Tonight:
4°c
An American travel website is warning travellers off our fair city on the grounds that it's "dirty" and the cuisine isn't all it might be. While it isn't usually my style to enter this sort of fray - I am, after all, a dual citizen - I feel I must speak out.
I know I'm not alone in thinking that the boom years led London to have a somewhat bloated self-image: we began to think in terms of the City traders' bunce; if we were property-owners, we fell prey to the delusion that money in bricks and mortar was also cash in the bank; we ignored the widening gulf between rich and poor.
But while all of this may be true, we never lost our sense of integrity or civic pride. London was the first of the world cities - and it remains one of the greatest.
I've travelled extensively in the States and while there are some cities which indisputably have a character of their own, for every San Francisco or New York there is a Dallas: a plantation of homogenous skyscrapers and shopping malls which, for sheer blandness, makes Basingstoke look like Baghdad.
As for the food, don't get me started. And while our streets may be dirty, give me London's time-scumbled surfaces any time over the featureless expanses of plate glass and the antiseptic precincts of North America.
The same website suggested US travellers might be better off heading for Paris if they want to experience picturesque Europe but for all its obvious virtues, our neighbour has nothing of London's sheer grandeur.
You can't imagine having the experience I did the other evening, cycling from my home in Stockwell to the Whitechapel Gallery, in any other city in the world.
First the Victorian terraces of Kennington, then the resurgent Brutalism of the Elephant, next the Chaucerian confines of the Borough. At Tower Bridge, the traffic was held up as the bridge was raised to allow Silver Cloud of Nassau to dock in the Pool of London.
I've no idea what the passengers were thinking as the tug pulled them past Traitors Gate and they anchored in the evening sunshine by HMS Belfast but I can't imagine they were suffering from ennui.
As for me, I pedalled on to Whitechapel, where I stopped at Tubby Isaacs's stall (established 1919) for three fresh oysters on the half shell (cost £2.70), before entering the beautifully refurbished gallery, which has been vital - and free - East End aesthetic resource for over a century; later that evening I repaired to a balti house in Brick Lane for kebabs, and some of the creamiest dhal it has ever been my pleasure to sup.
Exercise, history, drama, excellent victuals - and all for a tenner.
Every so often even I succumb to a perverse urge to move to the sticks - but then I have a quintessential London experience like that, and realise that while tired I may be, I'm not tired of life.
Slippery character
Congratulations are due to Kew Gardens and all who sail in her soaring cast-iron-and-glass arks.
The botanic gardens celebrate their 250th anniversary this week, and over the centuries have become all things to all Londoners: an oasis of vegetative calm in the animalistic heart of the city, a serious resource for scientific researchers, and, for others, a good place to pick up some new bedding plants.
Last Friday I ran into a friend of mine who works there, and he told me it was a great job: "Early in the morning it's magic. The other day I saw an eel kill a cygnet!" I'm not sure this demonstration of nature red in tooth and claw would be to everyone's taste — but I got his point: it isn't only in the City that you can witness the survival of the slipperiest.
Norwich is Heartless
It isn't every morning that you get threatened by a budget hotel maintenance man — so I suppose I should cherish the experience.
Staying at the Express Inn in Norwich, I —perversely — decided that I didn't want to listen to a DJ on Heart FM read out emails from moronic listeners about their novelty pants.
So I yanked the wires from the back of the wall-mounted speaker. I overreached myself by going for a second speaker and was nabbed by a waiter, who addressed me as "mate".
The maintenance man came to repair the damage, and when I half-rose from my chair, he snarled at me: "Are you getting up again!" Call me old fashioned, but this is the kind of "service" you expect to get in Guantanamo Bay — not that you pay 80 quid a night for.
• Apparently the Army is building a complete reconstruction of an Afghan town in the sandy wastes of Thetford Forest, so that our personnel can experience the realities of counter-insurgency before they leave the UK.
Every effort is being made to achieve verisimilitude, including employing Afghan refugees to dress up as Kalashnikov-wielding Taliban fighters.
