Last Train to Lewisham
by Lester Alfonso
Boom. I’m in London, England. I’m not quite sure how it happened. I got a phone call. I got on a plane. And now, I’m here. Working on a project so secret the computer hard drives have to be locked up in a safe at the end of each day. I’m in Soho. Led by hand to "strictly members-only salons for the carefully segregated strata of high-income hipsters." I’m here because I know someone here. Aside from her, nothing is familiar. I’m the character from Memento with no Polaroids in my hand to explain anything anyone faces traces or names. I smile. Raise my pint of Stella Artois. Sip. No time to think about how far I am from the Only Café just now.
I’m walking through Leicester Square. A mob has gathered to watch celebrities get out of limousines at the premier of an American film. I manage to squeeze myself through. Squeals from teenaged girls. Then, scores of different languages are overheard. Tourists are teeming out of every cobblestone alleyway. The streets are filthy in their wake. There are no public garbage bins in London anymore because terrorists keep putting bombs in them. Central London is so busy it reminds me of New Orleans during Mardis Gras. Hop on a quick cab to Hampstead. I ask the driver if this is some special night, some kind of holiday or something? "It’s just a regular Saturday night, mate." SLAM. Two aspirins later, my head is on a pillow.
Newspaper headlines show, like thought balloons, what commuters have on their minds the next morning in the Underground express to London. SHOCKED PARENTS NUMBED BY GRIEF provides the tragic punctuation to the biggest news story this summer in England. In the quiet little village of Soham, two 10 year old girls, close friends, went to the corner shop to get some candy and never came home. In an otherwise uneventful summer, the details of the search, the discovery of the bodies, and the hunt for the perpetrator, have provided much needed news copy for local print and television. Suddenly, Peterborough is in the news. They find some evidence in the school caretaker’s home. Arrests are made, court dates announced and statements for the ravenous media are carefully orated on the steps of the High Court in Peterborough, England. Every time I hear the blonde news anchor say the word "Peterborough" I look up from my cappuccino.
I spy a street performer in Piccadilly Circus wearing a space helmet with his body wrapped in tin foil doing tired robotic moves to some tinny electronic music. He’s attracted a small crowd of expressionless onlookers. On his donation receptacle, I notice he’d written "In memory of those two Soham girls…" The story becomes just another ingredient to put into the strange mix. The picture of the missing girls, the one everyone has seen on TV and the papers, taken just before they disappeared, shows them both wearing the crimson uniform of their favourite football team. (Incidentally, the name of largest mobile phone company in the UK is also in large type across their chests.) I’ve seen this image so many times that a chill runs through me when I see a girl about the same age wearing the exact same uniform walking with her parents in the park.
Fast train to Lewisham. Another fine sample of Filipino cuisine is waiting for me on the kitchen table. Staying at my Aunt’s house has its advantages. But food in general has been quite good in London. To rescue England from its reputation for gastronomic indecency, the world has come to town with a stack of menus. Apparently, if I had gone 10 years ago, it would have been a different story. I hear this while eating in a completely vegetarian pub in Brighton. The laid back seaside town is about 50 miles south of London. It is the Londoner’s quick city-getaway. And it comes closest to the Peterborough, Ontario vibe that London could never manage. Still, there’s no real point in comparing the two.
Witness: London. The way it has sampled and re-sampled itself beyond recognition. The impression from the street is a super-pixelized society whose overall image can only be seen from a great distance. Then, see: Peterborough. And find: you can still grasp it, enjoy it with both feet set firmly on the ground.
