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To Edinburgh and a few days with The Mother. A short walk to the tube station pulling a small case on wheels, the tube to Liverpool Street where two young men push their way out through the barriers without tickets and then the Stansted Express. I have How To Market Books by Alison Baverstock, which I intend to read as homework for promotion of First and Fiftieth, but though I've taken this journey many times in the past, I find it difficult to read when I can stare out of the window. I always find it more difficult to concentrate on a train than on an airplane. In economy, I prefer the aisle seat so I stretch my legs without disturbing my neighbours. When I occasionally fly business the window seat gives both a view and freedom to move around, but clouds and endless sea are less absorbing than a film or a book. So from the train I watched Bethnal Green and Hackney slip by, enjoying perspectives invisible from the number 8 or 277 bus - occasional glimpses into back gardens and more frequent views of the small workshops that spew out from under the railway arches. Then the anonymity of larger warehouses and roads punctuating what remains of the marshes that circled north-east London. When that paled I returned to the book and planning of the publicity campaign that my publisher cannot afford. Stansted Airport has won awards for architecture and I am sure that if the clutter of traffic outside and the check-in desks and partitions that divide landside from airside and shop from restaurant were all cleared away, I would be impressed. But the primary impression is of a large untidy room littered with individuals and groups picking their way past each other and the sprawling queues that block every pathway. I reflect that with the advent of the cheap airline, the last vestiges of the romance of travel have died. When you are surrounded by tabloid readers from half a dozen countries it is difficult to think of your journey to Berlin, Barcelona or Belfast as any more exotic than the daily commute to and from Balham. Then I pick myself up from between the stools of snobbery and egalitarianism and join the queue for Go's domestic flights. I had thought this trip would be the last time I flew the airline, but according to rumour its separate identity will be maintained until the end of March when it is finally drowned by the Easyjet orange. My few experiences with Easyjet have been consistently discouraging - unhelpful staff, poor punctuality and a scrum to get on the plane as passengers fight for the best seats - and my prejudice has only been confirmed by television's fly on the wall. It strikes me that the orange logo - loud, aggressive and unsubtle - is highly appropriate for both the airline and its customers and I shall have great pleasure in taking my custom elsewhere. The Go flight takes off late, but arrives in time. The Mother is waiting, beaming as ever, in the Arrivals Hall. We greet each other, pick up my luggage and we head off to dinner with three of her friends, an eclectic mix of ages and nationalities. One, a young Italian would-be film director, asks who my influences are. I sense the beginning of an intellectual discussion, something I usually try to avoid, but by the end of the evening that my brain has woken up and creaked into action and I find myself enjoying a wide-ranging conversation round art, politics, linguistics and other topics. We each talk with more opinion than knowledge, but that, of course, is part of the fun. The rest of the week is equally pleasant. The Mother and I drive to Angus to see The Aunt and The Uncle. I mow the lawn, front and back. We get stuck in a traffic jam on the way to the borough dump and in Musselburgh fail to locate a twee café in which to have tea. We talk about going to the theatre and end up in front of the television, but on my last day actually get to the Royal Museum of Scotland, where a small exhibition on the Emperor Qianlong and a glance at the permanent Scottish history exhibit passes a couple of hours. But, this visit, as every visit, I am reminded that you can't go home again. There is much about Edinburgh I love, in particular the lack of so much that makes London unpleasant - the litter, the rudeness, the petty crime and the sense of rootlessness in a city whose inhabitants always seem to come from elsewhere - but my childhood memories keep clashing with today's reality. It's mostly small things - the first signs bus queues are about to disintegrate into London anarchy, the parking lot where a tenement used to be, once familiar shops replaced by discount stores. The realisation that the tall dark buildings that to a small boy were both forbidding and protective have shrunk to human size. And not for the first time, the shock of darker skins with Scottish accents, young men and women to whom Edinburgh is home. My head tells me that immigration is a universal phenomenon, that I have lived most of my adult life in multicultural cities and my relationships and friendships have been with Africans and Americans, Indians and Chinese, as much as with Brits of every hue. But my heart tells me that Scotland was different, a small, homogenous society, where we all had the same pale faces and spoke with different variations on pinched Scottish vowels. These new Scots are intruding on my memory. No disrespect, I want to say, but please go elsewhere, to London, New York, Delhi or Johannesburg and give me back my childhood. My memory is wrong, of course. Long before I was a schoolboy there were communities of Italians, Poles and, I believe, Chinese. And black and brown faces were not uncommon, as students and tourists and occasional residents. The fact that I do not remember them does not mean that they did not exist. And so I swallow my reaction and smile and silently wish the stranger well. This is their home now, not mine, and I hope they are happy there and make others happy in their turn. All I can do is walk away. At the end of the week, I say goodbye to The Mother. Edinburgh is behind me in more senses than one and the plane brings me back to a London that I am always ambivalent about. I frequently curse it while enjoying its culture, friendships, nightlife and much else besides. After more than twenty years, however, I know that it is not a place that I will ever love and I ride the Stansted Express back into the capital, wondering where my private Utopia might be. |
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| 20 September 2002 |
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© Martin Foreman |