This is all so real. For me, like some others, it was NYC. But there's the same sense of revisiting a massive charming asshole lover from whom you have recovered at length. I lived in NY for a long time and it took me at least two years straight on an Irish peninsula to stop being scared when people said hello. After eight years it's like, if I pass someone and they don't at least give the nod I think, who is this barbarian. The lack of eye contact in American shops is what scares me now, when I'm back for a rare visit. Amazing how we can adapt. Fuck living in big cities though.
The nod-and-greeting thing always amuses me. In Germany (confession, this experience is from the 70s and 80s so may have changed) when walking in the countryside in the south you could be sure of exchanging a smile and a cheery greeting, the chance of which reduced as you headed north. By the time you’re in the region of Hannover passersby in the woods will stare ahead stony faced. I sometimes wondered whether I had achieved the trick of invisibility, which would be really useful if I could harness it when I needed it.
I know, it's regional here too, very specifically so. I just got back from an early morning walk in my town and everyone was saying good morning like it was their job. Twenty minutes north is a rich town where people will blank you in the woods, like you described. How can we be so estranged from our natural instincts that we won't acknowledge another being alone in the woods, even to check if they're a threat?
I live in London, round the edges, although I would never describe myself as a Londoner. Had to come years ago to study at Bar School in Chancery Lane and never left. I’m one of those people who looks up, with a stupid grin on my face. In fact, I’ve only just remembered that I was walking and grinning during a lunch break, when I realised I had been surrounded by about 7 threatening black youths. The ring leader demanded to know why I was grinning, and without breaking my stride I replied “Dunno, just simple I guess” and carried on my way. When I looked back, they were all laughing and calling back to me that I was ok. Well, that was indeed good to know and I was free to stroll back to the office and carry on with my day. During another lunch break (and this will teach me not to stay put), I was in my car and a car travelling behind me carried out a dangerous manoeuvre by speeding past me. So I beeped. Just a friendly beep. The car screeched to a halt and 4 huge black blokes got out, brandishing baseball bats. As they ran towards my car, I locked the doors and reversed back up Muswell Hill. Unfortunately, they all returned to their car and chased me, backwards. Here we all were, in a car chase, but not like the ones in the movies. This was quite a slow one, reversing uphill. I did manage to shake them off eventually and went back to court to prosecute a trial. These memories have only just come back to me now. I was only going to reply by saying I’ve been to Goldfinger’s house. It was lovely seeing the old TV. But I still look up and grin at people, often engaging them in needless conversation. Sometimes I feel a bit like Crocodile Dundee.
On your last bit, this happened to me one otherwise uneventful day on Cambridge St. in Boston USA, except for me, my chasers beeped me first from behind in rush hour traffic. My brilliant young self proceeded to do something that my youthful impetuous, smart-assed-ness instantly regretted: he gave them the finger in his rear-view. As the traffic moved forward toward a light, everyone was now at a dead stop. With my eyes still in the rear-view, I saw the raging passenger AND driver get out of their car, now diagonally situated in a lane about 3-4 cars behind me. The driver was brandishing some kind of weapon in the palm of his hand as they started their approach, going between cars. I was stuck dead in the water about 2 cars back from the traffic light in the right lane. After making an instant decision that a rolled up window would not do, I drove right right on to the sidewalk, maneuvering back over the curbstone in order to avoid a couple very surprised pedestrians and back on to the sidewalk, then into the intersection, just missing a car coming through that had the green. I turned in the direction of that car and went on my way. It was the only time in my life that I had enough time to consider that my life was in imminent danger, and I had to make an instant decision to save it.
As a Bostonian I am so sorry you had that experience! I know the rumor of Massachusetts and Boston drivers isn’t good. But I have to say that most people are respectful. I guess it’s the luck of the draw and again I am sorry you experienced that.
Thank you Sas. I am a proud Bostonian and, like a typical Chicagoan, I'm always protective of her reputation, just like you are here! You may find relief in knowing that this kind of response could have happened anywhere with that kind of provocation. I tell of the terror I experienced in those moments as a forewarning to never provoke a complete stranger.
