An Unfashionable Opinion

I must apologise in advance if this entry is a little below the usual standard. I’m afraid I was out celebrating my birthday last night, and most enjoyable it was too. Kudos to all in attendance. Those not in attendance will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Anyway, the end result has been a hangover that feels as if someone is trying to pull my brain out of its skull cavity, and no attempts at a cure have so far worked. I’ve tried greasy food, caffeine, sugar, a long walk, going back to sleep and eating painkillers by the handful, and nothing has made more than a dent. The best cure, in my experience, is coconut milk, but I can’t find that for love nor money around here. I tried offering money first, then love, but it turns out my pallid and necrotic countenance is not as sensual as I had first thought.

So I’m going to go over a book I’ve been reading recently. It’s a little difficult to define a “London novel.” There must be thousands of books set at least in part in London. James Bond’s HQ is in London, but you’d hardly call his books “London books.” The Time Machine is set in London’s suburbia (and the ruins thereof), but again, you couldn’t say it’s a London novel.

I suppose my definition would be: could you set it anywhere else? In the case of, say, Oliver Twist, the setting is absolutely integral. You need the slums of Jacob’s Island, the respectable streets of Islington, the crossover-point that is the City, the roads and junctions. Their proximity and interrelationships are essential to the story. Oliver Twist is, therefore, a London novel.

The novel in question is London Fields by Martin Amis. Now, I know this is a very popular London novel, so when I say how much I didn’t like it, I’ll no doubt be accused of fashionably Amis-bashing, which seems to be the standard accusation levelled against those who dislike his work. But, well, I didn’t like it.

The story is told from four points of view. We have Keith Talent, a cheat (Amis’ term for a conman, italicised throughout the book), wannabe professional darts player and generally horrible individual. His reality is defined by the media – television programmes, tabloid newspapers and pornography – and so he can’t quite relate to society other than on those terms. Then you have Guy Clinch, a successful banker in a boring marriage with an out-of-control toddler. Then there’s Samson Young, a crap writer with an inferiority complex. Linking them all is the femme fatale, Nicola Six, who has decided that she wants to die. She manipulates the other three central characters with the aim of bringing about her own murder. Meanwhile, the city is in the grip of unspecified upcoming apocalypse, which is a Metaphor. Or the murder is the Metaphor for the upcoming apocalypse.

Now, I’ll admit that Amis isn’t all bad. There was, for instance, a joke I laughed at. But the characters are so broadly caricatured, and so obviously designed to serve a purpose, that I just couldn’t give a toss about them. And yes, I know the characters aren’t supposed to be likeable, but even an unlikeable character should have enough depth to allow you to identify. The most irritating of all, I think, is Clinch’s toddler, Marmaduke, whose havoc starts out as entertaining, then surprising, then finally tiresome and predictable.

The get-out-of-jail-free card is that Amis is writing about writing. Samson Young is a writer adapting Six’ life into a novel in an effort to prop up his career. He’s in a rivalry with the more successful Mark Asprey, whose supposedly real-life exploits are as real as his fiction, and by the same token we can never be sure which version of events is the one actually taking place.

I’m not a fan of writing about writing. I mean, yes, the unreliable narrator device is an interesting one, but too often writers-who-write-about-writers disappear up their own literary arses. Your book was remaindered? Baaaaaawww!

Then there’s the device of the self-insertion. If I was a publisher, the moment an author inserted themselves into a story I’d reject the manuscript. Amis is more blatant in Money, in which a version of the actual Martin Amis plays a significant role. In London Fields, you may have noticed some similarities between the names Martin Amis and Mark Asprey, the latter of whom signs his name as “MA.” What I hate about self-insertion is that ultimately, it carries the message, “Why, look at old Amis making fun of himself! What a jolly good chap he is!” Self-deprecation is all very well, but ultimately it’s still on your terms.

So, back to my earlier question. Is this a London novel? Well, it’s set in London. It’s not, as the title would suggest, an East London book, the title simply referring to Young’s unattainable desire to revisit childhood memories. The book, in fact, is set largely in and around Ladbroke Grove and Kensington, in a version of London that doesn’t really exist. The London of this book is a purely symbolic presence, having little to do with the real city (Amis’ version of Great Ormond Street Hospital, for instance, differs significantly from the one in our universe). The setting doesn’t reflect London so much as it does human society as a whole. Therefore, I don’t think it can justifiably be called a London novel – the grimy streets and upmarket residential districts are called London seemingly for convenience.

On that bad-tempered note, I’m back off to bed. In conclusion, Amis is annoying.

St Pancras – more than just a pretty facade

And now, children, we continue our story of London’s termini with St Pancras Station.

These days St Pancras is undoubtedly the most glam of the termini, thanks to the arrival of High Speed One and the Channel Tunnel Rail Link (take a hike, Waterloo). Of course, it was not always thus. Yr. Humble Chronicler recalls the days when it was just a drab, second-rate grey sort of place. When you’re overshadowed by the awful Euston Station, you know you’ve hit rock bottom, all. When Alan A. Jackson wrote his book London’s Termini in 1969, he observed that its future was far from certain, although he thought it unlikely that the station would be allowed to disappear entirely.

