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The One Thing London Lacks

I have once again just got back from my usual daily trundle. Today I thought I would just go to Lewisham, take the DLR up to the Isle of Dogs, and head up to Canary Wharf. That area still amazes me: to think that, forty years ago, all that was there was a bunch of decaying docks is incredible. Going there is like suddenly stepping into Manhattan or Tokyo or any other great commercial centre of the world. The way skyscrapers keep shooting up is nothing less than jaw-dropping.

The thing is, I am starting to think that the very thing that makes that area so incredible is also what makes it dull. Ernest Hemingway once said he found London too normal. When I first moved here, I couldn’t disagree more: London seemed an amazing, innovative metropolis unlike anything I had experienced before. As someone used to a small,  rural Cheshire town, to suddenly find myself trundling around one of the world’s greatest metropolises filled me with awe. Yet sixteen years on, I think I finally see what Hemingway meant. London is rich and affluent: the type of city capable of turning a wasteland of crumbling docks into a thriving commercial centre, creating multi billion pound rail networks, hosting the Olympic Games or anything else. It is rich, middle class and safe. Obviously it is multicultural and diverse, but that’s because people come here from all over the world because it is so safe. It’s wonderful to hear such a diverse array of languages being spoken in the streets and on public transport, but at its core London remains an affluent, middle class English city. 

The thing is, in that middle class safety it looses something which I now find myself craving more and more. Everything may work here and the busses may come on time, but with that it looses something exotic and intriguing. Its ability to pile billions of pounds into all kinds of projects means it loses any sense of danger. Its coffee shops may be accessible and well maintained, but it feels like I am getting bored of cappuccino. Tube stations may all be clean and have working lifts, but with that they become sterile and inhuman. Busses and trains are brilliantly regular, yet that regularity is starting to feel soporific.

With privilege you lose thrill, and it is that which I now find myself yearning for. That touch of human limitation which carries with it a sense of cultural diversity. A kind of exotic fallibility or down-to-earth grit that I encountered in places like Jaipur or Tangier, but which London would just concrete over and turn into yet more ubiquitous blocks of flats. The grimy, gritty, working class docklands of east London have now been transformed into a phenomenally wealthy landscape of sleek skyscrapers, bling and decadence: Canary Wharf could be an area of any other big city. In that sense, it’s transformation and gentrification took away what gave that area it’s own unique character and rendered it normal.

Trying Out The Bakerloop

The main piece of news I have to share today is that I have ridden a bus. I realise that might not sound particularly exciting, but today I thought I would try out the new Bakerloop bus route. If you haven’t heard of it, the Bakerloop is a new express bus route from Lewisham to Waterloo station. I had been hearing quite a bit about it but on various London public transport YouTube channels, and I thought it might be worth checking out.

Of course, if I had simply wanted to go to Waterloo I would just have taken the good old Jubilee Line: a tried and tested route, and probably a bit quicker. What I found so enticing about this new bus route, though, was that it was instated as a test route ahead of a possible extension of the Bakerloo Line to Lewisham. To be honest that’s a prospect I find rather exciting: Not only would such an extension help to open up south London even more, making getting in to the city centre even easier, but presumably it would also mean that the existing part of the line would be redeveloped and made wheelchair accessible. Whenever such extensions have been created before, the obvious example perhaps being the Jubilee Line itself, the rest of the line has been updated in the process. I really think that is something to be encouraged, which is why I went to Lewisham and caught the bus earlier.

In the end it wasn’t much to write about. The trip just took about half an hour, and before I knew it I was at Waterloo station.  From there I thought I’d have a little trundle along the river,  the Palace of Westminster looking radiant in the sunshine, before crossing the Thames and catching the tube home. Perhaps the biggest advantage busses have over tube lines, though, is that you get to see more of the city you’re passing through, and on my way I caught a glimpse of the vast amounts of building work happening along the Old Kent Road. London is developing ever more quickly. It’s also shrinking, thanks to the initiatives like the one I tried this afternoon. A metropolis which once seemed so vast and daunting now feels increasingly accessible and homelike. 

I’m sure that won’t be the last time I use the Bakerloop: the possibility that it might eventually give rise to something even more substantial really is exciting. Getting across the city is becoming easier and easier, but that slow shift towards modernity will only continue if guys like me actually try out and start to use the improvements being offered.

