Boatgirl #3: London Time, Changing Times – London, England

2: London Time, Changing Times

February 18, 2002
Went to the Tate yesterday, because I’d actually never been. It’s sad but, besides Francis Bacon and Edward Burra, British painters don’t move me like others do. Don’t know what it is, maybe the lack of sunshine.

I was very excited to see Nan Goldin had a show on at Whitechapel Gallery. She went to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts as well, and I’ve always loved her photographs, but never really had the chance to see them in a gallery, all nice and big. It was a big retrospective, with work from all the various periods, including her famous slide show, “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency”. Well, I won’t bore you with all my adoring details, but if you like photography, you should look her up if you don’t know her work already.

Then I spent a lovely afternoon in Patisserie Valerie, drinking way too many espressos and writing.

It’s always strange for me to be in England. It’s familiar and strange, all at the same time. I notice changes every time I come back. The European Union and the open borders are changing things rapidly. There hardly seems to be any English accents in London anymore, I hear every language on the planet. It’s good and bad, I suppose. Pubs are being taking over by corporate chains, instead of being family-run, but the food’s improving. It’s now possible to get just about every kind of food, from every country. I always missed Mexican food when I was in London (it’s funny what you take for granted) – not anymore. Every other business in London is a pizza/pasta restaurant or an espresso bar, and judging by the guide books, it sounds like the locals in Rome choose to hang out in British pubs. It’s definitely a “melting pot”.

Crime’s gone up, and there’s an undercurrent of violent tension in the city. There are huge signs warning people not to use their mobile phones in Leicester Square because muggers will come up and grab them. The front page of the news is screaming about a woman who was run over by the getaway car of the junkie who snatched her purse in the tube station. The woman ran after the thief, and the thief’s partner ran her over with the car. She died, and everyone sort of shrugs and says, “She shouldn’t have chased them.”

Of course, politicians, especially in Belgium and Austria, are taking full advantage of the fear. They spout all sorts of racist bollocks, blaming immigrants for everything. Personally, I find it highly ironic that most of these countries with an “immigration problem”, were colonial powers who had no problem charging into someone else’s country when it suited them. Now they have strange faces in their own home towns, they want to close the borders, even though they’re still dependent on cheap foreign labour.

Oh, well. Everything changes. The new euros are highly convenient; I’m sure Britain will give in to it in a year or two. You can never go home once you’ve left. As soon as you turn your back, it becomes a different place, for better and worse.

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