Ideal home exposition

For the past half hour or so, two extremely low-flying heli­copters have been buzz­ing the skies over Eal­ing. The last one that passed over­head made my bed­room win­dow rattle. It’s after 11.00pm at night. All that’s needed now is Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries blar­ing out and that’ll be it — Apo­ca­lypse Now re-enacted in sub­urban west London.

I can hear a caco­phony of sirens in the dis­tance. The con­clu­sion I’ve come to is that there’s either some­thing big going down — check your news­pa­pers tomor­row morn­ing, con­spir­acy the­or­ists — or a gang of upwardly mobile joyriders has taken to nick­ing heli­copters rather than hot hatchbacks.

This city. This strange, strange city.

My mind reels back to last Fri­day night. After an even­ing out in cent­ral Lon­don, I arrived home and found myself pick­ing my way through the crowded streets at chucking-out time. How I wish I had timed that bet­ter. It seemed that the sev­enth circle of Hell had spewed out its ghastly inhab­it­ants for a night on the tiles. Piles of lit­ter, junk food dis­carded in the streets, the alco­holic fumes of pissed rev­el­lers. Gangs of obnox­ious cave­man throw­backs whose beha­viour would put our Neo­lithic ancest­ors to shame, throw­ing empty cans of lager or, in some cases, vomit­ing. And for added local col­our, a noisy fight going on in front of a bus shelter.

So I’m no pur­itan, tee­total saint; I’d had a few drinks myself earlier that even­ing. But the post-pub dis­sip­a­tion I wit­nessed was some­thing else entirely. I sud­denly remembered why, over the past couple of years or so, I’ve taken to stay­ing in on Fri­day even­ings — simply to avoid the hor­rors of London’s almighty end of week piss-up.

In my head, of course, I hated that my reac­tion was straight of the New Labour book of crime pre­ven­tion; I could hear David Blunkett’s flat mono­tone recit­ing the Home Counties’ vote-winning man­tra about clear­ing the streets of yobs and their “anti-social beha­viour”. Three strikes and you’re out. On-the-spot fines. I think of myself as a woolly lib­eral; I shouldn’t approve of such dra­conian crack­downs on civil liberties.

And then a man ran out into the road and kind of flailed around in front of the busy traffic, shout­ing to his mates, com­pletely lost in his drunken stupor. Well and truly out of it. Back in my head, the voice of pop­u­list polit­ics was replaced by the more sin­is­ter tones of Travis Bickle. Let’s clean the scum off the streets. Yeah, Travis — I’m with you all the way.

No doubt about it, it was def­in­itely time to go home. I shut the door with a reas­sur­ing slam. The out­side world, seem­ingly rot­ten to the core on that par­tic­u­lar even­ing, was back where it belonged. Out­side. Fur­ther away the better.

Six days later. Tonight, I donned rose-tinted spec­tacles and found myself writ­ing about the place where I spent the first eight­een years of my life. Home. Home, for what it’s worth. With the bene­fit of four­teen years’ dis­tance, I can fool myself into believ­ing it was a rural idyll. It wasn’t. Not really. For at least twelve years after I deser­ted the coun­tryside, I couldn’t have cared less about it. The city was where the bright lights were, where the action was, where the people con­greg­ated. But things change, and now I fre­quently find myself day­dream­ing of open roads stretch­ing forever in any and every direction.

If you need to fall in love with Lon­don again — even if only briefly, just to tem­por­ar­ily restore your faith in your sur­round­ings — don’t go under­ground. Take more time than you need to get from A to B. That’s what I did this even­ing. What’s the rush?

Some­how, Lon­don at night looks more beau­ti­ful, more serene — dream-like, even — when you see it through the win­dow of a near-empty bus. I res­ted my head against the pane of glass and watched my reflec­tion drift in and out of West­min­ster Bridge, St James’s Park, Hyde Park Corner, Marble Arch, Bayswa­ter, Not­ting Hill Gate, Hol­land Park. Even Shepherd’s Bush looked curi­ously attract­ive. Shop-fronts and street-lamps speed­ing through the mir­ror image of my eyes. I was cap­tiv­ated. The 148 could pos­sibly become my favour­ite route as it car­ries me from south to west.

What was I say­ing about a strange, strange city?

Coun­try boy. City dweller. As yet, I don’t think I’ve dis­covered the place I truly call home. When I find it, I’ll know it. I’ll just know.