A Dark Day For London

I am very, very pissed off about what happened here in London yesterday. London is an open, tolerant, welcoming world city, home to thousands of different cultures and people from all over the world; yesterday afternoon saw it’s streets hijacked and trampled by 100,000 mindless morons with no understanding of diversity or value for cultures other than their own. Of course, being me, I went up there yesterday afternoon, although I now wish I hadn’t. At about 11 I set out, taking the Jubilee Line up to Westminster. I had intended to go directly to the counter-protest, but as soon as I got out of the tube station I found myself surrounded by countless flag-waving idiots, many carrying banners which wound me up instantly.

The sight was utterly repugnant. I’ve been to quite a few protests here in London over the years, about a variety of issues. Most of those issues were just and sensible. The gathering of idiots London saw yesterday was neither of those things, but the venting of bile and hate by those too stupid to direct their thoughts and feelings elsewhere. Obviously, I know we should be open-minded and tolerant of those whose views we disagree with – part of valuing diversity is valuing diversity of thought. Yet what I saw yesterday was an insult to those values: most of the people there had been bussed in from across the country; people I doubt had ever met anyone who didn’t speak English as their first language. They were just here to shout and scream, drink larger and hurl abuse. For most of the men I saw yesterday, it was just an exercise in looking ‘hard’: I doubt you could have had any kind of meaningful debate with any of them about the politics at hand. As I found when I went to Canary Wharf a couple of weeks ago, for such people, it seemed to be all about whipping up animosity and social division: demonstrating that they were better than ‘the elites’ – ie those they unconsciously feel inferior or subordinate to. Frankly, it felt like an abject intrusion upon everything that I feel is wonderful about London, like shit being trampled into it’s very streets.

I stayed up there for most of the afternoon. I tried to find the counter-protest, but got lost, eventually crossing the river to the south bank. When I eventually found my way back to Westminster I found the station shut, so I set off for Green Park, trying to avoid the showers. It had been a disturbing, sickening afternoon: I felt very angry indeed about what I had seen, and still do. Such acrid xenophobia has no place here in London, and it felt like the metropolis had been intruded upon by morons with no idea what they were saying. The capital had been hijacked and misrepresented. Surely the country is better than such thuggery; surely we cannot allow the wider world to see us like this. My biggest fear now is whoever organised this gathering of halfwits will feel emboldened and try to do so again. If that happens, those of us capable of rational, independent thought must be ready to show our opposition.

Cable Car Vindication!

I’m suddenly feeling quite pleased with myself, albeit for a fairly random reason. You may remember, a year or two ago, I started talking nonsense about London building new cable cars. I was at least semi-joking, but my reasoning was fairly solid: urban cable-cars would be cheaper and easier to build than brand new tube lines, and probably cause less disruption. Well, it seems I have been vindicated, by Paris no less. According to this video, the Parisians have decided to build a new urban cable car in the south of the city, rather than extending the metro. Their argument goes that it would be cheaper and more efficient than either extending the existing metro line or implementing new bus routes. I think that is a great idea, as gliding over a city is certainly cooler than being driven through it on a crowded bus, or thundering under it on a cacophonous tube train.

Mind you, the cynical teenager voice in the back of my mind is saying that this is just a case of Paris wanting what London has: The cable car in East London glides over the Thames, connecting North Greenwich to The Royal Docks, the O2 Arena to the Excel Centre. Not only is it an efficient way of getting people from one place to the other, it is also a great tourist attraction. The Parisians have clearly looked at it and said “We’ll have some of that!” More to the point, whereas the London cable car crosses the wide Thames River, making the only alternative a bridge or tunnel, the one in Paris won’t cross such an impenetrable geographic feature. The same goes for the cable car in Barcelona, which apparently ferries people up and down quite a steep mountain. In other words, the one in Paris would be pretty much entirely for show, with no physical, practical need for it.

Such cynicism aside though, I still think this is pretty cool, and another reason to go back to the French capital in the not-too-distant future. Who knows, maybe this could be the beginning of such cable cars – even entire networks of them – springing up all over the place. Might they even be the future of urban public transport?

Bare Bums And Blue Powder

This is resoundingly not the entry I thought I would be writing this afternoon. I thought I’d be writing a short, jolly entry about London still clearly knowing how to party, and about never having seen so many bare women’s arse cheeks, having taken myself up to the Notting Hill Carnival. My parents had warned me against going, but as usual my curiosity had got the better of me. After all, having gone to last year’s carnival and the one before it, I was thirsty for more.

