Yesterday, after the BBC’s utter incompetence at predicting the weather was confirmed once again, (the symbol for torrential rain remaining defiantly on their website whilst Londoners sauntered about their Sundays in gentle sunlight), I spent a leisurely while strolling the leafy path that runs beside the Old Street-Angel section of the Grand Union Canal.
I’ve only recently been introduced to this quiet little stretch – its existence coming as a mild irritation considering I spent every morning and evening of last month trudging the mile or so between Old Street and Angel amid the jams and sirens of City Road, completely oblivious of the waterside and fume-free route running parallel just 50 yards to the right.
But that’s London, apparently designed to give maximum focus to the shit bits – the red neon glow of an Aberdeen Steak House is inescapable – whilst plentiful pockets of quirky bars, pretty parks, basement pubs and deliciously cheap international restaurants are craftily concealed behind a facade of filthy windows, concrete alleyways and cigarettes stubbed out in chewing gum. London is not made for the visitor.
While Old Street might not be the cobbled scene of bowing iron lampposts, musty bookshops and wizened tailors that its name suggests, the Shoreditch end throbs with an irritatingly attractive and achingly cool crowd who pout and pose their spandex-wearing way around fittingly kooky establishments. It may be a pretentious bubble that shamefully encourages the shallow and ridiculous, but this people-watching paradise is eccentric London at its best.
Yet five minutes down the road, visitors taking the Shoreditch exit from Old Street tube station are met, not with neon bulbs and the thudding of electric beats, but rather a vomit-strewn pavement sporting three gaudy Kebab shops, a cash machine that charges two quid and frequently nicks your card, and the chaviest pub I have ever seen (and I grew up in Portsmouth). There is not the slightest hint that around the bend is a whole community living life like it were a music video.
London makes you search; you can be right on top of something and still not find it. Thrice-daily do I receive pleading requests for directions from wispy fashionistas who have mistakenly wandered onto the concrete estate that I live on in search of the boho cafes and bars of nearby Hoxton Square.
“Turn onto Hoxton Street, pass the group of vocal tramps on your left, and, once opposite the smashed windows of the job centre, take a right by the industrial bins,” are the exact directions.
And this architectural plan to deceive happens all over. On the opposite side of the city, tourists eagerly emerge from Notting Hill Gate tube expecting Hugh Grant-a-likes, cream townhouses and wrought iron gates revealing glimpses of trim private gardens. Instead you get crap cafes and Waterstones. A walk of two minutes and a couple of sharp turns will lead to vintage shops, quaint cobbled muses and the eclectic charms of Portobello market, but if it weren’t for the sweeping current of the weekend crowd, you’d never guess.
Looking side-on at London from my morning train ride to work, (to an inconsequential place in Kent that no one has ever heard of – even people who live in Kent), it amuses me how, from this distance, the crowded, thumping heart of central London simply looks like an odd collection of toys peeking out over a non-descript sea of rooftops. Not even the skyline gives anything away.
