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...