Yes, it is often extremely tempting to instantly react with a retaliative gesture or mode... but often inadvisable to appear oblivious &/or dim, - as we can learn by experience, & sometimes with age - 👁️ presuming / hoping we live to tell the tale! 😳😅
Haha this reminds me of when ‘work’ foolishly sent me on a workshop in some big posh part of London . At one point we had to pretend we were on the underground and act like you would in the underground…. Well being a Scouse bird I thought they meant the Merseyrail underground and proceeded to have a 10 minute chat with some dude I didn’t know about his whole family.
Loved this Tom. Cackling at the Jeremy Clarkson analogy. I too lived in London at the turn of the Millennium. In fact, I lived in Greenwich and watched the building of the dome from my digs! I was 18/19 and enjoyed a fearlessness (or stupidity) that completely eludes me nowadays. London makes me feel frightened but weirdly exhilarated, a bit like the Nemesis ride at Alton Towers.
Thanks Jayne. I definitely did feel exhilarated for a short time on Sunday morning, while walking up to the pinnacle of Highgate Village. You were in that area at a similar time to me (I moved from North London to Blackheath in October 2000 and used to love walking across the heath and the park to Greenwich Market).
I live about 15 minutes walk from Blackheath and it still has lovely moments. I was born in Lewisham & sighed a huge sigh of relief when I moved back here after living on the Kent / Sussex border for 20 years. I love the range of people, and the variety of food shops this leads to. Maybe it’s because this isn’t a posh bit of London but I smile at people all the time and mostly they smile back at me. I flirt with ‘moving to the country’ but suspect I never will as London is, as you say, weirdly exhilarating.
Spent two years living and working in London and you nailed what I saw and experienced. Your notes on London reminded me of Bill Bryson's "Notes From a Small Island" as you both have the talent to put the visual details into words that us Yanks (?) can appreciate. Our favorite pub, "The Old Bull and Bush" near Hampstead, had the sign, "Two Countries Separated by a Common Language" and ain't that the truth!
"instantly wanted to write a multilayered 600 page timeslip novel around the long gone tree it was named for, which John Wesley preached from to the local farming community during the 1700s while in the process of founding Methodism."
This sounds like a story I would love to read, so if you ever do actually decide to write it, I'm sure I'm not alone in saying I'm here for it!
I love this piece. I went to London in 1994 when I was 18 from Devon and lived there for 9 years. I had a weird love hate relationship with London. Now I love to visit but only so I can just walk, do the things that I had no interest in in my early 20s, see history and people watch. I find it fascinating now but am glad to come back to Devon after.
I’ve never been to London, though it sounds a lot like NYC. I like visiting big cities, but wouldn’t want to live in one. I spent a summer living in downtown Boston and it was never quiet. Your descriptions of London made me feel like I was there. Thank you for the journey in my head!
I’ve lived in London most of my life so it’s always interesting to read peoples thoughts on it. It has changed hugely over the decades but I still believe it’s the kind of place which can contain everyone ( who can afford to live here) even those of us who appear with straw and underarm pigs although I must add that a lot of my friends had to move out to afford to buy. Only those of us in social housing remain.
Thanks for this. While I've been a city dweller my whole life (Boston born and a NYC denizen for nearly 50 years now) I also understand how the city can at times crush us with its indifference. Of course, I've visited London many, many times over the years and enjoyed it a lot each time mostly for theatre, but now I can't get the image of Jeremy Clarkson's massive head out of my mind. Hopefully I can do that before my next visit!
All I would add is that, in my experience, one can sometimes find lovely "villages" hidden in the urban jungle, with neighborhood shops and restaurants where you are known by name, writers, musicians, actors, young couples and families, other retirees and lots of loved and loving pets. But maybe it takes a few decades of hunting to find them. And the prices! Ugh!
