Morning:
8°c
I was walking to the local post office one morning this week when I came across a policeman looking grimly at a large pile of car tyres that had been dumped in the gutter.
"You're looking tired out," I quipped, but when he failed to smile I went on philosophically: "Well, that's London for you."
"No," he replied, still stony-faced. "That's Stockwell."
I went on my way a little chagrined at his stereotyping of my neighbourhood, which, while it may have its problems, still deserves a less negative attitude from its law enforcers.
But then it occurred to me that I was guilty of propagating a stereotype as well - and mine had been even broader, reducing the entire metropolis to a zone of petty crime.
We all do it, though, don't we: view this great and infinitely varied city through the reducing lens of stereotypy?
I think it's a coping mechanism: after all, if we stopped to consider the individuality of every single person we came across in a given day, we'd probably go crazy.
If you're reading this in a rush-hour Tube, try casting an eye about the carriage and imagining the unique thoughts, hopes and fears of the strap-hangers and the seat-slumpers.
It's disturbing, isn't it? It's far easier to lump them into this or that category according to such broad-brush criteria as gender, class, age, race or shoe style.
I want to make a plea for the particular against the general, and the individual against the stereotype.
Londoners have always inhabited a frenetic environment, prey to the madness of crowds, but nowadays even the exchanges that traditionally would have been personalised and face-to-face are being subverted by the anonymity of the computer and the phone.
If we want to retain our good manners against the rude blare of spam and call centres, we need to focus on Tom as Tom, not just another Tom, Dick or Harry.
I was moved to consider all this by a documentary made by my friend Harry Harris. In it, Harry, who's a licensed taxi driver and a qualified city guide, takes a look at wartime London.
So far, so predictable, perhaps. After all, what more obvious presenter for a programme like this than a chirpy cockney cabbie?
I bet you already think you know what sort of ground the programme covers: the Blitz spirit, the Royals on the ration, their majesties tour the East End, evacuee kiddies with luggage labels, the blackout.
Wrong on both counts. I met Harry about five years ago when I needed to pump a London cabbie for his knowledge of the Knowledge in order to write my novel, The Book of Dave, which has a taxi-driving protagonist.
We were introduced by a mutual friend who explained that Harry was a third- generation cabbie, born in Bethnal Green. If those weren't geezerish enough credentials, Harry's sister is EastEnders actor Patsy Palmer and his wife, Lindsey Coulson, is another from the show.
I was expecting Grant Mitchell in a congestion-fuelled rage, venting a stream of opinionated - if not bigoted - remarks about every stereotype under the sun.
In fact, Harry turned out to be a softly spoken, studious-looking man, who as well as having an encyclopaedic knowledge of London streets, landmarks and history was also a qualified psychotherapist.
He helped me inestimably with the novel - and helped me also to stop seeing cabbies as stereotypes, any more than any other professional grouping, whether they be bankers or barbecue chefs.
Harry's documentary also takes a swipe at stereotypy, beginning not with flag-waving British patriotism but Nazi banners flying from the flagpoles along the Mall.
This astonishing footage of the 1936 funeral of the German ambassador to the Court of St James, complete with massed crowds giving the fascist salute on Carlton House Terrace, forces us to re-evaluate what we think we know about London's past.
With the BNP gaining in strength in London, it seems only fitting that it should be an East End cab driver, who grew up watching National Front skinheads march by his council block, who raises the spectre of an alternative history: one in which the Right Club of virulent anti-Semites, founded by Tory MP Archibald Ramsay, might have assisted the Nazis in their invasion of Britain.
Nor is Harry's view of the Blitz a stereotypic tale of doughty endurance; instead he focuses on the March 1943 disaster at Bethnal Green, when anti-aircraft rockets fired from Victoria Park triggered a stampede into the Tube station that left 172 dead, including 62 children.
Harry's interview with one of the survivors, Alf Morris, now in his eighties, is harrowing, as both men are overcome by emotion on the steps where Morris saw so many others crushed to death.
We laugh at tourists who visit a souvenir tea-towel London, full of genial bobbies, quaint red phone boxes, Buck House and black cabs - yet we ourselves can end up living in a place quite as clichéd when we let stereotypes get the better of us.
Personally, there are plenty of policy positions I'm happy to mock David Cameron for holding but his call for us all to "hug a hoodie" isn't one of them.
The problem of feral youth in our city is one of perception as much as reality: there's a different head under every hood, just as there's a different postie walking every route and a different policeman under every helmet.
As for the tyres dumped round my way, I'm pretty certain no Stockwell resident would stereotype his or her own manor as a fly-tipping zone. The offenders must have come from Clapham.
Wartime London with Harry Harris, Discovery Channel, 6pm Sunday 8 November.
Reader views (2)
I am so pleased not to have to live near your pile of tyres or wonder which type of hoodie is next to me on the tube... On sunday my son and his girlfriend were sitting on a bus in west London with very loud music being played behind them...my son asked for it to be turned down ..abuse from husband holding baby and wife, she then slapped his face.....bravo ..my son made a citizens arrest and detained her until Police arrived..
- G Wheeler, Yealmpton Devon, 01/12/2009 15:56
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Very interesting. I worked as a student in Queen Anne's gate, a save the Children office in the sixties. London was very exciting then too especially after demure Edinburgh. Kings Road Chelsea was a favourite haunt. The boutiques were fab. The History of your great city always fascinates me. Must come down again sometime soon for one of the Mail's literary lunches.....they don't do so many up here in the freezing north, I wonder why?
- R. Shepley, Edinburgh Scotland, 06/11/2009 14:20
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