Yesterday I took a bus from Liverpool Street to Tottenham...it was rush hour and a long ride. Even though much of London has bus lanes many of the streets are narrow and they still get into jams along with everyone else. It was a very nostalgic ride. A few years back I used to work in a clinic in the City and this was my route home. In 1990 this area was also the scene of one of the most audacious and successful bomb attacks by the IRA when they exploded a van by the Stock Exchange. Almost 8 miles away at home my windows shook with the blast and my cat moved under the bed. There are still checkpoints in the City as a result.
On this visit I’m not in a hurry to get anywhere, Taking the Underground is faster but you don’t get to see anything. The bus is slower but at least I can watch the road and see what’s changed. This was a great ride – the bus chugged its way though so many ethnic areas: first the city of London, suits and office workers, mostly white, everyone rushing from one place to another clutching coffees and sandwiches. There are Pret a Manger branches everywhere. Pret make delicious sandwiches and coffee out of natural ingredients without additives and I really wish there was one in KL. Then Shoreditch, with clusters of Vietnamese restaurants and strange clubs and bars that look abandoned during the daytime...next Kingsland road, where we used to live – at this point the bus filled with Turkish and black women. Next Stoke Newington, where the police station used to be notorious for its racism. The area is shared by blacks and Orthodox Jews but as it was after sundown on Friday there were none of them to be seen. It’s a strange fact that Muslims pray on Fridays, Jews on Saturdays and Chritians on Sundays. Between them the Abrahamic religions have got the weekend covered!
I got off in Tottenham where our hosts du jour David and Dewey live. It’s also the home of Tottenham Hotspur football club. I lived here too, long long ago, when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister and there was a recession. 25 years later there’s a recession in the UK again and the old Labour mantra ‘No more boom and bust’ is simply - no more.
Quite an amazing bus ride, quite an amazing city and quite a ride down memory lane. I'm a tourist in my hometown!
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