Thanks for that. I'm reading Robert Walser's Berlin Stories at the moment, of his time being a Swiss Bumpkin in an early 20th century metropolis, so an excellent companion to my reappraisal of how I feel about Citylife. I still want to be a person of the city, yet something about being in a quieter place allows for more deep listening. Trying to contain multitudes, but would kill for a quiet morning.
London has always been fascinating and has perhaps as good a history as any other city. Never been there or to Europe for that matter. Do I want to visit London? No. The big cities do nothing for me. But reading about it is quite mesmerizing.
Very nice piece, Mr. Cox. They say that a person of wisdom does not wish to be any younger than the age they are right now. This, I think is true only up until a certain point. (Maybe not, as I have not lived up to that 'certain point' yet) In any event, I think though, at any age, a healthy mind can look back upon any period of their life now behind them and reflect upon a certain innocence, and be endeared by it.
Yes, I would agree with both sides of this, having met many people who appear to live in the past while not making the most of their present as they are sucked into nostalgic thinking of their apparently halcyon days of youth.
Conversely many people I have worked with in their 80s & 90s have said they wish they were a bit younger, but generally speaking, only in terms of the mobility of their limbs! 🤸⛹️🏇
Oh this brought back memories. I did two years in London in the early 2000s, working in magazines rather than papers. Living in first Angel and then Chalk Farm and then running scared back to the country for many of the same reasons. I haven’t been back for years, but we’re visiting in October for a few days to show our boys London, wander around where we used to live and no doubt remind ourselves why we live in a field in the French countryside now.
The push and pull of London can be pretty effective in creating a complicated relationship with the city can’t it? Up until about 20 years ago I was a regular visitor, either for work or the two year postgrad mistake I had foolishly embarked on. I’ve never warmed to the capital but I get why others do. Went to the British Museum with the grandchildren way back. I don’t envisage ever going again.
This is all so real. For me, like some others, it was NYC. But there's the same sense of revisiting a massive charming asshole lover from whom you have recovered at length. I lived in NY for a long time and it took me at least two years straight on an Irish peninsula to stop being scared when people said hello. After eight years it's like, if I pass someone and they don't at least give the nod I think, who is this barbarian. The lack of eye contact in American shops is what scares me now, when I'm back for a rare visit. Amazing how we can adapt. Fuck living in big cities though.
The nod-and-greeting thing always amuses me. In Germany (confession, this experience is from the 70s and 80s so may have changed) when walking in the countryside in the south you could be sure of exchanging a smile and a cheery greeting, the chance of which reduced as you headed north. By the time you’re in the region of Hannover passersby in the woods will stare ahead stony faced. I sometimes wondered whether I had achieved the trick of invisibility, which would be really useful if I could harness it when I needed it.
I know, it's regional here too, very specifically so. I just got back from an early morning walk in my town and everyone was saying good morning like it was their job. Twenty minutes north is a rich town where people will blank you in the woods, like you described. How can we be so estranged from our natural instincts that we won't acknowledge another being alone in the woods, even to check if they're a threat?
I live in London, round the edges, although I would never describe myself as a Londoner. Had to come years ago to study at Bar School in Chancery Lane and never left. I’m one of those people who looks up, with a stupid grin on my face. In fact, I’ve only just remembered that I was walking and grinning during a lunch break, when I realised I had been surrounded by about 7 threatening black youths. The ring leader demanded to know why I was grinning, and without breaking my stride I replied “Dunno, just simple I guess” and carried on my way. When I looked back, they were all laughing and calling back to me that I was ok. Well, that was indeed good to know and I was free to stroll back to the office and carry on with my day. During another lunch break (and this will teach me not to stay put), I was in my car and a car travelling behind me carried out a dangerous manoeuvre by speeding past me. So I beeped. Just a friendly beep. The car screeched to a halt and 4 huge black blokes got out, brandishing baseball bats. As they ran towards my car, I locked the doors and reversed back up Muswell Hill. Unfortunately, they all returned to their car and chased me, backwards. Here we all were, in a car chase, but not like the ones in the movies. This was quite a slow one, reversing uphill. I did manage to shake them off eventually and went back to court to prosecute a trial. These memories have only just come back to me now. I was only going to reply by saying I’ve been to Goldfinger’s house. It was lovely seeing the old TV. But I still look up and grin at people, often engaging them in needless conversation. Sometimes I feel a bit like Crocodile Dundee.
