Of Bells and Gherkins

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Of bells and gherkins!
 
Well for the moment the bells are not ringing at St Botolph’s across the way. Bell-ringing, we have discovered, falls quickly into the category of ‘you can have too much of a good thing,’ and when it comes to bells surfeit is indeed swift!
One of the delights of living in the city is that there is a church on just about every corner. At least it feels like that, particularly on Saturday morning which seems to be practice time. So much for the silence of the abandoned City!
Thoughts of throttling the bell-ringer, are sadly, frequent.
But here, as they say, is where we are at, huddled between the hustle and bustle of Leadenhall, Bishopsgate and Houndsditch. Now there’s a name for a street, Houndsditch! In that way of ancient cities, it is of course, or rather was, exactly what it claims to be. No double-speak in those days.
It was, in more ancient days, when London was ringed by a City wall, the ‘ditch’ , on the outer side of the wall, into which the residents threw their garbage, and it seems, rather a lot of dead dogs!
Not that there is much of a wall left these days  beyond the broken brick remains  that raise feeble heads between  the rise of glass and steel.
Although as luck, or perhaps the lack of luck would have it, we have as our nearest neighbour one of the most ‘questionable ‘of London’s attempts at the modern skyscraper.  Leaning out of the window of my East End eyrie I can glimpse the gherkin, otherwise known as 30 St Mary Axe. There are some who might wish they could take an axe to this London landmark and there are others who regard it  more fondly and call it the ‘erotic gherkin.’ This latest convinces me that I really do not understand the English!  Phallic it may be, but then most modern skyscrapers arguably are, and this cigar-shaped version, criss-crossed with gherkin-like wrinkles, is no exception.
 One cannot help but wonder just what strange substances the architect was ingesting on the day that he or she envisaged such a construction in their mind’s eye and saw it being built within a vision-blink of the sublime perfection that is St Paul’s!
Comfort can only come in the thought that while St Paul’s will endure  through disasters of taste and ego, the gherkin probably will not.
We are now into our fifth week in London with one more to go. It is always interesting to have the experience of ‘living’ in a strange city. There is an element of pretence about it of course,  because for us it is just one of many ‘camps’ on the journey, but it gives insight into the experience all the same. It reminds me that while big cities are interesting they are also hard work.
I will say though that despite the general ugliness of much  of the modern architecture one has a greater sense that an awareness has grown in  terms of the needs of human beings and the many piazza like areas nestling behind and inside office blocks are delightful.  They create a much-needed intimacy in a world where one is so easily dwarfed by cement, glass and steel.
And other things have changed over the years.   There is now a fair to even chance  of getting a decent cup of coffee in London which is a plus. The food has improved somewhat ,although given how good it is in Oz it still, by necessity falls short of the mark. I don’t even want to think about what it costs here. 
We have once again been making the most of the theatres, always good and these days, more readily available given a drop in tourist numbers. And we have been making our way through countless exhibitions and galleries, something that makes  big cities worthwhile for a time anyway. 
Whether it is a lack of tourist numbers or the novelty of a relatively sunny start to summer,  an event that is never to be underestimated in the UK, the galleries and museums have been less crowded than usual and it is quite a gift to spend time alone, standing in front of some of the greatest works of art in the world. We have been lucky enough to have had two holiday weekends during our stay here and those are times when London literally empties and only those who cannot afford to leave or have nowhere else to go are left. It is the best of times to be a tourist, and all the more precious because of its rarity.
But neither of us will be sorry to move on. London, like all big cities is also hard work.
On a petty level, where I am, as those who know me, often comfortable, I have to say that one of the things I will be most happy to leave  behind are the  doors in this flat. Or rather, the forever closing doors in this flat. It falls into the same category as  bell-ringing actually although surfeit seems to come with the second or third slam.
The doors drove me mad last year when we lived in Cheapside for three months, and yes, I did ponder the symbolism of the experience until I was told that they were a ‘must’ in such establishments and I realized that I had not strictly ‘drawn’ them to myself.  In fact, it would have  been unusual to have avoided them. I am told, that as a fire protection, doors are hinged to close in this way.  I have not quite grasped why a closed wooden door will stop a fire, nor how it can work given that human nature is such that one endeavours to keep all doors permanently wedged open. This is done with a doorstopper, of which we possess some half a dozen or more in various stages of disrepair. It is clear, that life as an English doorstopper is both short and brutal.  Or perhaps no-one has simply gotten around to making one that works properly. But more on that theme later!
The concept of the self-closing door, it seems to me, is a bit like communism and religion: good ideas in themselves for seemingly sensible reasons, but when human nature is brought into the equation, the practice  all too often, turns out to be deeply flawed.
We feel fortunate, that so far, we look like leaving Creechurch with all of our fingers intact. No mean feat in a life lived between one slamming door and another.  Because  as I said, of course, the doorstoppers only half work. But then there is a lot of that around here.
I have pondered during my time here, what it is that makes Australia work as well as it does by comparison. Is it the fact that people are paid a basic wage on which they can live instead of merely survive? Or is it because in Australia it is not only accepted that you will think for yourself, it is expected? Or are people trained better? Or is it the sunshine? All reasonable questions.
It is rare to find people here who not only seem to be enjoying what they are doing,  let’s not go into ‘knowing what they are doing,’ but more importantly, are interested in you as a customer.
As a taxi driver said to me yesterday: “People here are not paid enough to care. Why should you put yourself out when there is nothing to be gained.”
One could answer that satisfaction in the job is a gain, but then we all wish to feel that we are respected by others and we all wish to feel that we respect ourselves and in a largely material world, the amount in the pay packet at the end of the week goes a long way toward providing a measure of that respect.
As someone once said, ‘If you pay peanuts then you get monkeys!’ There are a lot of monkeys in this town. There is also a lot of inverted snobbery, not only in this town, but in the UK as a whole one suspects.
The class system is alive and well in Britain and it is enshrined in language…. Or to be specific, accent.
When you open your mouth in the UK you are immediately ‘placed.’ It is a categorization that is as final and as limiting as the caste system in India. As much as anything, because, like the caste system, people limit themselves  through the beliefs that they hold.
There may well be snobbery at work but inverted snobbery tends to have more power because it comes from within, and often is unconscious. One cockney taxi driver (and yes, I do know how the Tube works)  told me he believed he could never make it in the ‘City’ because he would never be accepted . He admits, that anyone with a ‘posh’ accent, is taken by him to be educated. It is not, of course, a given in reality, but it is a given in perception that limits people here.
The inverted snobbery also prevents people from  attempting to change how they speak, even should they decide it could be improved.  It  becomes a matter of ‘pride’ to speak as one does, despite that fact that many of the accents, cum dialects, represent  what amounts to a mauling of the English language . There are times when even watching the news becomes a challenge that sub-titles could fix in an instant.
A New Zealand friend, working as an optician in south London says she has  been chastised because of her accent, for ‘gittin above erself.’  Her pleas that she was a Kiwi and this was just the way she spoke fell on deaf ears, and she was ultimately forced to ‘git erself sor….ed’ in order to communicate.
Political correctedness at work in the UK in recent decades  saw an end to the old ‘benchmark’ of  a generalized BBC accent and has meant that accents and dialects have become even stronger. And more common. The word ‘common’ being used in the dual sense! No doubt there will come a time when all UK television programmes and films are sub-titled, not only for foreigners but for the  increasingly diverse British population as a whole.
But more than anything, one has a sense that Britain maintains the rigidity of its class system through language in the same way that India maintains the caste system through religion. Neither are positives I suspect in terms of productivity or progress.

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