Bright Lights

Today

I have just returned from a few days spent with Becky in London. On the last day we met at The Crusting Pipe in Covent Garden for lunch. There was a charming Cypriot waitress and we chatted about this and that. I told her that I was a Londoner by birth and she asked me whether I missed London.

Well, there's a question; I do and I don't.

In My Day

Being brought up in London would be meaningless if all it meant was knowing the few streets around your home and I suspect that has always been the case for many people. But, even as children, our London life included many of the amazing cultural, educational and entertainment opportunities.

We went to London Zoo, Battersea Park and Funfair. We visited all the museums in the Brompton Road many times (my especial favourite was the natural history museum) as well as the British Museum, Horniman's and, once, the National Maritime Museum. We had tea on the roof garden at Derry and Toms and at Lyon's Corner House on the Strand.

We were taken to shows, films, the theatre, operas and concerts. We went to Madame Tussaud's, the Planetarium, The Tower of London, the Monument, Trafalgar Square. I remember once going on an open-topped tour bus where a genial Cockney guide sent Daddy into uncontrollable guffaws with his commentary about St Martin-in-the Fields - "Coming up in the middle of the road..." as though the church were a giant Wurlitzer. We visited the parks, commons and gardens. St Paul's Cathedral and the Houses of Parliament were almost natural habitats.

This ease and familiarity with London spilled over into adulthood. By the age of twelve I was a regular Promenader and was spending my Saturdays and paper round money going to West End matinees. I used to visit all the art galleries., both public, such as the Tate, and private ones in Bond Street with my friend Lynda. With a youthful certainty about our cultural superiority we used to call such excursions "gallery crawls". David and I bought "Red Rover" tickets and travelled randomly on buses to more obscure corners of the city.

I bought student standing-room only tickets for the Old Vic and joined the Aldwych student group, going to see all that the Royal Shakespeare company could offer as well as the astonishing World Theatre seasons. I saw Shakespeare in the open at Regent's Park and at the George in Southwark. I haunted the V&A and grew fond of the Science Museum where I would draw the great Victorian beam engines and other machinery.

This was in addition to familiarity with all the great stores and the amazing specialist shops. There was less of a cafe and club culture than there is today, so there wasn't much of that and, anyway, we probably couldn't afford it.

So, do I miss it? Clearly, even with all of that, there was much I didn't experience. But you could live all your life in London and not see it all. And there are many other aspects to life. I have lived in the suburbs, by the sea and in a small country village and have learnt about what drives life in these places.

When I am in London, I feel energised by the bustle and the sheer variety of the place, but I think that a rounded life is one where there has been a breadth of experience and, right now, I love my wooded garden in a quiet village with woodland walks on my doorstep.

So the answer is, not really, not now.