London clearly needs more Crocodile Dundees! Carry on!
On your last bit, this happened to me one otherwise uneventful day on Cambridge St. in Boston USA, except for me, my chasers beeped me first from behind in rush hour traffic. My brilliant young self proceeded to do something that my youthful impetuous, smart-assed-ness instantly regretted: he gave them the finger in his rear-view. As the traffic moved forward toward a light, everyone was now at a dead stop. With my eyes still in the rear-view, I saw the raging passenger AND driver get out of their car, now diagonally situated in a lane about 3-4 cars behind me. The driver was brandishing some kind of weapon in the palm of his hand as they started their approach, going between cars. I was stuck dead in the water about 2 cars back from the traffic light in the right lane. After making an instant decision that a rolled up window would not do, I drove right right on to the sidewalk, maneuvering back over the curbstone in order to avoid a couple very surprised pedestrians and back on to the sidewalk, then into the intersection, just missing a car coming through that had the green. I turned in the direction of that car and went on my way. It was the only time in my life that I had enough time to consider that my life was in imminent danger, and I had to make an instant decision to save it.
As a Bostonian I am so sorry you had that experience! I know the rumor of Massachusetts and Boston drivers isn’t good. But I have to say that most people are respectful. I guess it’s the luck of the draw and again I am sorry you experienced that.
Thank you Sas. I am a proud Bostonian and, like a typical Chicagoan, I'm always protective of her reputation, just like you are here! You may find relief in knowing that this kind of response could have happened anywhere with that kind of provocation. I tell of the terror I experienced in those moments as a forewarning to never provoke a complete stranger.
Yes, it is often extremely tempting to instantly react with a retaliative gesture or mode... but often inadvisable to appear oblivious &/or dim, - as we can learn by experience, & sometimes with age - 👁️ presuming / hoping we live to tell the tale! 😳😅
You are kidding! That sounds spectacular! That’s what I would have done too. Yours sounds much more like a movie.
Come to think of it, it does! I was the protagonist in my own car chase scene!
Such fun!
Haha this reminds me of when ‘work’ foolishly sent me on a workshop in some big posh part of London . At one point we had to pretend we were on the underground and act like you would in the underground…. Well being a Scouse bird I thought they meant the Merseyrail underground and proceeded to have a 10 minute chat with some dude I didn’t know about his whole family.
Standard!!
Brilliant! 💪😄
❤️
😂😂❤️
Amazing piece of bravura writing. Really, really enjoyable!
Thanks Gillian!
Loved this Tom. Cackling at the Jeremy Clarkson analogy. I too lived in London at the turn of the Millennium. In fact, I lived in Greenwich and watched the building of the dome from my digs! I was 18/19 and enjoyed a fearlessness (or stupidity) that completely eludes me nowadays. London makes me feel frightened but weirdly exhilarated, a bit like the Nemesis ride at Alton Towers.
Thanks Jayne. I definitely did feel exhilarated for a short time on Sunday morning, while walking up to the pinnacle of Highgate Village. You were in that area at a similar time to me (I moved from North London to Blackheath in October 2000 and used to love walking across the heath and the park to Greenwich Market).
I lived on Vanbrugh Hill, by Greenwich hospital, which is long gone now. Blackheath was (is!) such a lovely place.
I live about 15 minutes walk from Blackheath and it still has lovely moments. I was born in Lewisham & sighed a huge sigh of relief when I moved back here after living on the Kent / Sussex border for 20 years. I love the range of people, and the variety of food shops this leads to. Maybe it’s because this isn’t a posh bit of London but I smile at people all the time and mostly they smile back at me. I flirt with ‘moving to the country’ but suspect I never will as London is, as you say, weirdly exhilarating.
