I have come to London. There was half a plan to meet some friends, but a train strike has nixed that proposal, and I am left wandering around by myself. It did not need to be like this, I have plenty to do. However, I felt that it would be nice to wander aimlessly around London, reflecting on the places and spaces that I used to work and socialise. I think it was before Covid times that I last visited.
I am currently sat in the BFI cafe, to write down some of those reflections.
First, I travelled here on the new Elizabeth line. I feel it is a bit of a sham between Burnham and Paddington, as this is the old creeper train that used to stop at all the stops when I went to college 25 years ago. I never took this train from Slough, always preferring the non-stopper. The Paddington cross rail is a different matter. One stop to Tottenham Court Road (while Bond Street is being finished) is revolutionary and I would have been extremely grateful for this cut to my commute time when working in Fremantle in Soho.
That said, I am gutted that the development at Central Point has turned half of Denmark Street’s Tin Pan Alley into some weird development. I lamented the loss of the Astoria years ago; it still hurts that it has gone. I prefer the new Foyles though, so developers giveth and taketh.
I barely recognised any of the area around Liverpool Street Station, where I used to go to work in Strongroom Studios. I visited the Smithfield market a few years ago with my friend Jon, but it seems to have changed even further in the last five years.
I went to Tower Bridge, which is obviously a landmark that hasn’t changed, although the skyline around it differs. London Bridge station has had a facelift. I wanted to go to the National Portrait Gallery, but that is closed whilst it too is having a facelift.
Camden was still Camden in most senses. I went on a loop, past the Dublin Castle, a pub where we gigged in 1998. It was lovely to still see the posters promoting concerts for bands on the outside wall. I carried on round Primrose Hill, where I worked in a recording studio on a placement during university, and it was where I witnessed 9/11 unfolding on the telly. The area is still as affluent and pretentious as always. I went up past Chalk Farm station and back into the markets. There are still the colours and the vibrancy. It has been gentrified to some extent, but that was apparent even when I was a student in my first year of university, where we made a film about the changes. A few years later it was destroyed by a fire (convenient) and redeveloped.
Places change. Visiting every few years is like seeing a a child and then skipping the formative years and seeing them as a teenager; the person is barely recognisable. I have had similar experiences in Dublin and Berlin, both places where I have fond memories and have lived and visited intermittently over the last 20 years. Bournemouth has changed significantly in the time since Bee and I moved here, but the day to day presence renders the changes relatively imperceptible until you deliberately reflect on them. And in general, the changes are good. However, there is a distinct feeling when revisiting a place where you were once so familiar. A clear sense of the world moving on regardless. The experiences were tethered to a different space and time, and no longer exist. Not better or worse, just different. My niece is currently 18 and enjoys visiting London; her experiences (and memories) will be different from mine. I went to Leake Street for the first time on this trip; I bet the people who were first there with Banksy would be mortified at the liberal elite on bike tours having their ‘cultural experience’.
If I feel a slight sense of melancholy over the changes, it is because I sometimes wish I could revisit and re-experience some of the memories. I think it is the impossibility of such a re-experience that is so strongly felt when seeing the city change. A desire to go back in space and time. I basically want a time machine. Who doesn’t?
