On the Town

When the melancholy hits it really hits… I keep telling myself I can stay here until New Year… I can hack it. I can brave the worst of winter. It feels like a challenge… I know I could go back today if I wanted to. My passport’s renewed. I have the money… More than enough to go to the airport today and take a plane back to warmer climes… But I’m not going to. This is home… It’s where I come from. I can take this for a few weeks or a few months.

The sky is neither white nor grey but somehow shimmering between the two. Sure it’s cold and grim and maybe that’s playing a role but I know that it isn’t this that’s bugging me… I want to think that this is where I could belong. This is the country I come from for Christ’s sake. Why does it seem so desperate? I watch people leaving Belsize Park tube tiny mobile phones pressed to their ears walking urgently from their A’s to their B’s while I’m wandering in their spaces between; their no man’s land. It’s true… I could get a job for a few weeks. Become part of things… But I look at them and the idea fills me with stark terror.

So I do the next best thing. I pop into the offy. The better UK off-licences have a unique kind of smell. You can just stand there inhaling the faint traces of beer and the wine soaked corks. Small Christmas trees decorated with liquor bottles. Fake glittering snow beds filled with mulled wines, creams and sherry. I linger for a while admiring the range but find myself opting to buy one small quarter bottle of reasonably expensive scotch. It’s wrapped in brown paper by a pleasantly fat bloke in his late twenties who asks “Would you like anything else sir?”

Part of me would like to buy half the shop and sneak it all back to my empty flat but that’s copping out. I smile and say no thanks but the air outside is biting cold. I take out my engraved silver flask and fill it to the brim. There’s still an eighth or so left in the bottle so I knock it back and feel the warmth slip inside me.

I sit on a bench on Belsize Parade watching the traffic lights switching between green amber and red and enjoy the glow like a kid watching Christmas tree lights. The commuters march across the cross beams of headlights with their collars pulled high.  An old man with a purple nose and a woolly hat joins me lighting a cigarette between glove free fingers. He says something to me in Polish or Russian. To my shame I can’t tell the difference. I smile and nod as if I understand and he looks happy.

The air suddenly fills with a fine mist of rain. The sky has slipped from its shimmering grey to a shimmering violet. Looking at the dilapidated Georgian houses I see television light flickering in the windows. This is what the English do with their nights. They watch fucking television. I spent most of my childhood doing the same. I lived in that small monochrome rectangle. I think I’m English but I’m only television English really. I know that graded grains make finer flour but I don’t know what the wheat looks like growing in the field and I don’t fucking want to know either.  

I get up, nodding goodbye to my Eastern European friend and head down the hill towards Chalk Farm. The restaurants all look full of life. The pubs look full of life… But part of me doesn’t want to walk into any of these places alone. I just keep going until I get to the stables end of Camden Lock Market. It’s being demolished at the moment… Or, I should say, part of it is being demolished. The old Victorian stables are being torn down amid scaffolding so the landowner can build a themed shopping centre that will use the appeal of the market but house the usual assortment of Starbucks and McDonalds and Boots and whoever else wants to pay inflated shop front rates.

A voice calls out to me, “Come here darling.” She’s Thai or Chinese. She talks in a studied mishmash of attractive Pidgin English and Bangkokney and proffers a piece of deep fried MSG chicken between chopsticks. “Try for free. Try for free.” I look at her face and her sweet familiarity makes my heart sink. Smiling temptation with full dark lips and twinkling eyes I can almost hear her whisper “Please come inside please sir.” Come inside where it’s warm and everyone pretends to give a crap… Of course I can see the dark rings growing under her eyes. She’s ageing here in this cold market. How did she end up here? How did half these Thai girls end up here?

I walk past without tasting the chicken… But there’s no escaping the familiar charm. They’re all around me. Thai girls, young and old, trying to entice me to their stalls. They make me feel I belong to them. They know I know their language and their country so I, more than any other man, have to buy their crap. It’s so warm here.  It’s joyful and full of young people. Incense sneaks its sinewy smoke into my skull. Blacklight paintings and high tempo music and Buddha and silk and all the same mementos, and I mean the exact same mementos, that line Sukhumvit Road.

I push on and head away from the market by following the canal. In the dark lamplights glitter in canal water. If I wasn’t alone here it might feel wonderful, romantic, warm. Couples and groups of friends engaged in their worlds pass me by. Absolutely locked in solitude I take another drink and feel my isolation evaporate. You’re never alone with an armful of booze hidden about your person.

Reaching at the zoo I can smell the fresh animal stink; the stink of food and sweat and shit. Odd sorrowful noises pierce the night sky. Stir crazy warthogs, confused peacocks and pissed off giraffes. I press on… I press on letting my steps grow wider and more energetic. I pass the endless magnolia houses. I walk down Charlotte Street alive with the smells of all the food in the world pausing only briefly to eye the cards displayed in telephone booths. “New Oriental Beauty – No Rush – Clean Discreet Apartment – 11AM Till Late – Close to Warren St.” The woman in the picture looks so sweet it almost tempts me but this is England. It just doesn’t mean the same thing here.

Soon I find myself wandering through Soho Square. Near here there are red lights, clip joints, shabby little signs on shabby little doorways saying “Model Upstairs”. This is no temptation at all. I’m more tempted to slip into a Thai restaurant and flirt with the waitresses. But the end result will, I know, just make me feel homesick for a place that isn’t really home. Instead I slip into Caffe Nero on Tottenham Court Road adding a bit more life to the coffee with the contents of my flask… I’m like some kid adding vodka to the school punch. See… I do have some happy memories of this country.

The world outside is slowing down now. It’s unmistakably night. The women who wander by seem elegant and stylish. They know they’re on display and it’s all a grand piece of performance art. Each has her own walk. Businesslike, sexy, ultra feminine, in control, out of control, funny, sweet. Some dress according to the season and some dress as if there are no seasons. The light from jammed up traffic sends a halo around the head of some Jewish looking girl with an aggressive afro. Another girl has hair so blonde that you could at first miss that she’s Japanese.

The West End glows… Inevitably I reach Chinatown… Gerard Street… The smells again fill me with a craving. I sit on a stoop and just watch the world come and go around me. Middle aged Chinese women wearing heavily padded coats stand outside the betting shop selling something, I don’t know what. Some Chinese secret just for the Cantonese speakers. As the minutes drag towards an hour or so one of them plays a flirty staring game with me and I wonder if these middle aged women are hookers or illegal lottery ticket sellers… It doesn’t matter. I just like that they’re there. I like that all these beautiful Asian women are coming and going. It just makes me feel happy to be a part of their world. Don’t ask me why because it makes no fucking sense at all.

As my arse starts to grow too cold to bear sitting on concrete any more I get up with the intention of buying another bottle from somewhere. My flask is growing light. I want the middle aged Chinese woman to notice me getting up but she’s chatting with her friends now…

I wander into another offy and buy another bottle of whisky but then slip into a pub. There’s a fire blazing inside and the seats are red velvet. I buy a pint of Guinness and sip it while watching the flames. The flames have me. It’s so warm here that I can’t imagine walking about any more. I’m getting old and I don’t really know many people in London any more. I hear and then see some teenage kids acting up in the street outside and I wonder if I ever looked like they look to me.

The Guinness, more than the whisky, seems to seep into my brain and sleep seems more inviting than pretending this will ever again be my town. It’s a nice place to visit but the umbilical cord was probably cut for good when I first left.

I take out my mobile phone and tap out the number for a mini cab.

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