Having said that, in 1966 British Railways floated the idea of running all St Pancras’ services into King’s Cross, demolishing St Pancras and building an office tower in its place. A look at Euston down the road will show you how awesome that would have looked, and fortunately the uproar caused by the rebuild of that station seems to have given them pause for thought.

Nonetheless, for many years the station was massively underused. The Midland Hotel – the huge Gothic structure that one immediately thinks of when St Pancras is brought up – was closed in 1935, turned into offices and later abandoned, decaying fittings and all. Indeed, St Pancras has had something of the Gothic about it in a way that goes far beyond its architecture.

Consider the circumstances of its construction. The Midland Railway, its builders, drove their railway straight through the slums of Somers Town and Agar Town, moving the occupants on without compensation. The line also cut across the overcrowded St Pancras churchyard, and little reverence was shown to the dead who had to be moved. Accounts speak of open coffins left on site and bones scattered in the road. I’m surprised nobody’s tried to claim there was a curse on the station.

Supernatural aside, the reality behind St Pancras’ semi-abandonment was that in 1923, the Midland Railway became part of the London, Midland and Scottish Railway. The LMS, as it is known to enthusiasts, also took over the much larger London and North Western Railway, whose terminus was at Euston. There was no sense in the same railway having two major termini within ten minutes’ walk of each other, so it’s understandable in practical terms that St Pancras would become the poor relation. Things became worse in the late 1980s with the opening of the Thameslink route, which took yet more of St Pancras’ traffic.

The station in its day was magnificent – the Midland Railway’s philosophy was that they might not be able to get you there as quickly as the other companies, but they’d be sure to get you there in style. The William H. Barlow train shed was, at the time of construction, the largest single-span arched roof in the world. The slightly Gothic-looking ridge that echoes the architecture of the Midland Hotel is actually a coincidence – Barlow thought it would offer some advantage in terms of reducing wind resistance. The hotel was intended to be the finest in London, and was designed by George Gilbert Scott. The original design was to be a storey higher, the Midland Railway’s head offices to be housed on the top floor. However, their decision to base themselves in Derby removed the requirement for one floor.

Scott’s design is sometimes erroneously described as simply being his design for the Foreign Office, hastily redesigned. In fact, though Scott did submit a Gothic revival design for the Foreign Office, and it was rejected, it did not become St Pancras. This was, therefore, his chance to prove himself as a Gothic architect and recover from Lord Palmerston’s snub. Indeed, Scott somewhat snobbily observed of the completed hotel that “my own belief is that it is possibly too good for its purpose.”

The combination of the Gothic architecture and the fact that it was abandoned have made it a popular filming location. If you’ve seen Batman Begins, the stairwell of Arkham Asylum isn’t in Gotham City at all – it’s the main entrance to the Midland Hotel. When Harry Potter goes to King’s Cross in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone  (Sorceror’s Stone in the US), it’s St Pancras he passes. Even the Spice Girls got into the act with the video for Wannabe. Or so I heard, cough cough. The station itself, having had such an infrequent service for so long, was a popular choice for anyone needing to film at a London terminus without causing disruption. Films with scenes here include King Ralph, Shirley Valentine, Chaplin, Howard’s End and Richard III, among others.

As we now know, of course, fortune was to turn in St Pancras’ favour once more. The Channel Tunnel Rail Link needed a London terminus and – by Jove! It just so happened that there was a half-abandoned one right there between King’s Cross and Euston! The rest, as they say, is history. The rebuilt station is, in Yr. Humble Chronicler’s opinion, a perfect example of how to modernise for the future while retaining respect for the past. You’d hardly think, looking at it today, that it had once been a candidate for closure. Why, they’re even planning to reopen the hotel.

Of course, I can’t finish this entry without mentioning the significance of the shopping arcade. As you can see on the left there, the platform level is supported by pillars. These pillars were originally designed with a very specific aim in mind. Apart from passengers, the major traffic intended to use St Pancras was beer. The Midland Railway served the well-known brewing town of Burton-on-Trent. They therefore built their station with extensive cellars under the platforms in which beer could be stored. The redundant cellars are now the shopping arcade. It’s worth noting that the pillars were specifically built with the optimum spacing for storing beer barrels.

A gloomy picture of the St Pancras undercroft, most likely taken in the 1950s.

The undercroft of St Pancras was to play a significant role in the history of Britain’s labour laws. Thomas Bass was the MP for Burton-on-Trent, a reforming sort of gent, was concerned about the working conditions of the Midland Railway. Trade unions were virtually non-existent in the 19th century, the attitude of the railway companies being very much “Here’s the work, if you don’t like the conditions then someone else can do it and screw you.” The consequence was ridiculously long hours (36-hour shifts were not unknown, even routine with some companies), no pensions and if you wanted to strike, the procedure was to down tools and get fired.

