Leaving London

I just dropped my Wife and Kids to the Airport as they fly to London for a few days.  Perhaps it’s natural, then, that my thoughts would fly in that direction also.

I have a passionate – and slightly odd - relationship with London in my head and it isn’t the relationship I thought it would be when I left Dublin in 1983. 

After completing third level education in Dublin, I was of the belief that I hated cities and wanted nothing more to do with them.  I don’t blame Dublin for this – it wasn’t you, Dublin, it was me.  I was just too young for cities.  I managed fine and had many a good time in my three years there, I just never developed a relationship with the place.  It’s still true to this day – I love to visit Dublin and I enjoy spending some time there but there’s an edge to it and, deep down, I fear that someday I might be required to live there again.

So, college over, I went back to Sligo and hid there for a year, happily working behind a bar.  There was no professional work to be had and London wasn’t for me – I hated cities after all.  But everybody was gone to London and there was good work there and I was stagnating in my home town and_ well, eventually it was just silly for me not to go, so I did.  Just for three months, mind, and not a day more…

…fourteen years later and it was time to leave London.  My wife and child had gone on ahead, back to Ireland, and I had a week to pack up the house and get it ready for the removal men.  A week on my own to say goodbye.

I had fallen in love, you see, with London.  I had got on the ferry from Ireland and watched the shore slip away behind me and I had berated myself for having to play out this most tired of clichés in this most modern of times.  I had caught the train at Holyhead (along with my friend Damian) and had arrived in London and made my way to Kensington where our friends had a flat and, yes, almost immediately, I had fallen in love with the place.

It was hard not to.  I was the right age now to want to live free and that’s just what London provided.  But it wasn’t just that.  I loved the scale of the place, the anonymity, the endless possibilities.  I didn’t ever really want to be anyplace else.

So, for fourteen years, we lived the full London experience.  We went everywhere and did everything.  We worked bloody hard too.  I mean bloody hard but the work was somehow part of the life rather than an exception to it – testimony perhaps to the quality of the people I was blessed enough to work with.

And then, 1997 arrived and Trish and I were no longer just a couple.  We were a family now and the imperative existed that our family would do better in Ireland than it would in London… and a job arose so we jumped, for the sake of family, we jumped. 

And, yes, it took a little time but it’s all worked out very well.  I used to have a fantasy of living in a little place where I was on speaking-terms with loads of people – a bit like the Steve Martin character in ‘Roxanne’ and here I am and I love it.

But my relationship with London had been quite intense so here’s where it gets a little strange – I left in February 1997 and I have never once been back since.  Not once.  I still think of London very often and love tweeting with my London friends.  Every year, I promise myself I will nip over and look around and I never do.  It would take another post to try to analyse the reasons for this, suffice it to say I don’t think they are overly simple.  But then, what is?

So anyway, there I was faced with my last evening in London, all on my own and what should I do?  I did what I had done so many times before, I went to Leicester Square and caught the latest movie.  That odd encyclopaedic-like knowledge I seem to retain of practically every cinema visit I’ve ever had tells me what film I saw that evening.  It was ‘Ransom’ with Mel Gibson and I really quite enjoyed it. 

Afterward, it was late but I didn’t want to go back to the house yet (already it was no longer home) so I walked.  I ended up at Westminster Bridge - on the Trafalgar Square side.  This bridge had been an icon of London for me since I had first come here on a college excursion when I was seventeen.  The illuminated underside and the sheer presence of the structure, as well as its amazing location, had all impressed me greatly.

I fancied I would stroll across it one more time but, when I got to the riverbank, I found the bridge was barricaded-off and completely empty.  A workman told me it was closed for the night for road repairs, which were due to start at One a.m.  It would be open again in the morning. 

I would be a hundred miles up the motorway in the morning.

“I’m in the building-game myself,” I said to the guy, “I’ll be across and nobody will notice.”

Amazingly, he let me slip through the barrier.

So it was that, on my last night in London, I stood, all alone, in the middle of the road in the middle of Westminster Bridge at midnight and I looked all around at the fabulous sweep of that fabulous city and I said goodbye.

I may go back for a weekend visit this year.

I’ve been saying that for a long long time now.

But, this year, I just might…

Any Aussie Got a Photo of Tom Waits and Me?

On a cold week-night evening in October 1985 I stood outside the stage door of the Dominion Theatre in London and waited for Tom Waits to come out.

I had never done that before for anyone and am fairly sure I will never do it again.

Tom had played a series of shows in The Dominion - I had been to see him the night before with a bunch of people and was so blown away that I was tempted to drive back into the City Centre to wait a while and just tell him how good it was.

So I did.

Through the stage door, I could hear the end of the show. Tom played three encores, one more than the night before. The closing song was 'Blue Valentines'.

I wished I was inside for that.



Perhaps because it was the last night of his London stint, it was well over an hour-and-a-half before Tom and his band came out. The time was passed quickly by chatting to the many people who went in and came out of the stage door to pay their respects - among them Elvis Costello and Bono.

When Tom finally appeared, there was only me and a young Australian couple left outside the door. I told Tom that I thought the show was fantastic - he said, "Aw gee, thanks," and he Autographed my Rain Dogs album. He told me he was on his way To Newcastle to do some songs for something called 'The Toob' (The Tube with Jools Holland and Paula Yates - 1982-1987) and sure enough he was on it two days later on Channel 4.

It was great to meet him, I'm glad I took the trouble.

Here's the thing...

The Australian guy said, "You gotta get a picture" so me and Tom stood in together and this guy took our photograph.

After Tom had left, I gave the guy my address and made him promise he would send the picture on.

Guess what?

I never got it... guess what else?

I would quite like it.

So if you happen to be passing through this blog and you think you might be that Australian Guy from that night in 1985, could you check your photo album and maybe, if you happen to see me in there, give me a shout.

Thanks!

PS - Of course I've seen Tom quite a few times, most recently this year in Dublin, review here.

Music and Driving

There is no doubt that the heady combination of music and driving can embed memories which are not easily put away.

Just a few minutes ago, a song came on the radio – ‘Where the Streets Have no Name’ by U2.

A good song, a long guitar intro, a catchy Edge riff, lively all-in-all.

But for me… well, it never fails to transport me. Back to 1991 Kensington, London W8.

Unable to get employment in my chosen profession after a year away in Australia, I went working as a builder’s labourer on an office-refurbishment project. Our mission was to rip out the third floor and put it back in differently.

It was a Saturday afternoon and me and the three other guys had worked hard, beating down plasterboard stud partitions with sledge hammers. Dusty, blister-inducing work.

We should have gone on until five but the boss had headed for Romford so we packed it up at 3.30.

I was heading for High Street Kensington tube to go home when Terry offered me a lift.

The other three were heading east and they could drop me off easy at Hyde Park Corner.

We piled in the car, me in the back, turned on to High Street and off down past the Albert Hall, Hyde Park sitting airy on the opposite side.

And then the radio came on and that U2 song was just starting and the lights were all green in front of us and all the Saturday-afternoon shopping people looked so good.

We cruised down along the park, sun shining, windows open. A hard days work done, money in pocket, and the prospect of Saturday night in London stretched out promisingly before us. And we smiled.

And that was it.

I’m sure they dropped me at the station. I’m sure I got home, showered and ate. But I don’t know.

All I know is the song and the drive and the feeling.

And it comes back every time I hear the song.

I guess it always will.