Spent two years living and working in London and you nailed what I saw and experienced. Your notes on London reminded me of Bill Bryson's "Notes From a Small Island" as you both have the talent to put the visual details into words that us Yanks (?) can appreciate. Our favorite pub, "The Old Bull and Bush" near Hampstead, had the sign, "Two Countries Separated by a Common Language" and ain't that the truth!
"instantly wanted to write a multilayered 600 page timeslip novel around the long gone tree it was named for, which John Wesley preached from to the local farming community during the 1700s while in the process of founding Methodism."
This sounds like a story I would love to read, so if you ever do actually decide to write it, I'm sure I'm not alone in saying I'm here for it!
I love this piece. I went to London in 1994 when I was 18 from Devon and lived there for 9 years. I had a weird love hate relationship with London. Now I love to visit but only so I can just walk, do the things that I had no interest in in my early 20s, see history and people watch. I find it fascinating now but am glad to come back to Devon after.
I’ve never been to London, though it sounds a lot like NYC. I like visiting big cities, but wouldn’t want to live in one. I spent a summer living in downtown Boston and it was never quiet. Your descriptions of London made me feel like I was there. Thank you for the journey in my head!
I’ve lived in London most of my life so it’s always interesting to read peoples thoughts on it. It has changed hugely over the decades but I still believe it’s the kind of place which can contain everyone ( who can afford to live here) even those of us who appear with straw and underarm pigs although I must add that a lot of my friends had to move out to afford to buy. Only those of us in social housing remain.
Thanks for this. While I've been a city dweller my whole life (Boston born and a NYC denizen for nearly 50 years now) I also understand how the city can at times crush us with its indifference. Of course, I've visited London many, many times over the years and enjoyed it a lot each time mostly for theatre, but now I can't get the image of Jeremy Clarkson's massive head out of my mind. Hopefully I can do that before my next visit!
All I would add is that, in my experience, one can sometimes find lovely "villages" hidden in the urban jungle, with neighborhood shops and restaurants where you are known by name, writers, musicians, actors, young couples and families, other retirees and lots of loved and loving pets. But maybe it takes a few decades of hunting to find them. And the prices! Ugh!
Thanks for that. I'm reading Robert Walser's Berlin Stories at the moment, of his time being a Swiss Bumpkin in an early 20th century metropolis, so an excellent companion to my reappraisal of how I feel about Citylife. I still want to be a person of the city, yet something about being in a quieter place allows for more deep listening. Trying to contain multitudes, but would kill for a quiet morning.
London has always been fascinating and has perhaps as good a history as any other city. Never been there or to Europe for that matter. Do I want to visit London? No. The big cities do nothing for me. But reading about it is quite mesmerizing.
Very nice piece, Mr. Cox. They say that a person of wisdom does not wish to be any younger than the age they are right now. This, I think is true only up until a certain point. (Maybe not, as I have not lived up to that 'certain point' yet) In any event, I think though, at any age, a healthy mind can look back upon any period of their life now behind them and reflect upon a certain innocence, and be endeared by it.
Yes, I would agree with both sides of this, having met many people who appear to live in the past while not making the most of their present as they are sucked into nostalgic thinking of their apparently halcyon days of youth.
Conversely many people I have worked with in their 80s & 90s have said they wish they were a bit younger, but generally speaking, only in terms of the mobility of their limbs! 🤸⛹️🏇
Oh this brought back memories. I did two years in London in the early 2000s, working in magazines rather than papers. Living in first Angel and then Chalk Farm and then running scared back to the country for many of the same reasons. I haven’t been back for years, but we’re visiting in October for a few days to show our boys London, wander around where we used to live and no doubt remind ourselves why we live in a field in the French countryside now.
The push and pull of London can be pretty effective in creating a complicated relationship with the city can’t it? Up until about 20 years ago I was a regular visitor, either for work or the two year postgrad mistake I had foolishly embarked on. I’ve never warmed to the capital but I get why others do. Went to the British Museum with the grandchildren way back. I don’t envisage ever going again.