disgusting. A strong word. If people have to travel in the rush hour, then all is understood, but you may hear people who know nothing about rush hours say how terrible the Underground is. This is the Jubilee Line and I use it all the time. Fifteen minutes at the most to get in to the centre. The carriages are bright and new-well, almost. There are efficient indicators, Charing Cross: five minutes, three minutes, one minute. The platforms are no more littered than the streets, often less, or not at all. ‘Ah but you should have seen what they were like in the old days. The Tube was different then.’
I know an old woman, I am sure I should say lady, who says, ‘People like you …’ She means aliens, foreigners,though I have lived here forty years … ‘have no idea what London was like. You could travel from one side of London to the other by taxi for half a crown.’ (In Elizabeth I’s time you could buy a sheep for a few pence and under the Romans doubtless you could buy a villa for a silver coin, but currencies never devaluate when Nostalgia is in this gear.) ‘And everything was so nice and clean and people were polite. Buses were always on time and the Tube was cheap.’
This woman was one of London’s Bright Young Things, her young time was the twenties. As she speaks her face is tenderly reminiscent, but lonely, and she does not expect to persuade me or anyone else. What is the point of having lived in that Paradise Isle if no one believes you? As she sings her praise-songs for the past one sees hosts of pretty girls with pastel mouths and rouged cheeks wearing waistless petal-hemmed dresses, their hair marcelled in finger-waves, and as they flit from party to party they step in and out of obedient taxis driven by men only too happy to accept a penny tip. It was unlikely those women ever came as far north as West Hampstead or Kilburn, and I think Hampstead wasn’t fashionable then, though in D. H. Lawrence’s stories artists and writers live there. What is astonishing about reminiscences of those times is not only that there were different Londons for the poor and the middle class, let alone the rich, but the pedlars of memories never seem to be aware of this: ‘In those days, when I was a little girl, I used to scrub steps. I did even when it was snowing, and I had bare feet, they were blue with cold sometimes, and I went to the baker’s for yesterday’s bread, cheap, and my poor little mother slaved sixteen hours a day, six days a week, oh those were wicked times, cruel times they were.’ ‘In those days we were proud to live in London. Now it’s just horrid, full of horrid people.’
In my half of the carriage are three white people and the rest are black and brown and yellowish. Or, by another division, five females and six males. Or, four young people and seven middle-aged or elderly. Two Japanese girls, as glossy and self-sufficient as young cats, sit smiling. Surely the mourners for old London must applaud the Japanese, who are never, ever, scruffy or careless? Probably not: in that other London there were no foreigners, only English, pinko-grey as Shaw said, always
chez nous
, for the Empire had not imploded, the world had not invaded, and while every family had at least one relative abroad administering colonies or dominions, or being soldiers, that was abroad, it was there, not here, the colonies had not come home to roost.
These Japanese girls are inside an invisible bubble, they look out from a safe world. When I was in Japan I met many Japanese young ladies, who all seemed concerned to be Yum Yum. They giggled and went oooh-oooh-oooh as they jumped up and down, goody goody, and gently squealed with pleasure or with shock. But if you got them by themselves they were tough young women with a sharp view of life. Not that it was easy, for there always hovered some professor or mentor concerned to return them to their group, keep them safe and corporate.
A young black man sits dreaming, his
I know an old woman, I am sure I should say lady, who says, ‘People like you …’ She means aliens, foreigners,though I have lived here forty years … ‘have no idea what London was like. You could travel from one side of London to the other by taxi for half a crown.’ (In Elizabeth I’s time you could buy a sheep for a few pence and under the Romans doubtless you could buy a villa for a silver coin, but currencies never devaluate when Nostalgia is in this gear.) ‘And everything was so nice and clean and people were polite. Buses were always on time and the Tube was cheap.’
This woman was one of London’s Bright Young Things, her young time was the twenties. As she speaks her face is tenderly reminiscent, but lonely, and she does not expect to persuade me or anyone else. What is the point of having lived in that Paradise Isle if no one believes you? As she sings her praise-songs for the past one sees hosts of pretty girls with pastel mouths and rouged cheeks wearing waistless petal-hemmed dresses, their hair marcelled in finger-waves, and as they flit from party to party they step in and out of obedient taxis driven by men only too happy to accept a penny tip. It was unlikely those women ever came as far north as West Hampstead or Kilburn, and I think Hampstead wasn’t fashionable then, though in D. H. Lawrence’s stories artists and writers live there. What is astonishing about reminiscences of those times is not only that there were different Londons for the poor and the middle class, let alone the rich, but the pedlars of memories never seem to be aware of this: ‘In those days, when I was a little girl, I used to scrub steps. I did even when it was snowing, and I had bare feet, they were blue with cold sometimes, and I went to the baker’s for yesterday’s bread, cheap, and my poor little mother slaved sixteen hours a day, six days a week, oh those were wicked times, cruel times they were.’ ‘In those days we were proud to live in London. Now it’s just horrid, full of horrid people.’
In my half of the carriage are three white people and the rest are black and brown and yellowish. Or, by another division, five females and six males. Or, four young people and seven middle-aged or elderly. Two Japanese girls, as glossy and self-sufficient as young cats, sit smiling. Surely the mourners for old London must applaud the Japanese, who are never, ever, scruffy or careless? Probably not: in that other London there were no foreigners, only English, pinko-grey as Shaw said, always
chez nous
, for the Empire had not imploded, the world had not invaded, and while every family had at least one relative abroad administering colonies or dominions, or being soldiers, that was abroad, it was there, not here, the colonies had not come home to roost.
These Japanese girls are inside an invisible bubble, they look out from a safe world. When I was in Japan I met many Japanese young ladies, who all seemed concerned to be Yum Yum. They giggled and went oooh-oooh-oooh as they jumped up and down, goody goody, and gently squealed with pleasure or with shock. But if you got them by themselves they were tough young women with a sharp view of life. Not that it was easy, for there always hovered some professor or mentor concerned to return them to their group, keep them safe and corporate.
A young black man sits dreaming, his
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