As well as being a Member of Parliament, Bass was a customer of the Midland Railway. And not just any customer.

This customer.

So when he mentioned that he was bothered by working conditions on the Midland Railway, the Midland Railway had to take note or risk a big, empty undercroft. Bass’ involvement with them and others led to the 1872 formation of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, the first proper railway workers’ union.

Next time you’re enjoying a croissant at St Pancras International, pause a moment. You’re in an important place.

In other news

Fans of this blog should keep an eye on the Evening Standard, for, er, no reason.

Model citizens

In a follow-up from my last entry, I thought I’d talk a bit about Soho. There’s a vintage clothing and second-hand bookshop on Berwick Street that I visited while clothes shopping the other day. On the way, I passed a doorway that had a small, handwritten sign proclaiming that therein could be found a “model.” There are a lot of these in Soho and quite a few in Chinatown, and I think you have to be a little bit naive to think you’ll find an Airfix kit in there. But what, specifically, is the deal with those places?

This isn't actually in Soho, but you get the idea.

Well, if you know anything about Soho’s status as London’s red light district (sorry, King’s Cross, you’re just too respectable these days), you’ve probably worked out already that “model” is a euphemism for “prostitute.” But this raises a number of questions. Prostitution is illegal in Britain, isn’t it? Why are these places still allowed to exist?

Fortunately for us, the Internet is here, and I have a number of books on the seamier side of London. Having sullied my browser history almost to the point of no return, I bring you my findings.

These places are known as “walkups,” and basically they are a way around the ridiculous laws in place in Britain. Contrary to popular belief, prostitution is not actually illegal in Britain. However, it is illegal to be a pimp, to run a brothel, to openly advertise and to kerb crawl. The walkup sidesteps the restrictions.

The way it works is this. You have the coded advertisement  for a “model.” It might give a brief description of the model, including body type, hair colour, race – pretty much everything except “and you can have sex with her for money.” And some just seem to say “model” as seen above. Anyway, your man, the “punter” to use the lingo, goes in and walks up the stairs to a flat (hence the term “walkup”). The door is answered by a “maid,” basically a receptionist. Then the punter goes in and meets the girl (“WG,” abbreviation of “working girl”). The usual set-up seems to be that the WG shows the punter a list of services and prices. Money is exchanged, and services are received.

It’s not technically a brothel, because there’s only one WG there at a time, although it is rented by several WGs on a timeshare basis. The WGs are self-employed, so no pimp (at least in theory; more on that below) and the maid works for them.

Personally, I think it’s a slightly stupid set-up. It’s as if you were to legalise cannabis, but make it illegal to possess bongs, pipes, rolling papers or bloodshot eyes, and you couldn’t call it cannabis. And it’s not like people don’t know what goes on. I rather take the view that prostitution should be outright legal or outright illegal, just so everyone knows where they stand. If I’m honest, I think the former – it’s going to happen anyway, and if you bring it out of the shadows then it can be policed and taxed.

The fact is that prostitution isn’t all about the tart with a heart of gold and the victimised punter whose wife just doesn’t understand him, or the glamorous pimp portrayed in countless hip-hop tracks. It’s true that many of the women involved do so out of choice, but it’s also true that there is such a thing as human trafficking. Many of the women are forced into the trade and controlled by criminal organisations. This is most common in the case of brothels (euphemistically referred to as “massage parlours” or “saunas”), but it’s far from unknown in the case of the walkups. The difficulty is that nobody seems to know exactly how many are trafficked and how many are legit. The numbers vary wildly depending upon whether the person you talk to is pro- or anti-prostitution, and both sides frankly seem to pull the figures out of their arses.

If it’s brought out of the shadows, as I say, things can be improved. Prostitution could be made subject to the same rights as any other field of employment, including pensions, health benefits, a clean and safe working environment, unionisation and, most importantly, police protection. Trafficking and coercion could be, if not eliminated entirely, greatly reduced. Punters who suspect a criminal set-up could report it without fear of running into the ridiculous halfway laws of Britain. And here’s a thing, The Government, you could cream a bit of money off the top in taxes. If there are as many thousands of prostitutes as the government claims, the potential earnings are enormous.

Anyway, enough soapboxing for now. I’ll finish where I started – on Berwick Street. Did you know that the first brothel in Soho opened on Berwick Street in the mid-eighteenth century? It was kept by a Madam Goadby and was known as a maison, “catering for all tastes at the most exclusive prices.” Quite a long way from the shabby street we see today. And for some reason Berwick Street always smells of cough medicine. Why is that?

The Quest for the Black Fedora

Have I mentioned how much I hate Oxford Street before? It’s quite possibly my least favourite street in the entire city. Unfortunately, over the past couple of weeks, I’ve found myself down there a surprisingly large amount.  The only time it was enjoyable was on Monday, when I met up with Shoinan (whose blog you should see on the right there). I drank far more than was sensible, which was perhaps best illustrated by my strategy for getting rid of a particularly persistent rickshaw driver, namely to ask him if he could get me to the airport fast, for I needed to get out of the country fast as I had “molested a lot of children.” If there’s a hell, I’ve got a front row seat.

