MY FIRST IMPRESSION OF LONDON is of a city with warm-shinned folk. Everyone appeared to be wearing leg-warmers! (Well, not the businessman but you never know what lies beneath a good suit …) I love leg-warmers. Ever since the movie FAME inspired me to split-leap across the loungeroom and name the cat Leroy I have loved leg-warmers. Now I had found a whole city of kin, a Mecca for all those that love 80’s dance movies. Hoorah.

THE THING I LOVE ABOUT LONDON is the statues. Well, to be precise, the pigeons pooing on the statues. I love the irony of it. These Great Men of History given the granity honor of commemoration, only to suffer the final fate of being happily pooed on by dirty birds, Forever Amen. I don’t know why (perhaps my anti-establishment humour comes from being Australian) but looking up at those birds makes me feel warm, happy and naughty.
Between the pigeons and the leg-warmers, I like London.

WE STUMBLE out of Kings Cross station with the weight of our luggage and the stupour of an early morning start. Spotting a double decker bus with “Euston Road” as it’s destination I wink and whisper to Timshel “This ere is Monopoly Board country”. (Australians play with the English version of Monopoly). We have a few hours to spare before we have to make our way out to the suburbs for the night. We will have to get the tube out to the suburbs but decide to walk in the general direction of our friend Sarah’s house.

We are in London!
The setting of so many books read, the place of many heroes born. We start singing all of the songs we know that mention London. I bully Timshel into taking a photo of me leaping out of a red phonebox. We spot the river Thames on our map and decide to visit. As if to further impress me of the importance of this great city, I discover little gold plaques on almost every corner announcing that Dickens was born in this house, The Earl of Sandwhich made his first sandwhich here, or Prince Charles once held a conversation with a violet in the back bedroom of this bedsit.

AS WE WALK THROUGH GREY STREETS, I start to notice the signs of the city: stinky bins, grumpy commuters, torn billboards and parked cars. Just as I am thinking “It is just another city”, Timshel pipes up with “Parts of this place could be Melbourne, you know”. Not wanting to sound like an American tourist (“Why Melbourne’s just like Seattle back home, only smaller”), I agree very quietly. We discuss how the feeling of anti-climax coupled with excitement seems to be part of our travelling experience.

As we walk further, my feeling of “This looks like any city, anywhere” diminishes. The most beautiful buildings seem to appear suddenly like a gorgeous sunset over the crest of a hill. Like Edinburgh, London is greedy when it comes to gorgeous buildings. Fine examples of classic architecture house the most boring of institutions; a building that would be a state library at home is the “Centre for Dentist Education”. Some buildings are so ornate I want to giggle or turn to a stranger next to me and say “Is that building for real?”

AFTER A GOOD AMOUNT OF POINTING AND SQUEALING, (ok, I squeal, Timshel grunts) we find the nearest sign for the tube and descend into it’s airless belly. Getting from the centre of London to our friends place in the suburbs on the tube proves frustrating, largely due to the amount of stairs we have to negotiate. We are a bit lost and each change of platform necessitates several new sets of stairs which see us perform a little public dance of bumped shins, swearwords and grunting. I get grumpier and mumblier as our journey progresses, and when a woman carrying a toddler and a stroller corners me in the darkness with the appeal “Do you know where a lift would be?” I feel like grabbing her in desperation.

“You’re asking me where the lifts are? You’re English, you tell me where the bloody lifts are! How can you possibly function as a society when your major public transport system is totally inaccessible by half the population? No wonder your birth rate is down, who would have kids in this country if it meant staying home for the first five years of their life! And what about the elderly, people in wheelchairs, the stair-phobic or those with really big feet or ear infections ?”

Luckily I do not submit the poor woman to my tirade. I just say “No, I haven’t seen any lifts”.
I watch her find the nearest stairs, and start to climb with the toddler on one hip and the stroller strung over her shoulder with a wide strap. I turn to Timshel and say
“I should help her, she’s alone” but dither about too much and then she is gone.

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