I grew up as a child in the midwest, but my father always enjoyed travel, and we were lucky to be taken along on his travels with my mother. The first time I came to England was in 1967, when I was five. The longest I have been away from here was six years, between 1978 and 1984, but otherwise I have been coming with regularity, every year or every other year, sometimes more than once a year, sometimes with a three-year gap. I have seen this country change in ways you cannot imagine.
As it is a slow saturday night (for me), I wanted to put down some observations for your amusement. Remember, I was too young for Cool Britania, and my parents were too old (my dad fought in the War, the one you don't want to mention).
Taking it in: food/drink/air
By 1967 war rationing was over, but the reputation of British food was abysmal. I actually always loved it, and particularly love the tea (I think the problem with US tea is it is stale. I never like the tea as well as back home. In fact the only tea I drink at home is iced tea. The lovely hot tea I have pretty regularly here is just not the same when I get tea in the States.
Here is my fabric tea sleeve that I got from the lovely DKos quilt people last summer:
Tea should be eaten with scones and clotted cream. Not with these marvelous goodies you can now find on every street corner. I think this week I am going to go and see if Waitrose still has the marvelous-looking "fairy cake" that I didn't buy last week, because I really don't need to eat pastries...
Up until the late 1980s or perhaps even the beginning of the 1990s, leaded gasoline was still the norm. I remember watching a television report where they tested the vegetables in people's gardens and confirmed what the government was saying, which was that the cucumbers that were grown in the city were too high in lead to be eaten. So much for growing your own food. In the mid 1970s (I don't remember if it was 1975 or 1978) we were driving into London from the north and there was a dome of yellow gunk on the horizon, which grew as we came closer. I had never noticed it so vividly before or since, but it was just heart-stopping to think this was the junk that you were supposed to be breathing. I suppose it would be like that in China, and in Egypt I think we are really lucky that we usually land after dark. But then, there isn't the contrast between the clean countryside and the danky city (did you know that lots of people were dying from the London smog disasters up to the 1950s?). When I was here in the 1980s we would not often sit out on the streets at the pubs even when it was hot because the air was so vile. It was not great inside, but it was disgusting outside. I still know what leaded gasoline smells like -- I can conjure it in my memory because of London.
London has changed indeed:
Getting it out: toilet paper (yes, toilet paper)
What I remember vividly about traveling to London in the 1960s (and I am sure into the 1970s) was the toilet paper in museums. I swear it was waxed paper. Or something like it. The parchment paper that you bake with? Imagine it in small folded sheets, coming out of the toilet paper dispensers. Each of the sheets had in black letters "Property of HM the Queen". I think. Something quite like that. I just couldn't understand why that was toilet paper (after all, in the US we had squeezably soft Charmin). And why would you stamp your name on it? It wasn't as though someone would steal it! After all, you could buy nice toilet paper in the stores, just not have it in the museums. It was uncomfortable, scratchy, and inefficient. Non-absorbing. And just icky.
Sightseeing: the war
We loved sound and light shows when I was little. We saw the Sphinx and the Pyramids, the one at Karnak, the one on the walls of Jerusalem. And the best I ever saw was at St. Paul's where they had the fire of the Blitz re-enacted with flashing flames outside the windows as you sat in the seats for the show. It was impressive. If they had it this year I would go back, as it is the 70th anniversary of the Blitz. No such luck.
Multicultural London:
London has become much more mixed than it was when I was coming here when I was little. And for a place that has a lot of issues with immigrants there is an overt effort to celebrate the breadth of the Commonwealth and the immigrant community. I went to Trafalgar Square last weekend to see the celebration for the 50th anniversary of Nigeria's independence. There was great music and food, and when I turned around from the stage I saw this:
This is the Fourth Plinth of Trafalgar Square, one which did not have a statue on it. The Mayor of London (now a democratically elected position, something that is quite new) has taken the empty plinth and places modern art on it in rotation. Yinka Shonibare, the Nigerian-born artist whose HMS Victory (Nelson's flagship) in a bottle graces the plinth these days is the first by a black artist. It is an ideal contribution to the plinth and to the square. I love this artist, and this work of art.
He also was featured on Art on the Underground and his cover was used for the London Underground pocket map cover.
I have long enjoyed the poetry posters they have up on the underground as well. This year they have Young Poets on the Underground:
I am enjoying the visual landscape of London. Last week I went to Art London, and yesterday to the Saatchi Gallery and saw a show of modern British art (what else?). It was clever, but rather empty of heart. Some I liked, but they tended to be the weird historical referencing pieces. Here is Goshka Macuga's "Madame Blovatsky":
This very modern art is something that we wouldn't have visited when I was little. My dad wanted us to see the traditional London (and I appreciate that he braved Madame Tussaud's for us, although I think he was very interested in the French revolutionary stuff there!). And we did, visiting the Museum of London and doing a river trip down to Greenwich, and Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament, the image that I will leave you with -- sunset along the river Thames, in early October.