Memoirs of London - 8

But if Soho is the pulsating heart of London's by night,  tourism is the real great business  in the  rest of the West End: a huge shopping mall and amenities in whose veins runs an infinite river of people, motorized and money which draws a continuous replacement of new life from the invisible arteries of the immense underground subway of the London metropolis.

The presence of this mass of metropolitan plankton had allowed in those streets the emergence of a varied fauna of sellers, including the fruit ‘s stalls, which were set mostly along Oxford Street.

Their fruit, so beautiful and flashy to look fake, stood out more for quality and shape than for quantity.

The "fruit'stallers" actually sold to the passers-by, usual to quick "lunch-time", or to occasional tourists, Californian a red apple, a greenish South African "Granny Smith"  or even a Sicilian grapefruit, a banana or, perhaps, to the most sophisticated, an avogadro cut in two halves, provided with salt and plastic spoon.  While the few housewives or restaurateurs in the area, found in the nearby Berwick street market cheaper prices and better choices.

The "London Fruits Sellers Company" (from which these particular fruit sellers were dependent) was certainly a company with all right papers: municipal marketing permissions; Public land occupation license; Health insurance card and even regular and substantial payments to the Great State Partner: the voracious Fiscal of the Crown.

The corporate summit was almost entirely made up of Jewish, eternal and skilled financiers, always looking for investments and profits, while the organization on the field, so to say, was in the hands of the English.

The  vendors all came from the neighborhood "East London", a city in the city, the ultimate London, for those who were legitimately and authentically Londoners.

The concentration in  the east of the Thames of the descendants of the ancient inhabitants of Londinium had gone along with the expansion of the English capital.

Pushed away to east by the enlargement of the ancient core of the city (as well as from Holborn, Seven Dials e Covent Garden), due to become in the centuries the wealthy square mile, evicted off the west to make space to rich and profiting buildings, the poorest people of London found shelter more and more to the East side of the town, merging with the offspring of the Huguenots, the Jews, the Romani and the already settled poorest English  people and so moving to  Clerkenwell, Finsbury, Shoreditch, Wapping, Limehouse, Hoxton, Stepney, Bethnal Green, Whitechapel, Shadwell, Aldgate, Millwall, Hackney, Rotherhithe, Mile End e Bow which  all became another London, the only real and original one, in contrast to London’s rich and tourists.

And while Harrod's, Selfridges, Marks and Spencer and the largest London banks were located where once they lived, they found refuge in the East End, far from the chaotic and polluted New Frontier. And when they crossed that invisible curtain that protected them to the east, they entered the "Town" or the “City”, but London was already behind. 

Bulwark and  symbol of the identity of this people was, still at that time,  the Cokney.

It is a real English dialect, though it has lexical borrowings from Yiddish,  and a distinctive accent that features T- glottalisation, a loss of dental fricatives and diphthong alterations.
This slang, which is said to bear more than one trace of early English London speech, acts as a linguistic element of group identification where the East Londoners find  their emotionally primary language, a true mother tongue.
 The other  English find it  very funny, a bit like it happens to the  Italians  when they hear  the colorful Roman dialect of certain comedians, from Ettore Petrolini onwards. Also in my company were several of these "East Londoners". 

8. to be continued...

Memoirs of London - 7

7.

The "Street's traders" were a microcosm in the West End.  They were all and everywhere: drivers, painters, musicians,  trumps,  preachers, mystics, sandwiches-men, artists, pimps, prostitutes, nobles decayed, clean-washers, interviewers, fake and real pushers, teddy-boys, advertisers, rock-punkers, adepts, dealers  and sellers of any kind and much more than that.

Everyone could meet them in that circular microcosm of twisted alleyways, avenues, secondary streets and main arteries, all mysteriously united as an osmotic network of communicating vessels where the rivers, streams and seas walk in a twofold direction, never stopping. 

A living body whose pulsating heart is the West End.

Inside there is an even more intricate series of streets and alleys that goes under the name of Soho, where pimps and prostitutes (in regular and authorized professional clothes) have their kingdom.

Prostitutes could only indirectly be regarded as "street workers". 

In the English mentality, in fact, a "bitch in the street" is totally inconceivable. In England everything can be done,  talking of sex, supposed  is not known around. Anyone can make anything  but he’s supposed  not to spread it around . This  attitude,  hypocritical and paternalistic,  is for  sure a Victorian legacy that even the liberation movements of the sixties had failed to sweep away.

Whoever works in the street is the pimp. The one who makes as a trait-union towards the paradise of the forbidden, well protected by the strands of the sexy-shops.


