Falling in love with London

The diversity of London, its tastes and fragrances turned out to be in sharp contrast to the image of the city I had been creating from my early years, basing on textbooks, illustrations, English lessons and my reading of English classics. Instead of tea rooms, English breakfasts and typical pubs I was in the middle of a multicultural melting pot – unlike in Italy or France. The small corner shops, family businesses of the immigrants from India, Pakistan, Sri-Lanka and Bangladesh apart from curry sauces, chapatti cakes or prawn paste, offer Polish beers and Russian dumplings.

I bought my first London sandwich (with delicious feta cheese) from a small shop, run by an elderly Greek lady. For the dessert, I got two sticky loukomades doughnuts, and full of calories and energy I set off to “savour” the city. I went past a typical English pub, which a few days later got packed with happy football fans, a South-Korean church, shops with Polish, Indian and Armenian food, a little Chinese shop selling dim-sum dumplings, a French bakery with golden croissants, a row of restaurants which serve the cuisines of literally every part of the globe, from Italian food, through Thai or Spanish dishes to sushi. This cultural variety is a commodity here, it also gives London the feel of diversity and novelty. Although the multiculturalism is rather superficial and consumer- oriented as well as quite unreflective, it creates a mixed that is a unique source of inspiration. The scale of the phenomenon was confirmed by the 2012 census revealing that “white Britons” are a minority in London. Only 48% of Londoners identify themselves as “white British” and 37% of the city’s residents were born outside the UK borders – although in some London districts the number exceeds 50% of the population.

So you should not be surprised by the multilingual hubbub the streets of London sound with – there are 300 languages in use! Anyway, one reason for choosing London as the host of the Olympic Games was the fact that “every Olympic team has its fans here.” The Polish and the Indian are the biggest London minorities, but what amazed me was the fact, that according to the survey, the fastest growing “minority group” were the people born in mixed families – there are almost 2 million households where at least one person has a different ethnic background. For them, multiculturalism means not a superficial experience of buying an Indonesian bami goreng, but true internationalism, multilingualism and the necessity to understand and use various cultural codes.

Of course, I meet the Polish around every corner – in the bakery I am chatting witha cheerful shop-assistant from Rzeszów about her holiday plans (she recommends doughnuts – exactly like those bought in Poland on the last Thursday of carnival), in a pub near the National Gallery I am being served by a nice marketing graduate from Poznań, who is telling me with enthusiasm about his negotiations concerning the takeover of the pub (“I could not even dream of running my own pub in Poland after a year’s work!”). We are both discussing the possibility of importing Polish beers, and he is telling me about the English delivery systems, stressing the excellent skills of the Polish of getting around the British job market and competing with English pub masters and Asian immigrants greedy for success. Soon, I catch sight of a signboard “Polish Financial Centre”– it turns out to be one of the many places helping the Poles to calculate their taxes and get acquainted with the British social insurance system. The British owners praise the resourcefulness of Polish immigrants and their incredibly fast professional development (half of the immigrants start their own successful companies just a few months after the arrival). While returning home, I am walking past some more Polish shops, job agencies, law counselling firms, transport companies and translation offices.

Finally, in an Indian shop, I pick a free Polish magazine, COOLTURA. Reading it in the evening, I am thinking about Richard Florida, who emphasised the importance of diversity and multiculturalism (in his famous triad there are tolerance, talent and technology) as a magnet for minorities looking for better life, which (especially in big cities ) becomes an important factor in developing the creative capital and increasing the potential of the “creative class” (artists, designers, actors, architects…). All this translates into bigger innovativeness and a higher GDP.

Just before I fall asleep, I read that one in ten children in London does not know what the capital of Great Britain is….

Second – my readings, or the cultural life

Every week in London, there are hundreds of concerts and performances (there are over 150 theatres), stand-up acts in pubs (there are probably over 3800 pubs and 6100 restaurants), operatic performances, ballets and musicals. There are over 300 museums and galleries and plenty of other attractions and artistic events waiting for their audiences literally around every corner (this is when I think about the second “T” – for talent).

