s humble beginnings as a small fishing town, the addition of King Fahd University (Petroleum & Chemicals) and expansion as a thriving city. I live on the edge of the old town. Few buildings are above four storeys. They are a uniform sandy grey. Most show signs of wear and tear. Steel, breeze block and concrete construction shows its age quite quickly. You can see the original districts, of residential, shopping and industry. As a geographer, the town planning is obvious once you can work out where the boundaries were. But, increasingly, the boundaries are becoming blurred as vacant blocks are turned into whatever can turn a profit.

Old Khobar is slowly being regenerated. Lost. New buildings, better utility provision. New roads, underpasses and bridges. The town feels like a near permanent building site. The old is making way for the new.

Another street dug up and cables being relaid.

Sofitel. Modern out of dust.

The rubble of a demolished building in the old town.
Scrub beginning to take hold.

Fouad Centre
All the food you can eat.

Artificial lake on the Corniche.
Landscaped gardens on the seafront.

Mosque
Gold surrounded by a dusty wasteland and cricket on Friday afternoons.

Municipal Art
Hope. Inspiration and Pride.
Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques Road

I’m liking the mix. The transition. Khobar feels lived in. Rough around the edges but with a pride and determination to move forwards. To change shape. To grow up. To become a swan.

A couple of weeks ago, I went out to Half Moon Bay. I’d been told about it since I was here back from day one. It offers a chance to take in the “seaside” in a Saudi way.

Obviously, it’s more car heavy than in the Europe. Although some provision is made for parking and for beach huts (concrete shelters where families can keep out of the sun and barbecue meat, most of the beaches are a free for all. Cars are driven to the sea front across the sand. Afterall, it’s where the desert meets the sea.

Yellow, orange, and blue. Ridge and furrow. Light and dark.
Check out the litter, though. It's everywhere.

Salt flats and dunes.
Compacted by the wheels of so many cars.

Way back, I posted some pictures of the desert taken en route to Riyadh. A friend sarcastically noted that they didn’t hold the romance of the Lawrence of Arabia images that they have of the desert. And in the most part, that is a true reflection of what I see. The desert is just that. It is deserted. It is big and bleak and lifeless. No romance. But, I get that there is something magical about the formation of dunes. Far from the biggest in the World, Half Moon Bay does – at least – allow a slightly more romantic version.

The front is loaded with temporary market stalls. Clothing. Food. Anything. Like Khobar, the place bustles. Adults relax next to their cars, wind breaks allow family privacy… Apart from the cars, it all feels familiar to me. Kids play. Pony and Camel rides. Bouncy Castles and quad bikes.

Quad and Bouncy Castles.
It was refreshing to see that girls were included in the driving games... Make the most of it while you can!

A guide supports a child on a pony. The camel carried a parent. I love the composition of this shot.
Simple but effective.

And still, I cannot believe my luck that I live by the sea. Beautiful.

Looking South

Hot Beach Action. A man named Francis contemplates the nature of life, love, happiness and sex.
Mostly, though he was contemplating the art of taxi driving.

OK. Not Half Moon Bay. This is the view toward Bahrain a few nights ago at dusk. I love the water colour textures and near invisible horizon.

Estonia

A few weeks ago, while I was over in the UK, my uncle passed away. He had been suffering from cancer; his death was not unexpected.

But it was still a shock and a shame.

I toasted his memory in a pub in London with my friends.

Today, he will be cremated. Only in England could the process of a cremation and funeral be complicated and delayed by road works, but that is the way it is over on Tyneside this year.

I cannot be there. Newcastle upon Tyne is long way away from home. But it doesn't mean that I cannot spare a few thoughts.

Back in my childhood. In the spring of the year that The Stranglers released “Black and White”, I visited Newcastle for the first time. It is the first memories I have of my cousins, my aunt and my uncle. I know that I had met them before, but this is the first time that I recall being with them.

I was in awe of my uncle. He was physically imposing, confident, bold and funny. He was also caring. I recall feeling safe around him. He drove a Citroen DS with its “self leveling suspension”. I was smitten.

We stayed in the suburbs of Newcastle for a few days before we headed north into Northumberland. To Beadnell. I stayed in a caravan for the first of only two times in my life… I don’t like caravans… I was young enough to see it as the most incredible adventure.

I have memories of trips out into the countryside, but my key memory was of the afternoon that my uncle took my father, my brother and I out in the small boat – a sailing dinghy - that – I believe – he co-owned.

My memory may be wrong, but it was a blue. Therefore, it was blue! I don’t know if it had a name, but I will call it "Estonia".

I was scared. If you've not seen the North Sea, it rarely looks comforting. It’s not a flat, azure pool. It always looks choppy. To me, mostly it is green grey and rough looking. I was a little kid, I was petrified.

Please excuse my nautical terminology. I know nothing of sailing except this experience and an adventure watching turtles on a pedalo in Zakinthos.

The boat was small. Space for no more than four or five people. I remember the instructions that my uncle gave us before we set sail. I recall the cold of the water as I set off to climb aboard. I recall my uncle taking me in his arms to lift me into the craft. And I recall the excitement and the fear…

Once out into the sea, my uncle started to show off. He started to have fun.

The balance of such a small boat is delicate. Given my poor physics knowledge, I guess – I reckon – that the tight turns that the craft are capable of are dependent on the efficient shifting of weight to counter the wind against the sail. The weight of its occupants prevents the boat tipping over. That sounds reasonable, doesn't it?

So, my uncle starts to perform tight turns on the water. My brother and father are having to wait for his command to move from side to side. They scramble left to right - is that port to starboard... I don't know -  trying to avoid to boom as it twisted and turned searching to catch the wind. Neither my brother nor father have ever been the most athletic or agile. I remember them seeming to crack their heads on the boom each time they were forced to move. My uncle worked them hard.

And all the while, I was sat at the back of the boat, out of the way. I had been instructed not to move, not to touch anything but to hold on tight.

As my brother and father stumbled around the boat, apparently at my uncle’s whim, I started to find it funny. And I remember my uncle catching my eye. He smiled as I giggled and giggled and giggled as my family jumped at his “Captain’s” commands. And that look will never leave me. I saw a caring, warmth alongside a wicked glint of fun.

Over the years our family have had their ups and downs. Good and bad. Details too personal to share online. Communication between myself and my aunt and uncle drifted away to near nothing after the late 1990’s.

But I have never stopped caring.

Ken Stewart.

Uncle Ken.

RIP

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...

...

...

"No one leaves you

When they live in your heart and mind

And no one dies

They just move to the other side"

Estonia

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