Oxford Street is actually very old indeed, dating back to at least the tenth century, when it was a major highway out of London. Streets in London that are named after places tend to take their names either from where they once led or from aristocratic local landowners. Oxford Street is perhaps unique in being both. It led to Oxford, being nicknamed “Oxford Street” by the early 18th century and previously known as “the Oxford Road.” At around the same time, the second Earl of Oxford bought the land just north of the street, and the nickname became official. As the land was developed, the street became something of an entertainment district and by the 19th century, was becoming known for its shops. It is these days the busiest shopping street in Europe.

The two ends of the street couldn’t present a greater contrast. At the Marble Arch end, you’ve got huge, high-class department stores, the sort of place where an invisible forcefield repels poor people at the door. The first of these was John Lewis, opened in 1864. Then at the Tottenham Court Road end, St Giles as was, you’ve got a lot of those short-term lease places, the ones that seem to be permanently having a closing down sale, even though you can’t remember when they were actually “open.” The ones where you pay a ridiculously low price for the goods and discover why two weeks later. And those deeply irritating shops where you have someone with a microphone hawking unbelievably-priced goods while a mute crowd blocks the pavement. Free tip, folks: perfume is something where you really should sample the merchandise before you pay a suspiciously low price for it.

[PARENTHESIS: The saddest example of this sort of shop I ever saw was in Kingston-Upon-Thames, in which the hustle was pre-recorded and there was no crowd. There's something pathetic about a tape shouting "Knickers half off - not yours madam!!!!!!" to no one, it's the sort of thing Samuel Beckett might have written]

So anyway, it was to this capitalist strand that I made my way a couple of weeks back in search of a hat. Not just any hat, though. I was specifically looking for a black fedora. I did already have one, which I’d bought back in 2001. Unfortunately, several years in storage had taken their toll, and held up to the light you could see enough moth-bitten holes to make it into a decent collander (albeit a totally gross one). Furthermore, it didn’t quite fit. I had to literally pull it down on to my head. And I wasn’t sure about the band. But I really liked the look - with my red scarf, long black coat, navy blue waistcoat and watch chain I had a bit of an 1890s boho thing going on (see M. Lautrec’s poster above right). Technically a fedora is out of period, as they didn’t become fashionable for men until the end of the First World War, but just try finding a Homburg for a decent price.

I figured Oxford Street would be my best bet. Camden has more vintage shops, but you could guarantee being charged a small fortune for something that’ll go out of shape in the first shower of rain. It’s possible to look very expensive for surprisingly little money, but below a certain point you really do get what you pay for.

Trilby

Do you know, there was not a fedora to be found in the entire street. No end of trilbies, thanks to the current hipster trend for wearing them. I’m entirely the wrong shape to be a hipster – above a certain weight, one is not expected to be fashionable. In any case, I don’t follow fashion on the grounds that when I dress up I want to actually be noticed.

The fedora is so cool that it can actually turn you into Humphrey Bogart.

Actually, I did find one fedora in a certain upscale department store opened in 1864, but it was at a ridiculous price and wasn’t even particularly nice. The crown was too shallow for my taste. The salesman tried to convince me that I was making a mistake, but frankly for that kind of money I want a hat that tells me I’m hot.

In the end, I found a much nicer fedora for a third of the price in Marks and Spencers Merton, about ten minutes from my front door. Which just goes to show something or other. In the absence of a moral, I shall repeat the slogan of the British Hat Advisory Board (BHAB): “We all adore a fedora.”

The disadvantage of having a hat that I can actually put on is that it can be taken off with surprising ease, as I found out on my way back when mine was blown off by an unexpected gust of wind from a departing train at the Tube station. However, like Indiana Jones, I wasn’t about to leave my fedora in danger, and so I deftly reached down and plucked my trusty hat from the running rail. I should note that this is not a clever thing to do unless you a) know exactly how long there is between trains, b) know which rails carry current, c) know how far it is from platform level to the rail and d) really like your hat.

All in all, this week’s shaping up to be thoroughly irresponsible. Excellent.

Coincidence? Oh no it isn’t!

Yesterday was started with the noblest intentions – buy new shoes, go to Kensington and explore the vintage shops there. Unfortunately I rather stymied this by getting up late. But damned if I’m going to waste my Saturday entirely, so I bought my lovely new shoes and headed up to Waterloo.

See, I’m writing a short fantasy story set in a city with heavy elements of 19th century London and Paris, so I thought maybe exploring the Borough would be a good way to get some atmosphere. I took a stroll around, exploring the old, unredeveloped parts of Southwark and the various occult centres (not that I believe in that sort of thing, mark you). I strolled past the Old Vic and was surprised to see someone I was at school with in the cast of Six Degrees of Separation. The chap in question is Ilan Goodman, and if I’m honest we exchanged maybe three sentences during the time we were both at the school, so it’s not like I was about to burst in and cry out “Ilan, old chap!”