I decide to discover “my” London with a map in my hand looking for the places associated with my favourite writers, artists and musicians. I start with the author of my favourite crime stories, who loved London so much that she made her char- acter Hercules Poirot take up residence at 14 Farraway Street and then, in Whitehaven Mansions. Agatha Christie lived at two London addresses: 5 Northwick Terrace, St John’s Wood and 48 Swan Court in Chelsea. Another crime story writer, Arthur Conan Doyle, lived at 12 Tennyson Road, South Norwood. Looking for the places associated with the great English classic, Charles Dickens, I visited the place at 48 Doughy Street. The author whose words: “ to write you need 500 pounds per year and a room of your own” I remembered for many years, Virginia Wolf, was born in London and lived at 22 Hyde Park Gate in Kensington. Another outstanding woman of literature, Sylvia Plath, author of the Bell Jar lived in London for some time at 23 Fitzroy Road, near Primrose Hill, where she committed suicide. Oscar Wilde, author of another book of my youth, “The Picture of Dorian Gray” resided at 34 Tite Street, while the author of “The Paradise Lost” (which I discovered for myself thanks to the opera composed by Krzysztof Penderecki to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the USA independence), John Milton, lived in Bread Street, and died in London. One cannot walk the streets of London, looking for literary associations, without visiting the places connected with the life of William Shakespeare – the Blackfriars Theatre and the Globe. I finished my search at 22 Ebury Street in Belgravia, where between 1934-1945 lived the father of Agent 007 – Ian Fleming.

Ebury Street is also the place where Wolfgang Ama- deus Mozart lived for some time at number 180. During my trips, I also stopped at 287 Kennington Road, Charlie Chaplin’s Lon- don address and 23 Brook Street, where Jimmy Hendrix once resided. Music could be a topic of another city break – London is undoubtedly the heart of the UK music industry. The musicians who come from London include: David Bowie (the brilliant “Man who Sold the World” and the energetic “Let’s Dance”), Slash (Saul Hudson) known mostly as a member of Gun’s and Roses, the great friend of Princess Diana – Elton John and Burail (William Bevan), whose second album “Untrue” has been acclaimed by critics and users of Discogs and Metacritic as one of the most important musical achievements of 2007, and finally, Brian May from the legendary Queen – 39 position on Rolling Stone’s 100 top guitarists list, and Phil Collins, who won an Oscar for “You will be in my heart”, a song from the Tarzan musical. But I am going to follow the musical traces some other time.

Third – greenery

London is one of the greenest cities in the world (although it was the first city where smog was observed in the 17th century). 1700 London parks – from vast green spaces such as Richmond Park with its beautiful old oak trees, St James’s Park full of fig trees, plane trees and willows, through walled parks such as Chelsea Physic Garden, landscape Hyde Park, Regent’s Park and the quiet Green Park, the small gardens of the City and church yards to numerous squares take up about 180 km2 and make up almost 11% of the city area. The positive influence of green areas on the comfort of living in an urbanised space has been scientifically proved by researchers from the University of Exeter. In the survey lasting for 17 years and involving 10 thou- sand adults (especially those with the experience of moving house), the data coming from five thousand house-holds was analysed. The results were unambiguous: parks, gardens and green squares improve the residents’ physical and mental state as well as their quality of living.

Fourth – innovativeness and creativity

Walking past a simple but charming shop window in the Georgian style (many of such windows can still be seen in London, not only here, at 70 Marchmont Street), my eye catches and intriguing inscription “Good ideas for everyday life”. The school of life is situated here, which offers riveting speeches, inspiring workshops, unique sessions that can help you improve the life quality, increase the level of attention, enjoy inner peace and have good relationships with other people. I enter the school and start studying a long list of its offers. When I try to enrol for some of the classes I discover that most of them have already been sold out (in the evening, I manage to find a vast collection of films from the events, published on the school’s web- site). Thinking about an average Londoner’s quality of life, I am also thinking about my partners, with whom I work and who always inspire me by their creativity, innovativeness and the KISS (keep it simple, stupid) attitude.

I am thinking about the first cash-machine that was put in the wall of Barclays Bank in June 1967. I remember that Lon- don was the first city in the world to have street lamps (in 1417, Sir Henry Barton, city mayor ordered that “lanterns with lights should be hanged out on the winter evenings between Hallowtide and Candlemasse”). On an underground train, I can see the anniversary stickers – on 10th January 2013 one hundred and fifty years passed since Metropolitan Railway opened the first underground line (it is said that the first cars did not have windows and were so claustrophobic that they were quickly nicknamed prison cells or sardine tins). I get off at East End, I want to see Shoreditch, the place chosen by IT giants and a number of smaller companies operating in new technologies. The area is called Silicon Roundabout not without reason. And again I think about Florida and his third “T”, for technology.

Later, drinking traditional English tea “at five o’clock” I feel I must agree with Samuel Johnson, who said that “if a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.”

The article appeared in BEDRIFT magazine, 2013, ISSN 2084-0225

[The article is available in Polish and English]