It had started well enough: a nice, easy journey up to Paddington followed by a short roll. When I found the carnival itself everything seemed fine, and I was once again fascinated by all the people in all kinds of weird costumes. After watching things for a while, though, I decided to follow the parade. That was a mistake: things become more and more crowded, and less and less pleasant. It became harder and harder to move my chair. It soon stopped being fun, and the music being played around me was far too loud.

When sticky, coloured powder started being thrown around, I decided I had had enough: I went into Red Alert, getting out of the situation as quickly as possible, battling my way through the thousands of people who had gathered by then. That certainly wasn’t the predicament I had expected to find myself in.

By the time I had got back to the station I had had chance to reflect a little. To be honest it was quite incredible to see such a large area of London, usually swarming with traffic, given over to such an enormous cultural event. On the other hand, given that the carnival was supposedly a celebration of Caribbean culture, I couldn’t help wondering how much of a role imperialism or cultural appropriation had had to play in its origins. After all, Notting Hill is a white, very affluent area of London.

Such questions, however, would need to wait, as at that moment I was far more concerned about whether I could get all the blue powder off my clothes. Having returned from Paris just two days ago, it has been quite a week; but I suppose today goes to show that I really need to listen to my parents more.

The Beguiling City

I really, really wish I knew more French. I think I’ve written about this before: the fact that I don’t know any language other than english feels hugely embarrassing to me, like a mark of extreme ignorance. I suppose you could just pin it down to the fact that special schools have other priorities- why bother teaching kids a language they’re never going to actually use? Here in Paris though, as I roll around this magnificently beautiful city, I find myself wishing I could understand what the people around me are saying or what the street signs mean.

I realise that I might have seemed a bit negative in my last few entries: too eager to criticise, as though I didn’t really want to be here. Let me assure you, noting can be further from reality. While I may have seemed somewhat eager to point out the problems or drawbacks we have come across, this was simply a case of my instincts as a blogger coming to the fore. The fact is I like that Paris: it is an exceedingly beautiful city, far more aesthetically charming than London. It’s narrow, picturesque streets draw you in, so that, in spite of its woefully inaccessible metro system and thousands of cafes with steps into them, it’s impossible not to fall under its spell. 

The longer I am here, the more immersed I feel, the more intrigued I am by the city and it’s fascinating history. I  love the little book shops, the streets named after writers, the thousands upon thousands of sculptures and statues; I feel so beguiled that John and I are already starting to plan our next trip here. The very streets and buildings captivate me like nowhere else. That is why I feel so sad about my lack of French, as it will always be a barrier between myself and truly getting to know Paris.

Another Way To Camden

I have just made a discovery which I am rather happy about. I’ve described here before how fond I am of trundling along the Regents Canal. One of the areas the canal passes through, Camden, looked essentially interesting. The thing was, I never had a chance to explore it properly as, by the time I got there, I would already have been wheeling, along the canal for a couple of hours and would need to press on to get home a sensible time.

A couple of days ago though, I noticed that Camden Town had a stop on the Northern Line, and was struck by the idea that if I just got the tube there, exploring the area would become much more straightforward. This morning, then, I headed to North Greenwich tube station, intending to get the jubilee line to London Bridge and then the northern line up to Camden. The problem was, the staff at Greenwich told me that Camden Town station was not wheelchair accessible.

However, the lady helping me then started to look for an alternative route I could use, and soon found that a could take the Mildmay overground line from Stratford to Camden Road. While ramps would need to be arraigned, it would be just as straightforward as my original route. This seemed quite an innovative idea to me though, as the overground is still something I have to get the knack of.

As it turned out, it was a complete non-issue, and I was in Camden within an hour ready to explore. It’s one of those thriving, fascinating areas of the metropolis, the air full of music and delicious smells. Some of the architecture by the canal is intriguing. As soon as I got there I was enthralled; and now I know how easy it is to go back there I certainly intend to.

London, it seems to me, is constantly opening up and becoming more accessible. I’ve been living here for fifteen years, but even during that time things have improved considerably. Using the overground was once totally off limits to wheelchair users; but although I’d still personally prefer it – and indeed the entire tube network – to be completely step free, experiences like today’s demonstrate how far it has gone in the right direction. Thanks to the overground, as well as the Elisabeth Line, which I used to get home, Central London is more accessible than it ever has been. It almost feels like the city is shrinking: what once felt like a vast, unwelcoming urban sprawl now feels more and more like home.