Then, in a backstreet, I came across the Union Theatre. This is a strange venue, one of those makeshift little theatres you get in London outside of the West End. You know, used to be something else, the auditorium is painted black and the seats aren’t attached to the floor. I’d been here once before, when a work colleague was in Annie, Get Your Gun! a little while back.

I noted that the posters outside were advertising a show called Oh No It Isn’t!, an adult panto featuring a friend of mine, whom I shall call the Mottster. If I’m honest, I’m not a huge fan of anything that advertises itself as being “not for kids,” as it tends to involve lots of cheap sex jokes in that terribly British fashion. There’s only so many characters with innuendo names like ”Droopy Bumfondler,” “Cocky Arsefucker” or “Cunty Childrapist” I can take before my brain self-lobotomises. But the Mottster is a fine actress, and so I decided I would take my chances.

This is going to make me sound an awful person, but the trouble with knowing a lot of people involved in the theatre is that there are only so many times you can go to a play purely because someone you know is in it. In fact, I now have an official policy which states “No Midsummer Night’s Dream” due to the ridiculous number of times I have seen this show on the basis that someone I know has a minor role in it. I was once in a production of this myself, so I know whereof I speak. I played Bottom, thus meaning that should I ever get back into theatre, I can ask casting directors if they’d like to see my Bottom. There’s one of those cheap jokes I was complaining about.

I digress from my initial digression. I find it very hard to attend every show that someone I know is in, so I tend to restrict it to close friends, major roles or things that a large group of people I know are already attending. If any of you whose shows I have not seen are reading this with a mounting sense of outrage, I would ask you in return to name the last play I was in. Here’s a clue: it’s not one you saw.

Anyway, before I make myself look like an even worse person, I did drop into the box office and purchased a ticket. And Sweet Jesus but they need to do something about those toilets. I’m not sure what that crusty stuff is along the top of the urinal, but it upsets me at a primeval level. The bar was nice, though. As is appropriate to small theatres, it was painted red. The selection of music could not be faulted, and the paintings around the place made for a far more entertaining distraction than the dramaramas and hipsters.

Having no doubt alienated half the theatre scene of London as well as several friends, I should say that I actually quite enjoyed the show. The first half, I thought, spent far too much time trying to cram as many dirty jokes as possible, actually to the point where they cancelled each other out. For instance, if you have a character named “Felchmore,” that’s the joke. He has a name that, if it is appropriate to his character, implies that he greatly enjoys the act of slurping semen from the anus (though whether he is the giver or receiver of this act is outside the scope of his name). If you then have a character saying, “I wish he’d felch less!” and clutching at his buttocks, that’s hammering the joke into the ground.

In the second half, however, the plot really got going and I enjoyed the piece a lot more as it came together. In fact, many of the major plot elements were only established in the second half. I rather got the feeling that by trimming some of the unnecessary comedy routines and subplots that went nowhere from the first half and establishing plot elements and characters from the second half in their place, the piece would have been a lot more balanced. I also think the major theme of the plot, i.e. the modern phenomenon of instant, disposable celebrities spawned by reality TV, could have been more effectively explored – there were some funny jokes and some nice satirical points raised, but dammit I want more.

Script concerns aside, the cast were superb, with not a dud element among them. It’s quite hard to make broad caricatures (as is an essential part of the panto genre) appealing, but nonetheless this was something universally achieved. The panto dames in particular were superbly funny. The design and choreography, too, were hard to fault. All in all, an excellent show aside from the fact that it could have done with fewer jokes. That’s a weird thing to say about a comedy, but it’s true.

Having said that, the other reviews seem to have been pretty good, and the audience were all laughing uproariously throughout, so maybe I’m just boring.

Special

With nothing planned this Friday night (you know how it is – soiree here, West End premiere there – the only way not to offend someone is to turn them all down), I’ve been a-surfing YouTube. While there, I came across this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ2oXzrnti4&NR=1&feature=fvwp

If you haven’t yet clicked on the link, it’s the video for the song ‘Ghost Town’ by the Specials. While I love the song, the video is I think relevant to this blog, largely because it’s a fascinating glimpse of the East End pre-redevelopment (although they also visit the City). I recognise quite a lot of the then-abandoned bits of 80s London – they’ve been refurbished and cleaned up, but they’re still there. All in all it’s a nice addition to the ‘London In Ruins’ subgenre.

You can fit a lot of 80s band members into a 50s car. See also 'Driving In My Car' by Madness.

Also, how sad is this? I recognise one of the tunnels they drive down. It’s under the London Bridge viaduct. I need to get out less.

Further viewing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUKvOpCz4zM&feature=channel - The Special AKA (literally The Specials by another name) singing ‘Bright Lights,’ a not entirely complimentary song about the city.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JppOXQt_fOA&feature=channel - ‘Lonely Crowd,’ in which the vocalist goes to a club in St John’s Wood and has a dreadful time.

