Memoirs of London - 15

15.

Chapter Three 
Leicester Square 

In the  morning, right in that day,  when all the white collars and secretaries in London were already at work, as previously agreed, I called  the Office to find out what would have been my place of work. Lucky gave me a hand: Jim, the guy who led a great selling point had forfeited the day before and that  made  vacant the position he occupied in one of the most important squares around the West End. 

When I got to the shop in Leicester Square I introduced myself to  an  Eastern Arab manager whose  name was Ibrahim.  He gave  a careless glance at my badge and  showed me my positon the back of the store, where I found the machine "Carpigiani", the milk to make the ice-cream, the  cones and some chocolate bars they called flakes to be served as "optionals" squeezed in the cream on top of the ice cream cone.

 In addition I had provided, right next to the ice cream machine, a dispenser with two trays, one for the orange juice and the other for the lemonade that I made it myself with running water and concentrated juice.

 Taken up position at the front of the store and, proud in my white apron, I began my new adventure of ice cream seller  in the Brian Brook Company.

Leicester Square is a square not far from Piccadilly Circus. You get access from there through  two short but commercially important streets: Coventry Street and New Coventry Street.

In the way to the wide  Trafalgar Square, instead, heading south, all  around the National Gallery, in a street called St Martin,  there is another special category of street's traders: the itinerant painters!

Students from the Academy of fine arts in London and from  the High  Artistic schools around the world, amateurs, skilful men  in the art of painting and portraiture; young emerging artists and old decayed artists; aspiring artists or assumed, all converge in this corner of London to offering passers-by the result of their inspiration onto canvas, for a fee that can range from a few pounds for a portrait or a caricature done right there, to much more  expensive  portraits in different  styles and subjects, with the hope  to leave to his descendants  maybe the equivalent of a Van Gogh. Although few tourists, to be honest, had the courage and the business acumen to invest and bet on the pictorial talent of those strangers, anonymous exhibitors;  and not least, it is certain that everyone, including the merely curious, breathed some fresh air authentically Bohemian because, beyond the artistic value of those painters not sedentary, passers-by were to appreciate the skill, ease and freedom with which they expressed in their art their existential anxieties, actual or alleged that they were.   In the more immediate vicinity of Leicester Square there are plenty of  box offices, theaters, pubs, discos, restaurants, clubs, bars and nightspots, bureaux de change and clothing stores; the latter, mostly, are the property of Indian and Pakistani traders, open seven days a week, from nine in the morning until late at night. The presence of several offices of the change machine was a safe attestation of cosmopolitan  London especially for the attraction made to foreigner visitors by this place.
.. 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...