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[morgueatlarge] Back To London
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morgue
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Aug 19, 2008 04:00 PDT
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The unnerving thing, to me, was that I discovered I know London better
than I know any city in New Zealand except Wellington. After three
years away, and of course never having done more than visit, I was
still able to navigate quite long distances through the complicated
streets without much trouble at all. But then, on further reflection,
I have spent more time walking about London than any other city except
Wellington and Edinburgh.
Walking is good. Especially in a city knitted together from
underground stations, it lets you see the joins and work out how they
fit together. And you get the chance to discover the seams of the
city, as I discovered wandering towards the west end from Liverpool
Street station on my first morning back - here I'm in a Bangladeshi
street market, now I'm surrounded by families come to London to
photograph the sights, now around the corner I'm in the square mile
with pin-striped twenty-somethings discarding cigarettes, now edging
back out of the City and I'm surrounded by white van men scoffing
bacon butties and reading the Daily Sport. Its all jammed up together,
painted over many times by waves of revolution and immigration but the
ancient patterns still show through.
I made a visit to the Tate Modern, as I always do in London, finding
the great turbine hall empty at present but much else to see. They've
rehung their collection so it took a bit of searching before I found
Anselm Kiefer's Lilith, the painting that had astonished me on my
first visit in 2002 and continued to reveal new aspects of itself on
this visit; and I stumbled into a new favourite, Gerhard Richter's
Cages series, which is exactly the type of abtract work that usually
makes no impression but somehow here tempted me to give it a second
chance and proceeded to enrapture me. Across town I dropped into the
National Gallery, paid my respects to Caravaggio's Supper at Emmaus
and explored several additional rooms - it will probably take a
lifetime of visits to London before I have exhausted the collection.
A chap with a Northern accent approached me while I rested and hit me
up for change with the full sob story - he was out of prison, out of
work, starving, could I only spare a pound. I remembered the hard
shell you build up here without even being aware of it happening.
We had a get-together down in Clapham, the Kiwi Londoners and I (and a
single token Yorkshireman), still a large number of my fellow
countrymen and -women set up in this gigantic city on the far side of
the world from home. They were full of stories of travel to exotic
places only a cheap flight away, of people they had met and shows they
had seen and things they had done, taking advantage of the endless
opportunities afforded by London. And they all asked, how is it being
back? Perhaps they're wondering themselves what it will be like if and
when they make it home - back in Wellington, that tiny little city by
the sea, so very far from everywhere. Do I miss the UK?
Of course I miss the UK. Of course I miss London. But there isn't the
slightest doubt in my mind - Wellington is where I want to be.
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