A Frosty Reception

Frost fair, 1683

I suppose today is as good a day as any for an entry about the old Frost Fairs. What with it being really snowy and all. The frost fairs, for those of you who aren’t “in the know” as we say, were undoubtedly a class of event whose time has passed.

From the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries, Europe experienced an unusually cold period known as the “Little Ice Age.” The exact duration is unknown, as are the causes. Suggestions for the cause have ranged from solar activity to reduced agriculture following the Black Death, the latter of which I think can’t have been much more than a contributing factor at best. What is known is that during this period, winters were harsh. Britain, a chilly sort of place at the best of times, was particularly hard hit.

[PARENTHESIS: Critics of the concept of global warming argue that we're still recovering from the Little Ice Age, hence the gradually rising temperature although this is considered to be a poorly-supported theory at best.]

Farming was the trade worst hit for obvious reasons. Fishermen, too, found themselves at a loss (although if they’d had a bit of nous, Captain Birdseye might have come on to the scene centuries earlier). Fuel was at a premium, and many found themselves unable to afford enough fire to keep themselves alive. It goes without saying that river trade was, so to speak, up the creek.

It wasn’t all doom and gloom, though. In London, the Thames froze on several occasions. At first, it was simply a way of getting across the river without paying for a boat or using the eternally-congested London Bridge. Tentatively, though, people started to realise that they could have a bit of fun. After all, it’s not every day that the Thames freezes. By the sixteenth century the frozen river was used for sport and recreation, with dances and games played on the ice. Henry VIII would sleigh down the river, and if it could bear his weight then it was a sure sign the ice was safe (cheap shot, I know).

A souvenir from the 1683 Frost Fair

The first true frost fair is generally acknowledged to be the one seen above, the 1683 fair when the river was frozen for two entire months. Enterprising tradesmen set up stalls, many of them watermen temporarily put out of business by the ice. Coachmen plied their trade up and down this new highway. There are even accounts of animals being roasted on the ice, though it would take a braver man than me to set up a fire in the middle of a frozen river.

Frost fairs took place on a number of later occasions, but the last was in 1814, when nothing less than a full-grown elephant was seen on the ice.

Since 2003, an event known as the ‘Frost Fair’ has taken place on the South Bank, but I think it lacks a certain something by virtue of not being on a frozen river. Or maybe that’s just me. There was also a slightly bat’s-arse idea to freeze the river again in 2000 using a network of refrigeration pipes, which was abandoned due to environmental concerns and, one suspects, because it sounds like exactly the sort of thing that James Bond would be called in to prevent.

The nineteenth century really put paid to the Thames freezing again, supervillainy aside. The reason the Thames to the west of London Bridge was so prone to freezing was, to a large extent, due to the old London Bridge, seen left. The bridge, as you can see, was supported on a series of narrow arches. The already narrow passages were cluttered up further by waterwheels, fishing nets, mooring posts and any old crap people felt like putting down there. As a consequence, the water rushed through the arches at a hell of a rate. It was said that a wise man would cross over the bridge, but a fool would cross under it, and watermen considered it a test of skill to shoot the rapids without, you know, dying. What this meant was that the water west of the bridge was fresh – not a hope of any brine getting past that lot. Furthermore, it meant that if a chunk of ice got stuck in one of the arches, the whole thing could very quickly get dammed up. In 1831, though, the medieval bridge was replaced. It was considered to be woefully inadequate for its purpose, making boat trade and cross-river traffic alike unnecessarily difficult, and a new bridge with wider arches replaced it.

The next obstacle to the Thames freezing was Sir Joseph Bazalgette, whose name has graced these pages before. His embankments may have done wonders for the cleanliness of the water, but they also narrowed the river, making it too fast flowing to freeze. Further construction, including several more bridges, made it even less likely.

And then, of course, there’s the fact that it’s a lot warmer these days. Remember that as you struggle into work tomorrow.

And then I said, “What about Breakfast at Tiffany’s?”

OMG ITS ANNA FREIL SHES LIKE TOTALY NAKED U GUYZ!

I don’t really like the way the West End is going. Fortunately, the number of musicals based on the back catalogues of musicians seems to have fallen off somewhat (when the Proclaimers have a touring musical, you know something has to be done). Revivals don’t bother me so much, at least as long as they stay away from deciding the stars via reality TV. Musicals based on films just piss me off.

Andrew Lloyd Webber is going with the novel idea of a sequel to Phantom of the Opera with the upcoming Love Never Dies, a title apparently taken from a fourteen-year-old’s fan fiction. If this show is successful, I confidently predict Miss Ho Chi Minh City, Moses and the Remains of the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and, of course, The Return of Javert.

I appreciate that theatre audiences are shrinking, that it costs a lot of money to put on a show and that most of these big theatres are anachronistically oversized hangovers from the days when theatre was the only form of visual entertainment, thus you need something that is guaranteed to be a success just to break even. Like it or not, people will go to see what they know. I don’t quite understand the point of this. I want to see something original when I go to the theatre – why spend £30 on The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert in the West End when I can get the DVD for a fiver?

