Summer In The City

London Fields # 67
First published Inpress, Melbourne on 19 August 2009
NB: Each column has a name, but these do not appear in print; printed versions may differ slightly to those displayed here

When you live in a place, you end up with all kinds of insider knowledge without ever quite knowing how you picked it up in the first place. In London, milk is cheaper at the corner shop than it is in the big supermarkets, a hint of sun on a day warmer than 17 will result in hoards of shirtless men in the high street, and if you see a Japanese person with a bewildered expression in the centre of Hackney, it’s most likely they’re trying to find the Burberry factory outlet. Although an Englishman’s home is supposedly his castle, the fiercest pride and competition is in his garden. An unkempt hedge will draw disdainful glances, and any foray into your back garden is to invite comment on its state. That said, a true joy of gardening here is the lack of ferocious beasties; there are no white tails hiding in your gloves, or deadly critters in the undergrowth.

The great centres of the British making conversation continue to be weather and sport. The predicted long hot summer has so far failed to arrive, which is a little bit of a blessing as the long brick terraces of the capital can become furnaces once the mercury creeps over 30. Football (soccer) is the ubiquitous game here and virtually nothing else comes near challenging its dominance. Such is the strength of both sentiment for the sport and team loyalty, that to really follow a team you have to be born into it, which is not part of a shared upbringing for a lad from suburban Melbourne. These are some of the few weeks of the year when the game isn’t being played professionally; still it’s always football and never cricket that’s being played on the streets around where I live.

All that was different a few years ago, if only for a few short weeks, in 2005, when The Ashes were last played here. Back then the whole country suddenly went cricket mad, particularly after England ended up winning them back (The following series, where England copped a drubbing in Australia, seems to have been conveniently forgotten about). With the Poms last-minute survival in Cardiff, and their first Ashes win at Lords in 75 years, I fear that all this is going to repeat itself once again. In 2005, the Ashes games were shown free-to-air; this time around the live broadcasts are exclusive to a premium satellite subscription channel. So maybe it won’t capture the nation in the same way? It seems Aussie baiting has already become a secondary sport; all the more reason to hope Ponting and his team can still turn this series around.

Surely part of the experience of living in another country is about immersing yourself in that lifestyle, and becoming a part of the community in which you live? So while I may want to ‘fly the flag’, another part of me keeps a distance from the expat community here. Last week, the BBC dug out The Adventures of Barry McKenzie and I was wondering if it isn’t due for an update about the new generation of Oz ambassadors to the UK. With visits from Melbourne friends recently, more than once I’ve ended up on a purely Melbourne table in a pub. It was nice to talk to people with shared experiences of growing up, and to learn new examples of Australian vernacular as well. Walking up Essex Road in Islington en route to another pub, I pointed out Britannia Row, the former studios where Joy Division recorded Closer. In the ensuing conversation, it was suggested that the London I was living in was one based in the past, rather than what is happening now. I’ve never considered myself much of a scenester, in the context of this column it bothered me. So for a while I may be taking a step back from music and concentrate on writing about other aspects of life here.

Reading seems little more than a satellite town of London in the characterless commuter belt. I found myself here again recently as it was my only chance to catch some other friends from Melbourne before they flew home. Given the persistent mizzle falling, there was little other option than to retire to a nearby hostelry. It could easily be argued that real ale appreciation is just gauze to disguise another excuse to get drunk. But there was no piped music in The Hobgoblin, and mobile phones were frowned upon, so the only sound was that of animated conversations, it made me very glad to be in this place and time. It was a distinctly English environment yet sadly it’s now hard to find a place like this anymore in the city. On the train back into London, another thought struck me. It’s friends who make anything worth experiencing, regardless of where you or they came from originally.


