Sombre solace - No Place As Home - BootsnAll Travelogues

October 17, 2004

Sombre solace

Hi everyone, my last few days in England. My flight is booked for Wednesday night, I'm feeling happy. Leaving family and friends once more is going to be desperately sad; leaving London behind will not be.
In the mean time, here is a collage of images of London. I originally planned to do some sweeping overview of all of London, but... the city is so large, so diverse, so fragmented into different groups and friendships... that it would have been absurd, or at the very least a couple of weeks work. So instead, here are some disconnected images from a couple of the areas I know best in London: Hampstead and Camden Town, the "City" and its surrounds.

The plan is to fly into KL then get up to Chiang Mai in a couple of days, and rest for a while. Louise may well be joining me, if she is able to get a visa and other such stuff sorted... I plan to spend a lot of time with her (obviously), study some more leather working at ArtLab, meet friends again, generally take it easy. I was going to write the concluding article for this diary while still in London, but am finding it very hard to write here, so will wait to be back in Thailand.

I used to work here, before I left to see the world.

A Hampstead pub - it looks a lot better on the outside than in.

Camden's Roundhouse Theatre:

Camden Lock - the grey skies steal most of the colour from these shots....

Yet some houses fight this perma-grey.

Hampstead Heath, a leafy refuge I've lived near most of my life:

Benches of the Heath remember.

London is full of inbetween places. Gaps untouched by tube stops, old unexplained buildings, council housing estates looming cold, strange inscriptions. Pieces of history everyday used, enclosed parks, swanky anonymous businesses.

One road, the houses are new, shiny and astronomically priced; on another, they are old, shabby and also astronomically priced. It is a great city for walking in, the feel of an area changing from street to street.

The "City", or the "Square Mile" has more to see than banks - I've always felt that around Bank, Holborn, Spitalfields etc, there collect hints and ghosts of the much older London.

The old and new work side by side; the neo-Roman combines with the Erotic Gerkin.

On Bow Lane lies my favourite sandwich shop in the city, Bar San Remo. San Remo is a place to come only once in a while, or after a period of life threatening malnourishment, as the portions are gargantuan in both size and calorie content. Piles of mayonnaise rich combos such as bacon-ham-chicken or avocado-tuna-crabmeat rise like burial mounds under the counter - half a baguette or ciabatta will generally suffice for the rest of the day's food.

This picture barely captures the monstrous effect on your arteries and the divine effect on your tastebuds (assuming you don't mind the taste of full strength mayo).

These photos scratch the surface of only a few areas of London - it is an incredible, enormous and ancient city. In the next (and final) No Place As Home article I'll explain why I'm more than happy to leave.

Daniel, 17 October 2004, London town.

Posted by Daniel on October 17, 2004 07:02 PM
Category: England

Comments

been reading your blog over the pass week.. got the link from cayce's blog... sad to hear that you are concluding article for this diary... no more updates when you're back in KL and Thailand?.. or you're going to start a new chapter... your story with Louise is real amazing... it added colours to your blog... tried looking through for a picture of you and Louise... did you post any?... glad to hear that you are meeting her again...

p.s. if you have the chance to go back to east malaysia, come to Brunei. It'll be a different experience seeing Brunei through your eyes....

Posted by: Joan on October 19, 2004 09:57 AM

i remember camden lock! i was there during one of the sunday markets. your photos brought back to life the feel of London to me. all i can consciously remember is the crowds and crowds of people -- probably because most of them were tourists like me since it WAS july and it WAS oxford street i was walking down.

Posted by: bristolcities on October 20, 2004 01:35 PM

Interesting post - but is England/London _that_ gray? goodness grief, what did I get myself into?

I do hope you'll keep writing, and it would be nice to see a photo of you and Louise :)

Posted by: Rogerio on October 20, 2004 07:55 PM

Hi Rogerio, well, these photos were taken on very cloudy days. That said, there aren't that many non cloudy days, this close to winter...
I wasn't trying to capture every aspect of London in this piece - the photos were there to illustrate my current mood and feelings towards the city. With a different perspective I might have focused on the warmer, more lively aspects of London, or on Londoners themselves.
How long will you be in London? I'll email you some tips and places to visit.

Joan: I am going to continue writing, I just wanted to finish this particular section of my life - to give the story an ending. The next blog will be called, I think, "Suitcasing", but I haven't worked out yet where to host it etc. I'm hoping it will be a mixture of the current descriptive / reflective writing about countries, travelling, myself, but also have some more philosophical / more lighthearted topics.
And thanks for the invite - I hope in the not too far future to be able to get back to East Malaysia.

There aren't any photos of Louise on the site, at her request - not everyone is as happy to have a public life as I am... But when I've met up with her again in Thailand, I'll ask her if she's changed her mind.

Thank you to everyone else who's been commenting and reading. For some reason, writing has been very hard here in London, so I'll probably answer any posted questions in a few days once I'm back in Thailand.

Cheers,

Daniel

Posted by: Daniel on October 20, 2004 08:27 PM

Ditto from me on all of the above.

Your writing always touches the essence for me.

Your blog is like a special elective course in school. The course that isn't like any of the other hundreds of core and prereqs. The one that really interests you. The one that sets your heart a-flutter, your spirit soaring, and your soul in peaceful harmony.

I love your insights. Please keep writing.

Lynn

Posted by: Lynn on October 21, 2004 05:07 AM

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