Not A Very Uplifting Experience

Something bloody stupid happened this afternoon. It’s one of those slow, cloudy Sundays, so I thought I would pop up to Stratford for a trundle around the Olympic park. Up there, to get from the station to the park you either have to go up a flight of stairs or use a lift, as I do. This leads to a large foot bridge over the railway station, which is the only way between the older and newer areas of Stratford. The two lifts are really over used, and over the years I have had quite a lot of trouble with them.

Today, however, really took the biscuit: One of the two lifts was clearly completely out of order, and I must have had to wait at least ten minutes for the second to arrive. When it did, though, it was already full of people who were obviously perfectly able to use the nearby stairs. What followed was quite a furore over who should be using the lift and who should not. Things become rather heated, and to cut a long, stupid story short it was around another five more minutes before I was eventually able to get into the lift. They seemed to think they had as much right to use the lift as I did, if not even more. I’m not sure what happened then: as I was entering the lift I might have knocked the door with my powerchair or something, because it then completely refused to go up to the floor I needed to get to. No matter how many times the button was pressed, the lift wouldn’t move.

After a few minutes two other wheelchair users got in. By then the ambulant people had got out to use the stairs, but those of us who had no choice gradually began to panic. For a while the zarking lift seemed broken. Fortunately things ended well, the lift started working again and finally went up to the bridge without the engineer having to be called out. As I trundled towards the Olympic park though, I found myself reflecting once again that such things would happen far less often if lifts in places like that were only used by people who need to use them; and that the episode would probably be good material for a blog entry.

Of Parades, Backsides and Trains

Yesterday proved to be a complete waste of time – albeit an interesting one. After breakfast, I thought I’d go up to Westminster to see what all this. VE day fuss was about. After all, it’s only a few stops away on the Jubilee line, so what would be the point of just staying at home and watching it on TV? A few minutes after leaving the flat, though, I came back for a coat; the hints of summer we had a few days ago were definitely a deception.

My trip up into London proved easy enough. Once up there however, I almost immediately saw that staying at home would probably have been the better idea: the area was teeming with people, so much so that I could barely move. Watching the parade, even getting a glimpse of it, was off the cards – all I could see from my powerchair was other spectators’ backsides. I tried to move around a bit, up and down Whitehall, to try to get a decent view, without avail. Mind you, it must be said that I lost count of the number of people who complemented me on my ‘Make America Think Again’ cap.

After a couple of hours or so I gave up. I caught a glimpse of the flyover, which was fairly cool, but that was about it. With the parade over and the crowds slowly dispersing, I decided to go for a bit of a trundle up The Mall and through St James’s Park. I rather like that area of central London with it’s parks, ponds and fountains. I initially intended to find my way to Bond Street in order to get the Elisabeth Line home, but somewhat predictably I got lost. I eventually found myself at Victoria Station: at first I thought I would just ask for directions there, but then, on the tannoy, I heard that a train would be stopping at Kidbrooke. Catching it would make getting home far easier and quicker, I presumed.

I found one of the station staff and asked, using my Ipad, if I could get on that train. They duly obliged, and I was helped to board the train, only to be asked to get back off two or three minutes later because nobody would be at Kidbrooke to help me with the ramps there. I got off the train and was told to wait for the next one.

That wasn’t so bad: I just connected to the station Wifi and checked my Facebook. Twenty minutes or so later, though, exactly the same thing happened: I was helped to board the train only to be told to get back off at the last moment. Needless to say I was furious. Back on the platform I demanded to see the station manager, only to be told, rather condescendingly, to calm down. If other people can get on and off overground trains with such ease, why couldn’t I? London public transport has come on in leaps and bounds in terms of accessibility over the last few decades, so why is the overground still so shitty?

To once again cut a long story short, I got home an hour or so later: it wasn’t late, but I was hungry. I would have been home far earlier if I had just taken the tube; although it must be said that, sat in the train carriage, I was treated to some intriguing views across South London. More to the point, if I had stayed home I would also have had a much better view of the entire parade. Yet trying out the London overground is something I had been wanting to do for a while – I now know it sucks.