So when my chum Miss M invited me to see Breakfast at Tiffany’s at the Theatre Royal Haymarket with her, I was initially dubious about the whole thing. I’ve long since stopped following what’s in the big West End venues out of despair, so I have to admit that when I first heard about this show I was expecting yet another musical-based-on-a-film. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that, in fact, it was nothing of the sort.

The film, you see, sanitises the book massively. The stage adaptation, adapted by Samuel Adamson and directed by Sean Mathias, pulls no such punches. Holly Golightly in this version is, to put it bluntly, not the sort of character Audrey Hepburn would be allowed to play in a 1960s Hollywood film. She’s a very ambiguous character – it’s never entirely clear how naive she really is. She manipulates and lies, and yet at the same time is very hard to dislike. This is at least in part down to Anna Friel’s engaging  portrayal that perfectly captures the “wounded innocent” without ever descending into the kind of wangst such roles often wind up being. Much has been made of the fact that she strips off in this piece, but for Christ’s sake get over it it’s like one scene.

I think the problem with the show is that it tries to do too much. There are quite a few characters who don’t really seem to do much in the show and as a consequence come off as a little two-dimensional. For instance, while Mr O’Shaungessy and Sally Tomato are important to the story, their actual appearances could be cut out entirely without harming the show. Middy Munson and Madame Sapphia Spanella are little more than caricatures. Worst, Joseph Cross’ William Parsons, the leading man, becomes a cookie-cutter naive male lead, and in all honesty a little wet. Cross also has an irritating habit, at least in the first scene, of shouting rather than projecting.

Having said all that, I did actually enjoy the show. If I’m really honest, the weaknesses were something that I only really spotted afterwards, if that makes any sense. I found the show entertaining enough that I was quite happy to forgive its failings. Kudos to the Theatre Royal for daring to actually go against the iconic film.

Less kudos to their ushers. Miss M uses a wheelchair, and at previous shows we’ve been to, the theatre folks have been most helpful. In this case, they seemed rather bewildered by the concept of wheelchairs, despite the fact that the tickets were booked well over a month ago and it was very clearly stated that one of us was a wheelchair user. The usher who led us to our seat had no idea what to do with a powered wheelchair (too heavy to push, you see).  The ones who led us out abandoned us as soon as we were outside the auditorium, and so we had an entertaining time trying to get through two sets of double doors to the street. Ever try holding two doors open while at the same time allowing a fixed wheelchair through? Thank you, undertrained theatre staff, for that novel slapstick experience.

Bonus feature: Titles for musical sequels not used above!

• Jesus Christ Superstar: The Second Coming
• Some More Cats
• Avenue R
• Starlight Replacement Bus Service

Waterloo, couldn’t find my train if I wanted to

And now, in our continuing tale of London’s termini, I bring you – Waterloo!

You can’t help but feel a bit sorry for Waterloo. While it’s not exactly the poor relation of the big London stations (at least it hasn’t closed down – I’m looking at you, Broad Street), it seems to have suffered from a terrible lack of planning. For a start, it doesn’t have a fantastic frontage. Kings Cross has its Italianate facade, St Pancras has the Gothic Midland Hotel, Euston had its Doric Arch before some idiot thought the “really big bus shelter” style would be an improvement.

What about Waterloo? Well, it does have a frontage, except they stuck it on the side. It takes the form of the Victory Arch, a memorial to company employees killed in the Great War, seen above. This would be a magnificent prospect, were it not for the fact that it’s hidden from the main road by the viaduct to Waterloo East and an ugly, shabby-looking taxi rank.

To be fair to the station’s builders, Waterloo as built wasn’t originally intended as a terminus. It was actually only planned to be something of a stopgap. The London and South Western Railway had originally had a terminus at Nine Elms, and had ambitions of reaching the City itself. Waterloo was just a stopping point. Engineer Robert Stephenson (who, with his father George, had constructed the pioneering locomotive Rocket) advised that “there is no point on the south side of the Thames so good for a large railway station, or a combined station, as the south end of Waterloo Bridge.” The LSWR thought they could do better, and so in preparation for the anticipated extension, built a spur line that ran straight through the concourse itself. Achieving their ambitions, however, was going to be difficult. The problem with big projects in London is that it’s a very crowded city, and as a rule people aren’t too happy about you throwing a honking great station up in the middle of town. At the very least, they want a lot of money for it. The LSWR didn’t have that kind of money, which meant that it looked as if Waterloo was the closest the LSWR was ever going to get to the centre of town (until the opening of the Waterloo and City Line in 1898).

And so over the years extensions were added, willy-nilly, until the station was what is known in architectural terms as a “horrendous mess”. By the 1890s, the station had eighteen platforms, numbered one to ten. That is not a misprint. One number was sometimes used to represent two platforms and, in some cases, the platforms just weren’t allocated a number. In such conditions, Platform Nine and Three Quarters actually doesn’t sound so far fetched. The platforms were only part of it. There were also numerous footbridges, roads and tunnels running through the concourse as well as, as I mentioned earlier, an actual railway line with actual trains running on it. Supposedly a country bumpkin who visited the station, on the fifth attempt at working out how to get to his train, was heard to say to his wife, “No wonder the French got licked here, Mary!”

