London Lives

Saturday was frustrating. It didn’t start out being frustrating. After listening to Saturday Live I managed to have a lovely bath and breakfast and be out of the door by 10.45. Early indeed.

The problem is the transport at weekends. Victoria line completely closed. Circle, Metropolitan, Hammersmith and City closed at random points. All these connecting arteries not really connecting. I hope the Olympics will be worth it.

And then the buses were diverted around the Square Mile because of the Lord Mayor’s Show. So, a combination of tradition and modernity conspired to snarl up a simple journey to the library to write.

When I got to the library to write, a power cut had snarled up the computers.

So, writing today was not to be and I was feeling philosophical about it by this stage. I chatted with an officer from the City of London police and established that yes, the buses were still diverted and what a bloody nuisance it all was. At 1.30 I gave up the ghost to go home.

There was relative sanity on the Piccadilly line.  Opposite sat a beautiful man asleep with his book open. And above him, part of the Poems on the Underground series, was this newly-discovered gem by Katharine Towers entitled The Way We Go:

the way we go about our lives
trying out each empty room
like houses we might own
eavesdropping for clues in corridors until

standing at a gate or attic window
seeing beauty in a flag of sky
we’re gone, leaving the doors open
all the lights burning

(copyright Katharine Towers)

Simple and beautiful.

I met up with a good friend today (yes, you know who you are) to mooch to Muswell Hill for food and natter. It was fairly blustery walking weather and he suggested walking there instead of getting the bus (it’s probably about two miles).

It was indeed good walking weather as we made our way over Crouch Hill and into Crouch End, only to find our path halted by the large Oxfam bookshop there just past the church tower.  Our plan to get there in half an hour was immediately cast aside in favour of a browse among the sections. This place manages to be neatly organised while offering promise in each section. Philosophy, thrillers and contemporary fiction all reside here. And there are vinyl albums with lurid covers and singles for fifty pence. What’s not to love? A charity shop hasn’t been this seductive for a long time.

Now, one of my reasons for increased use of public libraries is to borrow all the books I want and to avoid coming home with armfuls of them from charity shops. I didn’t come out with armfuls, but did manage to spend a fiver on two of them: Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine is always a good read (and a great study for plotting and psychological characterisation for other writers). I’ve also been looking out for Andrew O’Hagan’s The Missing for some time; I enjoyed reading his related articles in The Guardian in the nineties.

In truth, I could have spent at least twenty pounds on books from there today, but managed to restrain myself. My friend bought some books too and we continued on our way, ambling on up to the higher ground of Muswell Hill. Nice food in the restaurant and a small jaunt in another bookshop (just minutes from early Sunday closing, saving us from being led even further astray…)

Then the bus home and a drink in the sprawling pub nearby. Real ale in a proper speckled glass with a handle for him and a lush Rioja for me.

There’s a good sniff of Autumn in the air now.

Over the last few weeks I’ve expanded my living room by looking for other spaces in which to write. This has led me to those apparently unsung heroes: libraries. All the boroughs have a number of libraries, with a couple of larger ones in each of them. You used to have to live or work in the relevant borough to get a membership card, but no more! Now you only need a UK address to join any of them.

I have mentioned earlier the lovely reference libraries and writing spaces at Marylebone, Paddington and Westminster Reference Library (all part of City of Westminster Libraries). Now, I have added City of London Libraries to my list of Spaces. I spent some time at the Guildhall Library, which has a brilliant and extensive specialist collection about the history of London and is a great space in which to write: modernity among so much history. Lovely bookshop too; I bought a postcard of Fleet Street from c1905.

Similarly, the Barbican Library has a splendid London collection and a huge range of books covering hundreds of other subjects. The Barbican itself is intriguing (an iconic 1960s living space and arts centre built on the ruins of the bombed area of Cripplegate). You wander along the Moorgate Highwalk  to get to the arts centre and are entering a special concrete space.

The thing that’s struck me about all the different libraries is just how well-used they are. Westminster’s are busy on Sundays with teenagers doing homework and noodling on laptops. The City’s libraries have a broader range of people there at any given time than I had anticipated. So, you might need to wait for that desk or one of the computers. But this is a good thing, right? These are important public spaces that are being well-used by, well, the public. Long live it. It seems the libraries are not such unsung heroes after all.

I plan to investigate the Bishopsgate Institute next. These spaces are important.

Anyway, it’s nearly Easter. The weather is (inevitably) somewhat blustery and rainy. And the libraries are closed for four days now.

An early(ish)  jaunt to the LSE to hear a lecture delivered as part of their Reading London event (Cities Programme). The event covered literature, social history and architecture in an attempt to ‘read’ and describe London.

The discussion covered land ownership in Bloomsbury, Christopher Wren (of course!) and how the metropolis has managed to develop, rather than sticking to any major plan. Along the way, we learnt about Wren’s great plan for London (it was all going to be so neat and orderly, apparently; I think London’s organic and somewhat haphazard development has been to its great credit. Imagine all those nooks and crannies being neatly ironed out and not being, well, nooks and crannies any more..). We also discovered that Peter Pan is set in Bloomsbury because Roget (of the Thesaurus)  once lived there and provided many a guiding light.

And then there was the news that the British Museum has some hidden doors in it (well, imagine if the dear BM didn’t hold such secrets). I have noted the locations of these and shall do some discreet prodding of walls next time I’m in there. Hope I don’t get thrown out.

Now that I’ve been bitten again by the writing bug, it’s good to explore other writing spaces and to research ideas. So this week I joined Westminster Libraries (one of them is a good research library too). Off to lovely Marylebone to  collect my card and explore the facilities. The upstairs has an extensive research collection and study area and I sat for a while reading up on John Dickson Carr and locked room mysteries.

Then I hopped on the bus to Paddington to look in another of the borough’s libraries. All fab again. Both are in lovely old buildings. I shall look in the Charing Cross one and the Westminster Research Library this coming week or at the weekend (although I have an LSE lecture and a friend’s play on Saturday).

This is intriguing, too: Westminster’s Archives Centre is serialising an 1846 diary written by Nathaniel Bryceson, a Victorian clerk in Pimlico. His mother was born in 1797 and Nathaniel himself died in 1911. That’s just two generations crossing a very significant period of time. Incredible. I look forward to reading the entries.

When I left the library in Paddington, the day had become suddenly spring-like.

Gloucester Terrace, London W2

Porchester Square, London W2

I saw Mr Shah on the Tube today. He didn’t see me. Mr Shah and his wife used to run the newsagent’s near where I used to work. They used to bicker constantly and complain if you walked in with a newspaper that you’d purchased elsewhere. I think the shop is a chicken place now. Mr Shah had strange hair and dry hands and was an odd local character along the road.

Great interview with Beth Ditto on Woman’s Hour, which I listened to on the way home. Interesting woman with things to say about her home town, her look and the debate about flat stomachs.

Earlier, I listened to some Front Row interviews with Marc Almond as well as William Trevor. Marc Almond is making some unusual Russian music (good to hear that he is  recovering well). William Trevor sounded slightly grand (as perhaps he should). The Independent once called him ‘The quiet chronicler of the lost and the damned‘ – a superb description. His Ballroom of Romance is one of my favourite short stories.

And Bloomsbury looked like this in the evening sunshine earlier. Serene.

This is just out by Michael Mansfield QC and I badly want a copy. I think he’s a very interesting character and he’s doing talks and signings all over the place at the moment.