Trying Out The Trams

This afternoon, what happened yesterday still very much on my mind, I thought I would set myself a bit of a challenge: how far could I get while using as little powerchair battery as possible? IE, could I still get out and about, without needing to actually drive my powerchair very far? Obviously that would mean sticking to public transport as much as I could, but given the alternative was staying at home on my computer all day, I was up for it.

With that in mind, I must say I just got in from a rather cool afternoon. The route I took was quite an elastic one: I caught a bus to the Royal Standard, then another from there to Elmers End in order to catch a tram. I had been intending to check out London’s tram system again for a while, and today seemed quite a good opportunity.

The tram ride was sleek and modern, if rather slow. It is essentially a tube line across south London, built on the surface due to the water-logged ground south of the Thames. If anything, I started to wonder why the line didn’t extend further east to, say, Woolwich or Greenwich, in order to link up with the tube. That would make it much more convenient if you ask me, but that’s a question for another time.

After an hour or so on the tram I found myself in Wimbledon. I haven’t been to that area of London much before, at least not for a while, so decided I’d have a brief look around. I was, however, still conscious of my need to conserve battery power, so before long I returned to the station to get the District Line. By then the system was getting crowded, but it wasn’t too bad. From Wimbledon it was a short(ish) ride up to Paddington, the Elisabeth Line from there to Woolwich, and then a bus back to Eltham: all sleek, smooth and accessible.

I don’t think I’ll ever stop being amazed by London’s public transport system. It is very much the circulation system of this thriving metropolis. It is far from perfect, but I’m happy to say it is gradually becoming more and more accessible. Today on the tram I went through places I had never visited before, even after fifteen years of living here. But the flip side of that is, while London gets all this fantastic new infrastructure – trams, crossrail, superloop – I can’t help worrying the rest of the country, especially the north, is being left further and further behind.

An Unpleasant – Yet Very Lucky – Evening

I think it’s fair to say that I had a very lucky escape yesterday. To be honest I was in two minds about recording what happened yesterday afternoon here as it’s just too depressing, but I suppose a blog entry is a blog entry. I was out and about once again, this time on quite a long trundle through Bexleyheath heading up towards the river. Spring is coming, so I’m becoming eager to go out and explore a bit more.

The thing is, I have gone on quite a few long trundles recently , and it has probably had an impact on my powerchair battery. I was heading for Abbey Wood in order to get the Elizabeth line back to Woolwich and then a bus home, when I noticed my battery dropping quite rapidly. Of course I knew I needed to get back as swiftly as possible, but to be honest I felt a tingle of panic.

It took me ages to find the Elizabeth Line station, but luckily I managed to get onto a train. I traveled the single stop to Woolwich and got off the train. I was heading along the platform towards the lift, when suddenly my powerchair cut out completely: it turned off and wouldn’t turn on again.

I was obviously in deep shit. Luckily there was a member of TfL staff nearby so I got her attention and explained the problem. The staff took my chair out of drive and pushed me up to the station entrance hall. The staff were very, very kind, doing what they could to help. First they tried calling a taxi to take me home, but rather ridiculously my powerchair wouldn’t fit.

What followed was a very long, stressful evening spent in the Woolwich Elizabeth Line station. The staff did what they could to help me, giving me drinks of water and offering to get me things to eat. As hungry as I was by then however, I didn’t want to risk getting myself too messy, and as there wasn’t a table nearby to put any food on I thought I better not try to eat anything. I tried contacting people like Dom on my iPad without luck. Eventually they dialled 111 for an ambulance to take me back to Eltham.

By the time it came I had spent about two hours at the station, unable to go anywhere. To be honest watching the evening commuters go in and out was fairly interesting, and I think it’s fair to say that London’s newest tube line is being well used. Even so, it was a highly stressful, unpleasant couple of hours waiting for the ambulance.

Thank fuck it eventually arrived. By then it was half past eight and I had spent about three hours at the station. I felt tired and irritable. Luckily the trip home was swift, but when I got back here the zarking chair refused to charge. Who knows what is up with it, but I have emailed my usual wheelchair maintenance guy.

In short yesterday was a horrible day; the kind of day I would rather just forget. At the same time I was incredibly lucky: if my chair had conked out anywhere else things would have been a thousand times worse. At the station there were people around who could help. If I had been, say, in a park or going along the path by the river, I would have been in serious, serious trouble. In all, then, I had a bloody lucky escape, and so it is worth recording. Even so, some days rule and some days suck: yesterday was emphatically the latter.