© James McGalliard 2009

The Battle Of Britain

London Fields # 18

First published Inpress, Melbourne on 21 September 2005

NB: Each column has a name, but these do not appear in print; printed versions may differ slightly to those displayed here

“Covering up the agony with mindless entertainment…”
ABC - United Kingdom

Over the past seven years, so-called reality shows have completely changed the landscape of modern television. Along with makeover projects, these are reasonably cheap to make, and have all but replaced the documentary. If their prevalence has made us all slightly more media savvy, just what has it done to those who participate?

In 1998, The Truman Show depicted the ultimate development is reality television. In the same year came the documentary 42 Up, looking at how a cross-section of British children, first interviewed at the age of 7 in 1964, were coping aged 42. This week ITV, as part of their 50th anniversary series of programmes, are halfway through showing the latest of the seven-year updates, 49 Up. The lives of the dozen or so participants have now probably outgrown pure documentary to evolve into the first reality TV stars. Yet in the time elapsed since the last instalment, the world of Big Brother and similar shows has not been without affect. A snowball that means that the director finds himself questioned about his motives in continuing to chase his subjects every seven years. Initially I thought filmmaker Michael Apted had lost his way when putting this together. It felt disconnected, as though he’d merely tacked an appendix onto his earlier work. But as time’s passed, I’ve realised there’s another reason for this change. The nation that he started to document some forty years ago no longer exists.

If starting a similar project now, would virtually all the children be white, and mostly male? There are different schisms now than class, which was seen as the major cultural divide back then. What’s worth noting is [in the first half at least] everyone has moved out of London. The reasons vary, but the most telling comes from Tony, the cabbie. He no longer feels that there are communities as there were when he was growing up, due to the influx of other cultures into Britain. His answer is to head to Spain, and set up his own Little Britain there. To go to another country and create an English enclave there – in other words to do exactly what he doesn’t like about the UK in the twenty-first century himself.

Reality television and documentary can meet and create something other than low brow fodder, as The Monastery showed. The concept for this was remarkably simple – take five men and put them in a Benedictine monastery for forty days and nights, living as the monks do, spending much time in silent thought, and to observe what happens. The resulting three one-hour episodes followed the challenges and revelations the men made as they come face-to-face with their inner selves. Made by the BBC religious unit, it was a compelling, and genuinely moving experience, and easily ranks as one of the television highlights of the year so far.

Last week there was a moment of national pride here, as the English enjoyed the feel-good factor, brought about by their victory in the Ashes series. This was a little odd. Cricket is not a grassroots game at all here – you don’t see kids playing it in the streets or the parks. The strongest following comes from the public schools, and the Asian communities [in the UK that means India, Pakistan and Bangladesh]. Football is the only real national sport here, but English successes there are even rarer than in the cricket. Sadly it seems unlikely that this fervour will have oxygen to fan the flames, as the draw at The Oval which gave the series victory to England was the last test match that you’ll be able to see on British TV without paying a subscription.

Having lost all three of its principal leads during the last series, the producers of Spooks had to find a pretty big bang to keep it all rolling. They came up with a two-parter about a series of bombs aimed at civilians in the capital. Yes, of course it was plotted, written and probably filmed before the events of July. Yet watching the scenes of dialogue-free devastation, you felt that someone had capitulated and rushed back to re-edit the original footage. The next episode concerned the election campaign of an ‘England for the English’ politician. A series that started as an enjoyable romp has descended into a dangerous mirror-reality, almost begging for copycat actions, so they can show how astute their observations are. If only leading light Rupert Penry-Jones had been given a second series of the sadly cancelled North Square instead.

Coincidentally, last weekend Trevor Phillips, the head of The Commission for Racial Equality, spoke of fears that Britain was in danger of becoming a ghetto nation. Yet all of this could be seen as the efforts of a new, changing nation struggling to find its own identity. If Apted decides to continue with his project, it’ll be interesting to see just what the Britain of 56 Up will be. And Gillian Armstrong – isn’t it about time that you showed us how the Australian women of Bingo, Bridesmaids & Braces are coping with their forties?

© James McGalliard 2005