You begin in London’s Docklands and end up in Hackney. This is a journey that takes you through the rich savannah of London’s world famous wildlife reserve: ‘Moronic Park’ From the high rise of Canary Wharf in the Dockland’s where the wild-life is genial, tame and generally harmless to the seething urban jungle of Hackney where the forces of Darwinism seem to have gone pear shaped and survival is of the dumbest variety only.
Have you ever seen London’s Docklands at night? Towering glass infernos hanging like crusty stalagmites; glistening in the drizzly twilight like a zillion diamonds baked into rectangular slabs of shiny metal. Bright squares of light surround you floating in nothingness. It’s a strange sight - surreal. Like something out of the set of a Fritz Lang movie. It reminded me of the video to Queen’s classic “Radio Ga-Ga” where Freddy, Brian, John and Roger weave through the ‘scrapers of a futuristic metropolis in their flying machine: “I sit alone. And watch your lights. My only friend. Through teenage nights…”
You feel like you’re in the video as you sit in the carriage of the 'Docklands Light Railway' (DLR)– a modern marvel that Brunel would have been proud of. The DLR is built on great stilts that raise the track 40ft above street level as it snakes its way between the glass precipices that loom over it. When you peer through the window you can’t fail but marvel at the floating squares of light, just hanging there as if motionless in space (lights from the buzzing industry of offices). The stations and places you pass have names that allude to a rich history and a sense of humour: Mudchute, Pudding Mill Lane, Galleons Reach, West India Quay and Coriander Avenue. On your way to work the carriage swarms with city slicker types; decked in finely cut suits, haute couture shirts, gourmet ties, and the obligatory spiky ‘just got out of bed’ muff of hair. And all this dressed in a rich sauce of smug ostentatiousness.
The docklands is everything the rest of London is not: squeaky clean, planned, well designed, restrained, polite, polished, German almost, with a distinctive whiff of wealth and a bloated pretentiousness that manifests itself as a scab of self-importance; like a spoilt super-model. You see it in the passengers in the DLR. All modest behind their dandy shoes, quiet, minding their own business, sullen expressions as if they’re the unluckiest bastards on earth!
It lacks something though. You get to understand what when you make the second leg of the journey home: Bank station (in the City of London) to Hackney on the 149 bus. When you get on the 149 your still in the City so it’s full of respectable types: people of culture and learning (snobbish git I am!). The bus is Zen-calm, relaxed, a gentle patina of chit-chatter like soothing raindrops murmurs in the background. But as soon as the bus hits Shoreditch and the Kingsland Road (that defines the boundary between The City and Hackney) it’s almost like a scene out of ’28 days later’ – invasion of the zombie flesh eating yokels. I’m not sure what it is about Hackney; perhaps the air in Hackney is somehow different or perhaps it’s the water but the fact of the matter is before you can say ‘who nicked my f***ing wallet?’ the decibel level suddenly starts to rise and before you know it, you’re crossed an invisible threshold because even though you’re wearing your German made headphones (that promised to keep out all sounds bar those from your ipod), you can still make out some of the foul mouth expletives amongst the din. ‘Fuckin this’ and “fucking dat’ and ‘dirty cunt this’. The change in decibel level occurs in tandem with a change in vernacular parlance. Like a double comedy act: ‘yaa maan innit’ – ‘dats buff’ – ‘yo chief’ – ‘lemme see dat man wicked’ etc. I’m not going to trawl through the vocab less it give me a bleedin ed’ache man but you get my gist innit? The change in tongue and switch to mashup English also coincides with a change in passenger profile.
Gone is the city type, who seems to have fled and got off at Liverpool Street Station to continue the journey into the salubrious leafy suburbs. The void that is left by this sudden departure is gradually filled, as we move into deepest darkest Hackney, by another type of passenger. Preliminary indications are that the passenger aforementioned are of a type that can be regarded as human; but barely so: Homo Hackneosyphillis – features of note are a general look of unhealthiness, spaced-out eyes that wobble at you thorough deeply recessed orbits, a face like Edvard Munch’s painting 'The Scream' (that depicts a state of insanity), and clothing bought from the condemned section of the Sunday flea market.
Now, I have nothing against markets. In-fact I love to wander amongst them on a Sunday morning, but there are certain things I would never buy from them. Namely, pills claiming to be Viagra, blood sugar-level testers for my mother, Chinese porn DVDs called ‘King Kong – bigger then part IV’ (featuring a hairy gorilla, strange grunting sounds and lots of naked fondling up trees and necrophilia – sexual attraction to corpses) and of course clothes. Why? Because I don’t want to look like a walking trash bin and besides it’s so obvious anyway when you’re dressed as the rag man.
Looking at the stunted and moth eaten population of Hackney you’d think everybody was on a ration diet of bread and marge from the many ‘Caffs’ that litter the Dalston High Road like smallpox. It’s not just the shriveled faces though; the rots even got into the cranium. Extract of conversation between father and son sitting opposite:
‘Wer we goin dad?’
‘To dat no good slag bitch mother of yours, so shut the f**k up’
Mm, another kid that’s gonna grow up to be a well balanced nipper
Then there’s a little altercation in the back between a black women and a black kid over the lack of respect. The kid seems to be suffering from some sort of spinal affliction as he’s walking with a lilt and rubberized ‘limb syndrome’ – The Hackney Walk
“Yo stop barlin man. Tut!” he says to her
“You got no respect. The lot of you! I’m not even gonna bother getting down to your level” she barks back.
The youngster continues giving it his best no doubt to save face with his friends.
Then there’s the bunch of school girls in the back pointing and sniggering at people on the street:
“Tut! look at that man! Check out those freaky trousers!”
“What about him, check out his hair? Check out the old man with the zimmer frame and the glasses!” They start banging on the window scaring the people on the street and no doubt giving themselves a bad reputation.
As the bus moves down Stoke Newington High Street you’re now in yet another world: The Ottoman Empire Part deux. The Ottoman Empire, originally dismantled after the 1st world war, now seems to have sprung up on my very doorstep. Its invasion of the 24 hour Kurdish Convenience Store (now rapidly becoming something of a cliché) with its rudely lit façade and supply of Turkish cheeses, sausages and fresh olives (yummy) and the abundant Turkish Restaurants too. Now, I love these restaurants, the food is fantastic and fresh and the service friendly and prices not too bad either but all the menus are identical; in all the restaurants! But the stiff competition (there’s a new restaurant opening every time I walk down the High Street) has driven down prices and driven up quality, which is much more then what can be said about the card-board cut outs of ‘Bangla Town’s’ identikit restaurants with their touts luring in victims with false promises of ‘great food’ – the operative term here being food!
Time to get off now. I don’t know but it sure makes my journey much more interesting then it would otherwise be if we had nothing but fish and chip and pie and mash shops. I think I’ll grab some food on the way home tonight. Yeah, feel like some fish and chips innit!
Bon appetite!
