Dirty old river

I'm not that wild about London, to be frank. Britain, I like. Scotland, I love.

I've been down in England for a year, living in the Big Smoke proper for three odd months. It's a struggle, like any big city. Lots of people, lots of noise. The prices are exorbitant. The transport is shit. It takes forever to get anywhere.

I live south of the Thames; I work and hang out with people who mostly live north of it. The hassle of traversing the river sometimes feels like going through Checkpoint Charlie. I worked late tonight, finishing off a story that needed to be in tomorrow. I was feeling a trifle crabby as the Number 68 trundled along towards Waterloo Bridge.

Behind me were two girls, maybe university age. They were both southern Continentals, but from different countries, they were speaking English but obviously both their second languages. They were jabbering about how great the city is, the wealth of opportunity, the excitement.

Just as we started to cross the bridge, one said 'Look, a Waterloo sunset. This always makes me happy.' And the sun was indeed setting, this deep gold kissing the tops of the buildings on the south side, glinting off the Oxo tower. One of the girls had the Kinks song on her phone, and she started playing it and they both began singing along softly, joyfully to the tinny, mini-tannoy sound. I looked up and down the river, Big Ben, Houses of Parliament, the Eye, Somerset House, those stupid floating pubs. And I too started singing along, smiling, joyfully.

Southbank

A charming bit of flanneuring yesterday, through nearly deserted Fleet Street to Blackfriars. This side of London is very peaceful on a Sunday; during the week it's chock full of go-go lawyer types. Then over the bridge to the Southbank which never ceases to depress me. The walk along the Thames is fine, just don't look at the monstrosity of the Southbank Centre.

Did anyone ever think this jumped up multi-storey car park was even interesting, let alone beautiful. Even in 1976? You look up and down the river just in the immediate vicinity, and you see jewels: the Oxo Tower, the dome of St Paul's, the Penguin building on the Strand. And yet this cultural mecca is soulless, despite all attempts to dress it up. At night, there are neon lights beamed on the National Theatre breeze block Fly Tower and last year, they tried to cover its sides with grass. Which was interesting for the day or two the grass lived. Then the grass just turned and it looked like a sad piece of scrubland, albeit vertical scrubland.

Patriot's Day

Yesterday was Patriot's Day, the anniversary of the Battle of Lexington and Concord and Paul Revere's ride, a public holiday in Massachusetts and Maine (or Monday is, rather). It marks the beginning of our struggle in which we threw off the shackles of British oppression. Okay, 'we' is a bit over-egging it - at the time my ancestors were digging up potatoes in the West of Ireland and stamping grapes in the hills of Asti. And it was more the French navy than George Washington which won the war.

But still, I shall celebrate over here, reverting at least for an afternoon in the pub to some sort of Yank stereotype, telling all and sundry how we 'kicked Limey ass' whilst drinking Bud Lite and stuffing my face with curly fries. Yeah, should be fun. Then maybe I'll go home and read Longfellow's Midnight Ride of Paul Revere. Or I'll listen to that Beastie Boys tune off License to Ill which, despite name checking him in the title and song, seems not to be about Paul Revere or his ride. But it does capture that revolutionary spirit with lyrics like:

'So I grabbed the piano player and I punched him in the face
The piano player's out, the music stopped
His boy had beef, and he got dropped
Mike D. grabbed the money, M.C.A. snatched the gold
I grabbed two girlies and a beer that's cold.'

Word to your mutha, as I believe Longfellow wrote at the close of 'The Song of Hiawatha.' Word to your mutha.

LBF

A break in the nascent blog for a rather tiring, dissolute time at the London Book Fair. I was running around scaring up (inventing?) stories, writing them up and then, sometime mid to late afternoon, the drinks start. First at publishers' stands, then in the pub, to a publisher's party and then who knows where (and believe me, I still don't know where).

I don't know if any real business gets done at LBF now, particularly on the rights side - agents have told me that no deals are agreed at the fair, even if there is a hot book, a lot of checking has to be done with head offices. So maybe it's solely about meeting folk face to face - and a piss up.

I met someone who runs trade shows (not for Reed, the LBF backers) who cheerfully admitted to me that they are a 'scam.' 'I sell air and space', he said. 'And the best thing, is that once you get people to come, they have to come next year because they get scared they'll miss out on some business.' And then he laughed demonically and disappeared in a sulphurous puff of smoke.

Piss take

I was talking to my cousin Jeff from Boston the other night and he told me about about a piece he heard on NPR about a shortage of public toilets in the UK. Actually, he didn't say toilet, he said "loo," chuckling as he threw in the Brit-speak he picked up from the story.

This story has gotten a bit of play over here lately as well. A similar one has cropped up every few months in the nearly ten years I have lived here. Usually it's a politician banging on about it, or some old duffer has been caught short and has started a public awareness campaign.

The reason I mention it, and part of the reason for this blog, is it shows how America perceives the UK. The NPR piece had a rather twee angle: how the hardy Brits were going to tackle the problem. Pubs were going to let cross legged non-customers in to use their toilets and councils have brought out open air urinals in popular city centre areas. Banding together just like in the blitz, stiff upper lip, pip pip,cue Rule Britannia.

Which is probably as inaccurate a picture of the UK as you can get. 'Course Brits think Americans are all guileless, fat, irony-free, gun totin' psychos. Which is untrue; we're not all fat.

There are some pertinent things we can glean from the toilet story. Apparently 95% of Brits have pissed, shat or puked in public. Which means everyone has, except maybe your gran; just because you don't want to think about your gran taking a wee in public, but she probably has really.

As I said, I've seen this story crop up for nigh on ten years. I was in Soho the other night, on the way home from the pub. On a side street, I saw a guy weaving and pissing against the side of one of those open air urinals, not into it. That for me, is real Britain. A problem, complaints from the public, promises from leaders about getting things done, and nothing ever gets sorted out. So you end up pissing in the street.