Friday, February 25, 2005
The fifth day of snow today. Not one large fall, the only of the year, incapacitating the city - five days where instead of rain: snow. Somehow this seems as it should be. The hum of disappointment that the world is not as it is supposed to be, that the personal reality is inferior to the model, has quietened this week. Looking out of my bedroom window last night, making out the dusted redbrick chimneys of the parallel terraces, it was as if the discordance had shifted. The snow had bound my contemporary experience to other Londons, “real” ones from old photographs and the imaginary but more perhaps more vivid Londons of old films. For once it seemed like the brochure had told the truth. The snow had validated my city, making it as worthy as A Christmas Carol London, Bridget Jones London, Mary Poppins London and all the other, less twee, projections of the place. And it seemed like this new solidity and continuity meant that we could stand unashamed beside Los Angeles, New York, Moscow and Tokyo; our mythical city could match any other.
As my train slid through South London this morning – Balham, Wandsworth Common, Clapham Junction, Battersea Park, Victoria – the usual grime was veiled, the city seemed emptier, quieter, the black stripped trees and concrete blocks had taken on a new role: perches for the snow to sit on. Rather than struggle on the Underground, I decided to walk from Victoria. There were already tourists outside the preposterous (and preposterously ugly) neo-classical façade of Buckingham Palace, tourists who might have felt a similar jolt that I often get in places I don’t know well. My fellow residents and I had not been placed here as local colour. We had places to go; we lived and worked here. I remembered again that the figures in old photographs and films are the same. They are not being charmingly Edwardian or “’50s” for our benefit. This here and now is not an epilogue; it is as deserving of stories and celebration, as glamorous and interesting as any other place and time.
Unfortunately the snow had not settled on Green Park, its name demands that the grass be seen at all times.
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As my train slid through South London this morning – Balham, Wandsworth Common, Clapham Junction, Battersea Park, Victoria – the usual grime was veiled, the city seemed emptier, quieter, the black stripped trees and concrete blocks had taken on a new role: perches for the snow to sit on. Rather than struggle on the Underground, I decided to walk from Victoria. There were already tourists outside the preposterous (and preposterously ugly) neo-classical façade of Buckingham Palace, tourists who might have felt a similar jolt that I often get in places I don’t know well. My fellow residents and I had not been placed here as local colour. We had places to go; we lived and worked here. I remembered again that the figures in old photographs and films are the same. They are not being charmingly Edwardian or “’50s” for our benefit. This here and now is not an epilogue; it is as deserving of stories and celebration, as glamorous and interesting as any other place and time.
Unfortunately the snow had not settled on Green Park, its name demands that the grass be seen at all times.
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