So I’m here in London, city of my birth.
The place has changed significantly since I was a kid. Now there are blossom trees all along the North End Road in Fulham. That was unlikely in the old days of pea-soup fogs, those worthy of Charles Dickens.
I have seen the trees with my own eyes. This morning I took a long bike ride on one of the motor-enhanced ride-share lime colored bicycles that now grace the streets. It was a journey through nostalgia. I passed the hospital where I was born – well the hospital that used to be there. Now there are luxury apartments instead of delivery rooms. I passed the Armenian church round the corner from my first bedsit (now called a ‘studio’). The rent back then was ￡7 per week, and pricey at that.
Along Kensington High Street where back in the 1970s I narrowly avoided death due to one of those terrorist bombs that used to visit London.
Then to Olympia, past what used to be the finest greasy spoon in all London, well known to taxi drivers, and past the exhibition halls now tripled in size with the new architecture looking like something from a Frank Herbert novel.
Past the house my mother bought for ￡2,100.
I rode past the Brompton cemetery one of the best hidden places in the entire city to go if you’re in a melancholy mood and minded to write poetry. The mausoleums are mysterious and overgrown with ivy. But there are benches where you can picnic or contemplate the futility of existence, depending.
At Earl’s Court I turned onto the Brompton Road and rode past The Troubadour coffee shop where my Aussie mother met another Aussie. That was back in the day when they called the area, Kangaroo Valley. The man became Mum’s best friend and later, my Godfather, his name was Collin Bates and he was a jazz man who could play. Boogie-woogie like no other.
And finally back to South Kensington where I’ve been billeted. Oddly, far more oddly than I can explain here, the hotel where I am staying is a few doors along from what used to be the HQ of The School of Economic Science. I attended classes there for about five years. I was aflame with youthful zeal and questing for the meaning of it all. Didn’t learn anything about economics, nor much philosophy as it’s generally understood.
The S.E.S. was an organization of completely admirable aspiration. Which is to say that it gave a spiritual paradigm for life, But … the place was in disguise as offering evening classes in subjects of quotidian interest to the thinking citizen, which was slightly misleading (in my opinion). And its methods and mores were dressed in Victorian modes.
I learnt things of great value while I was there and had strange adventures. I also learnt quite a bit that had to be unlearnt later.
In Bute Street South Kensington there is now a weekend street market offering all kinds of fare including a very interesting stall where the entire menu is in French. That is not as faux-chic as it sounds. It is geographically appropriate being just around the corner from London’s L’institut francais, and London’s finest French bookshop.
How and why did all this occur this brisk spring morning?
Oh yes, didn’t I tell you? I was flown here to appear for a second time in that excellent series, The Diplomat.
And guess what: the gig begins with that actors’ favorite: a day off.