These shops, all  opaque windowed,  at the time totally unknown and banned in Italy,  were officially licensed for the sale and rental of hard-core video cassettes and magazines, but in fact, and everyone knew it, they were the venue of infamous business, ideal recipe for itchy and perverted watchers of all kinds, sado-masochistic  represses, provided on the ground floor of prostheses suitable for pleasure and sorrow (whips, vibrators, inflatable dolls and all sexy accessories of paraphernalia you can imagine) and reserved apartments, projection halls, erotic cells with peephole and much more on top floors.

7. to be continued...

Memoirs of London - 6

In 1979 I was back on the road to work for the B.B.C., a company that, apart from the initials of its name, had nothing else to share with British state television. In fact, the Benjamin Building Company did not afflict people with boring programs, neither it  talked with shameless lies about national and international political events. Finally my Company did not even put its nose in the lives of the Queen and the other members of the Royal Family,  generally speaking.

The company I worked for delighted their customers  by selling ice cream and drinks, logistically relying on a chain’s shop of souvenirs, sweets and tobacco’s  strategically located at several points in the great London area known as West End.

 This vast and famous London metropolitan area, which also includes Soho district and numerous small and large parks, is bordered by a perimeter that runs through the important streets of Oxford Street, Charing Cross Rd, Shaftesbury Av and Regent's Street, forming an irregular trapeze whose four tops pass from Tottenham Court Rd to Oxford Circus; from there to Piccadilly Circus and  finally end at Leicester Square, couple of yards   from Trafalgar Square, where Admiral Nelson's statue, according to the likely intentions of the public authorities who wanted it so powerfully high, witnessed  the  British’s greatness and glory to all those who would walk from there: French people, foreigners  and British from all over the Empire.

 In those years, the greatness and glory of England, after the almost total depletion of the British Empire,  seemed more remote and far from the statue of the great conductor of the seas. And nostalgia, it’s all over known, is a feeling that more acutely manifests itself, when the best times are over and  a crisis is bound to come.

 And that Great Britain was in crisis at the end of the seventies of the twentieth century, it immediately became apparent also to the "street traders" who, living among the people, felt the moods of the average citizen in an emotionally direct way.

 On the street, they felt discomfort and nervousness, though the real troubles were still to come, shortly thereafter, with the irresistible rise to power of the Conservatives headed by Margareth Tatcher (later known as the “Iron Lady"), which would mark the end of a cycle in London's administrative life, characterized by a policy of traditional securing of democratic freedoms and sympathy for the weaker social classes.

Moreover, the English metropolis had represented since the rising of the first music liberation and protest groups (born on the wave of the American Hippies movement, also known as the "beat generation") a decisive cultural reference point, helping to make London the Capital of the Rock Movement, where refugees disappointed by the illusion of the failed revolution of 1968, could find a safe refuge escape from the backflow of the reaction which  had gone through  the whole world.

And it was right there, in London, that they could still see the last glow of brightness before its definite sunset. So, in a good way, I agreed to resume my job and sell ice-creams and drinks in the street. By my side I had a refrigerating machine that turned milk into ice cream and a refreshing machine dispensing orange and lemonade.

Where  else could I work, let alone  the road? And to do what? Maybe to get into some office with air conditioning in the summer, heating in the winter, and the stench of paperwork under my nose? There was no other world for me, now, if not that; no other destiny, no other life I could have wanted, than the free life  of street's traders.

 Returning to the road meant for me to relive from the very beginning my adventure in that mysterious and fascinating city that, unfortunately and superficially, is too often considered cold and inhospitable, considering also that never or almost never come into you get a direct contact with English or British people.

 This story is devoted to London and to the dear places where I have lived in.  But it is also dedicated to all the peoples that those places with such variety and vivacity animated in those years who will pass through the main scene of my story: the streets of London.

6. to be continued...

Memoirs of London - 5

5.

When the springtime came I decided to search for another job. I was grateful to the pizza’s factory ‘cause they gave me the chance to start a new life in London but I needed to change.

 I needed to stay at open air and I started walking on the streets, aimless, enjoying the people going on, the shops, the parks and all the life which ordinarily goes by.

One day, along  Oxford Street, in one of those tourist’s shops which sell with sweets a lot of Londoner’s souvenirs, I saw a notice like they were looking for staff. I got in and questioned the boss. It was not for his farm, he said, but for another firm which used his entrance for selling fresh ice-creams and drinks, made by personal machines on the place.

He gave me a phone number. After the interview and a three day training , just to learn how to use the machines for making ice-cream (an Italian made Carpigiani) and properly clean it, I started working on one of the pitches they had placed exactly where the shop chain had its selling points.

I was happy to stay finally outside and the weather was  nice and mild. The wages increased as the hot season advanced, so I could save some money to go away, may to India or to Mexico, who knows?