The station was not only confusing, but ugly and poorly-maintained. It was entirely unbefitting of a station that ran services to Ascot, Aldershot, Windsor, Hampton Court and many other respectable destinations – not to mention the occasional Royal train. So it was that at the end of the nineteenth century, the Directors of the LSWR decided that radical surgery was needed. Nothing less than a total rebuild would do, and it was not until 1922 that this was completed. Alas for the LSWR, the following year it would be absorbed into the Southern Railway and cease to exist as a separate entity.

Despite this massive reconstruction work, the site they had was still a pig to work with. The only place where there was space to put the Magnificent Frontage (a phrase I’m using so often that it deserves Capital Letters) was the side blocked off by the South Eastern viaduct which, to be polite, I will describe as “functional rather than cosmetic.” And so it is that if you approach Waterloo from Lambeth, Southwark or the City on foot, you get small, undistinguished entrances. Visually, the Victory Arch looks a little embarrassed to be there, while from all other angles the station is a forbidding monolith that neither welcomes nor impresses the traveller.

Which is a shame, really. Despite the fact that it’s largely a suburban station, it’s actually the largest of London’s termini in terms of overall floor area and, indeed, the number of platforms. Even if you exclude the abandoned ones that until 2007 formed Waterloo International. It’s a little underwhelming from the outside is all.

I think my favourite Waterloo fact was the 1998 argument by Florent Longuepee, a Parisian politician, who complained that it was hugely offensive to the French that they should come into a station named after their defeat. If I were going to be smug, I’d point out that technically the station is named after Waterloo Bridge, so really it’s the bridge he should have been offended about, but unfortunately I was fifteen at the time and no one was interested in my opinions. Longuepee even threatened to rename Gare du Nord to Gare de Fontenoy, after a battle in which the English were defeated by the French. The general reaction to this threat in Britain seems to have been “Fine, we don’t really give a toss.”

All this, of course, is compensated for by the fact that the station has its own completely awesome song. I refer, of course, to the Kinks’ 1967 hit Waterloo Sunset. This, I feel, makes up for everything. What’s less well known is that Ray Davies wrote a follow-up in the 1990s called, appropriately, Return to Waterloo. The title refers to a train ticket.

Further Reading

http://londonparticulars.wordpress.com/2009/09/14/did-you-see/ - An earlier entry about the Terence Cuneo statue that sits in front of the International platforms.

Unrelated

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Becoming-a-fan-of-things-in-lieu-of-taking-any-real-action/239120483389?v=app_2373072738&ref=nf#/pages/Becoming-a-fan-of-things-in-lieu-of-taking-any-real-action/239120483389?ref=nf - Proving a point on Facebook.

Further Viewing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmxoqpihE5s - Extract from John Schlesinger’s classic 1961 documentary, Terminus, about a day in the life of Waterloo Station.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvDoDaCYrEY - If you’ve never heard Waterloo Sunset, get yourself some culture.

Link-o-rama

Prior to tomorrow’s actual entry, I’ve been surfing YouTube for documentary footage. I love old public information films and I can’t explain why. Here are some items that may be of interest to London-liking folk.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fABILtla_lE&feature=channel - Blackfriars Bridge, 1896

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJi7x2QIO-8&feature=channel - London Bridge, thirty years later, in colour. Gives you a brief snapshot of just how busy the Pool of London was in those pre-war days.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9_gjh_YTJ0&feature=channel - The Houses of Parliament, 1926, again in colour. Surprisingly little has changed since this was filmed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipAYUpqDVNI&NR=1 - Some Bright Young Things in Hyde Park. This colour footage was all shot by Claude Friese-Green for a film called ‘The Open Road’.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzeBDcmrjjY&feature=channel - Petticoat Lane, London. Some fine footage of what the gentleman-about-town was wearing in the Roaring Twenties. Hats, mostly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwvX8P0ZRKE&NR=1 - Taking in the sights at St James’s Palace.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LGavykBbxM&feature=channel - ‘Colour on the Thames’ from 1935. Highlights include Richmond and construction of the ugly Hungerford Bridge. The heavily industrialised Pool of London is unrecognisable but for the few landmarks that survive. As for the Docklands, you wouldn’t know it was the same place today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Slk1KCQPolE&feature=related - The London Underground in 1963, including Upminster Depot, Loughton Station and signalling at Camden Town.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B92MnoPVtGs&feature=related - Coffee shops in London in the 1960s. Some fine footage of Soho. I particularly like the square narrator trying to be “down with the kids” and the supremely wooden proprietor complaining about overheads.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvFeZqv7WuQ&feature=related - King’s Road, Chelsea, 1967.

That’s all for now, chums, but stay tuned tomorrow for another exciting installment of London Particulars! G’bye now!