I wonder, has it occurred to the MoD quite what a terrible symmetry is being enacted here?
Imagine being one of these poor men, compelled to re-enact the very warfare that led to your exile — and imagine being one of the equally benighted squaddies, compelled to rehearse for a potentially deadly foreign expedition that's sold to them as an attempt to remodel Afghanistan in the image of … Thetford.
Reader views (10)
To the guy who moved out to Philly. I am not saying that London is a great place to live, mainly as I am not yet qualified to comment on this matter, but are you kidding? Did you see the documentary that Louis Theroux made exposing the sheer dangers of your current city. It was called Law and Disorder in Philadelphia - enough said. For myself It certainly confirmed a few thoughts in my mind about the 'security' felt in some American cities... I would happily take London at it's apparent 'dangers' thanks.
- William Parry, Norwich, UK, 09/05/2009 01:55
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Will, big mistake mate, you can 'talk up' the dhal as much as you like, but if you were up Whitechapel way and looking for some supper, you should of given Brick Lane a miss and checked out the 'New Tayyab' instead.
- Chris, Hornchurch, UK, 08/05/2009 01:36
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London retains it's humanity, in all it's forms.
I don't want the sterile, commercially manipulative environments of shopping malls.
Good piece, Will.
- Andrew, 'Ackney, 08/05/2009 00:35
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Hi Terry is see i hit a raw nerve take of your glasses the truth must have hurt how many young people have been murdered in london over the last year? i was burgled in london and held with a gun pointed at me many of my londoner friends have been mugged if you want to make a comment please be honest glasgow is not the best city in the world but you are 100 times safer than in london so he he he to you again and if you call me nuts i will have you for defamation of character.thanks
- Jim Fennessey, glasgow, 07/05/2009 00:11
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Jim Feeney, you have got to be kidding me?!? A comment like that coming from some one who lives in Glasgow? He he he, you're nuts!
- Terry Eagling, London, 06/05/2009 16:35
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London does offer great variety at a low price ... but do you often just rip out wires when the music offends you? Well worth a 'mate', eighty quid or not...
- Raoul, London UK, 06/05/2009 16:25
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Will
You are doing what so many Londoners do, living in denial. I lived in London from 1982 to 2001, I then emigrated to the USA and lived in Philadelphia for a few years, I was stunned at how my quality of life improved.
Almost every bar supplies table service as the norm, almost every bar offers food, some basic but some very good indeed, often up until 10pm or later.
Cuisine is superb, with Cuban, Mexican, French and Japanese restaurants represented very well.
Crowds, well London is far too crowded, was then and is now.
London is tense and aggressive, we see bouncers on the doors of pubs all the time, yet this is unheard of in Philadelphia.
Politeness, I was amazed at how polite people are, unassuming and not automatically unfriendly as London often is.
London is stressful, it really is, queues everywhere, bar staff never get tipped and so have no motive to do anything more than the bare minimal service, one rarely gets the feeling that one is valued as a customer because it is taken for granted that there's an infinite supply of them.
Take a stroll along any major London road, and you see a large proportion of cruddy pizza outlets, questionable kebab outlets, and so on, many of them offering appalling service and quality, this does exist in the US but is so much rarer.
I was able to stroll along South St in Philly on a Saturday afternoon, enter a bar and sit and drink a cold beer in a (pre-chilled) glass and listen to live Jazz this was just routine, but not in London.
- Hugh, Birmingham, UK, 06/05/2009 15:11
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Love this piece - thanks for standing up for London! it is a truly fantastic city.
- Mp, London, 06/05/2009 14:31
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a sad case of rose tinted specs, the place is awful dirty,and transport is a joke, shootings, stabings, mugging,need i go on wake up for pity sake,
- Jim Feeney, glasgow, 06/05/2009 14:08
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It's not my habit to praise Will Self, but well done for standing up for our great city.
- Johnny English, London, UK, 06/05/2009 11:24
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