I met a lot of good people staying outside.  Susy, who introduced me to some English poets and her friend Angie, a nice, blond, blue eyes girl.

But not even her kindness could prevent my departure ‘cause nobody can stop the will of leaving, the desire of traveling, the search of someone’s way.

After the summer season, I decided to leave.

In that time I was profoundly fascinated by the Indian culture. I went through the reading of several books like Hermann Hesse's Siddharta, The Indian Upanishads and Tagore's poems.  As a matter of fact I had a lot of confusion into my mind but when you fall in love with something you easily lose your reason. So I thought that I had to go there, where the quintessence of spirituality resided.

In  a certain way it occurred to me  what happened to the great traveler Cristobal Colon: as he did, I landed to America while searching for India.

After wandering for six months between Miami, Panama, Caracas and Bogotà I was back to London, as I’ll count to the patient reader hereinafter. 

6. to be continued...

Memoirs of London - 4

4.

At that time I felt like a stone in a river. I rolled by as the water flowed down. And if the river was dry, I stood still, waiting for the rain to come.

To be raised in a large family, had taught me, at least, to survive trying to be invisible and escape or fight at the right time.

I became a close friend to Erminio and  all his friends became also my friends.

Franco had a wonderful girlfriend, half Italian and half French. They had a nice flat in West Hampstead (or it might have  been in Finchley Road), where we often were invited for diner. We had clever conversation, while dining.

But mostly we  spent the evenings smoking and listening to music. My thought flew in the air following the guitars’ sounds of blues songs or twisting happily around rock’s riffs of skilful fingers. Then I soared over the world and I thought there were spaces for my soul to be discovered or detected, somewhere in the world .

Then I would abandon myself to the currents of the wind like a wingshed bird, hoping to applaud in a timeless land where my soul could dine for ever.

There must be such a land somewhere ! I dreamed of that, evening by evening, day by day, night after night! I didn’t dream of money  or richness assumed that I had enough to live through. I was spirit more than flesh in those days. I had a vacuum to fill up but I didn’t know how.

There were a lot of people, coming and going in that place, at any time. Though Franco and his girlfriend could be considered a conventional, may be even a bourgeois couple, they were very opened mind and always ready to add a dish at their table or to open a bed in the guest’s room for anyone who might enter in their house.

Once Marco came with a girl. A nice one, named Susanna or Simona, I can’t remember now. She was supposed to be his girlfriend, for they said were going to get married. Nevertheless, after diner, she wanted to make a dance for us; a sensual dance, so sensual it was that afterwards she took off even the last of her clothes, looking wonderful as her mother had made her. I enjoyed that very much but I knew she was Marco’s girlfriend and anyway I thought since then that making sex was a matter of  love and affection, not just a carnal contingency. There was also a friend of Franco’s  (named such as Rocco, or some similar name) watching that sort of Salome’s dance. He didn’t see the thing like I did and so made some rude advances with Marco’s girlfriend, assuming she was looking or provoking for something. He totally  misunderstood that strange behavior. He never showed up again in the house, after that. 

Another friend  of   Franco’s came one day, along with his girlfriend, from the wonderful Liguria land. This was a better one; a man of  good spirit, a searching soul, like I was. I'll name him later on in the story.We sympathized immediately.

He  handled some books of Carlos Castaneda to me. They were three books.

I fell in love with those three books. They spoke of the initiation of a young Western intellectual by an Indian wizard, somewhere in the Sierra Madre’s mountains of Mexico.

Though they are called Huichol, they called themselves “The people walking with the Gods” because so they feel through the ingestion  of a green mushroom, called  peyote, which contains a lot of mescaline, a powerful hallucinogen.

We spent a lot of time, talking about these books and planning to go to Mexico together. He also talked to me about a book he knew very well:  Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception. But he told me he never wanted to take LSD, because it was a chemical substance, and as a such,  he didn’t trust it. He wanted to go to the desert land of central Mexico, where those mushrooms grew. May be it’s thanks  to him if I never wanted to tried LSD or other chemical stuff that in those times were in vogue among young people. May be he was the river that moved the stone that I was in a certain direction, instead of another. But he never reached Mexico. He died in a strange way, somewhere in Italy, though I knew it when I came my back from my trip to  America.

4. to be continued...

Memoirs of London - 3

Working upside of the factory meant an improvement of my mood.

At least I had multiple company.

The Egiptyan guys made a club on their own but the Italians, were an open group.

They were all friendly and nice though outside the factory they had different acquaintances on their own.

There were really some special characters among them.

Arturo, for instance, looked like he were  out of his mind. And actually he was.

Someone told me he had taken too much of lysergic acid ( I never knew if it had been a wrong pill or taking too many pills on the going  time, which got him out of tune for ever).

He worked hardly, nonetheless. he was a sort of stakanovist worker, cause it seemed that his mind could only see the job, with no distraction at all. Only he seemed out of context, except for the strict connections in the chain production.

- "Trolley"- he used to shout very often, showing he needed more pizzas to get inside the oven.

He was a thin, spirited man with hallucinated eyes, almost out of their orbits. He wore a long pendoulos earring which had extended his right lobe;he had small teeth with smoked stains that he showed all the time in a strange, almost silly smile. I never heard him make a meaningful speech though he was still nice and jovial with everybody.He appeared to be happy, but of that kind of happiness producede by the vacuum of your mind.

Also Natale was a kind boy but in a different way. Although he was smoked all the time he never failed a reasoning and was  very brilliant and emphatic in conversation. Like Arturo he had different acquaintances outside the factory. He had two great loves: motobikes and smoke. They have led him to the end too soon.

Erminio and Marco instead were very close friends. They were both from Rome though, as I discovered in the following, they had knew each other in London and showed up to be a very different characters. Marco was a tall and slouching figure, with sweet, brown  eyes and very calm manners; Erminio was quiet a low man, yet strong and well proportionated; he had a clever, quick look in his eyes; he showed to be a nice rogue later on.

Franco was the third good Italian friend of theirs. He was from  Genoa or may be from some other place in Liguria. It was he who told me, later on, when we became close friends, that they had thought I was escaping from someone or something, since I had that long, thick beard and did not talk to anyone but old Jim downstairs.

Marco was the first who approached me, a couple of days after ascending the factory's floor.

- "Do you want to take part to Erminio's present for his next birthday?- he asked me at lunch time.

-" Yes, of course, I do!"- I answered nodding. In my shyness I was happy someone was talking to me.

-" Very pleased!" - he added. " I'll let you know your share. We're going to ask Natale for a small hashish quantity or some green grass. He likes very much smoking good stuff and Natale he's a good pusher"- he added  keep on managing for his lunch. 

- "Do you want a pizza for yourself?" - he asked after a while.

- "Yes, thanks; it's very kind of you!"

He was very skillful handling upside.

After a couple of days, when it was supposed to be the Erminio's anniversary, I asked Marco how much money I had to give for the common present. He smiled at me and told me Natale didn't want any money for a good piece of black pakistani he had presented to Erminio himself.

- " Why don't you come alone this evening? We have a party in my place, for Erminio, 'you know?"

He gave me the adress and I decided to go. Though I was not interested in smoking (as a matter of fact I   had never smoked at all any other thing but cigarettes) I decided to go to the party. 

When I arrived it seemed the party was already going at his top. A girl opened the door and I only said "Erminio", or some words with it. She let me in with a smile and told me to follow her. I entered a large room. There were a lot of people over there. It was all much unconventional, with people sat on the floor or lying in the carpet which occupied the centre of the room. Every body was drinking, smoking  and  laughing. I could not see Marco or anyone known. The girl who had introduced me told she was going  upstairs. I notice some going up and down from the stairs.  I took a sit in a sofa closed by the central carpet.

There was a lot of smoke inside and a pleasant yet tough smell. All around  I could see some people passing each other a strange cigarette.

Everyone, after aspiring deeply once or twice,  passed it away to the next, often   without looking at; it was a mechanical gesture, though all the rest seemed so spantaneous and natural.

I wondered if I was also going to  be passed it and what  would do in that case.

Without thinking too much on it I decided to do as the others. It was not way to break the chain and there was no reason to do differently.

After smoking in that voluptous and fast way I've already tried to describe I start hearing a soft music an the background; I also could hear a cheerful murmur of voices that I didn't heard before.

I started focussing around me; I could realize and appreciate some particulars did not noticed before: the dress colors; some  funny expressions of face; strange movements of the bodies on the carpet; tune of voices; but all in astounding way, as if everything was slowed by a camera.

I felt my throat was dry and I decided to go upstairs; I was hoping to find my friends and something to drink. I found both things upstairs.

"Come and see Erminio"- told me Marco after serving a frsh glass of beer.

We went to a small sleeping room; there were two bunk beds at the side of the room; I sat in  the lower right bed. In front of me I saw Erminio; he cheered me laughing and gave me to light a smoking thing he had in his hands: - This is from Natale, 'you know? Can you light for me, please?"

So I did, and I passed it straight to him after  a quick shot.

Then I lay in the bed. I woke up the  day after, which  was a saturday. I only remember a lot of laughing and a great sleep. 

3. to be continued...