Towers and gherkins
(Tower Bridge and the ‘gherkin’ building: London, UK)
As we wandered along the Thames walkway on this gloriously, unseasonably warm day a fortnight ago, my friend Alyn and I were having a discussion about London as a city. I am always being told that all capitals and big cities are becoming homogenised with globalisation, they all feel and look identical; grey, towering and sprawling. With London as my example, I beg to disagree – after all, being faced with this bridge evoked some odd feelings in me. It has been reproduced so many times on tourist maps, teatowels, postcards and as miniature models that I almost see it as just that, an object in a shop. In reality it is a working river bridge carrying both vehicles and pedestrians across the river. When I look at it like this, I am slightly amused and vaguely surprised to discover it is real and also that it is smaller than one might imagine and in addition, painted a jolly azure blue. It, along with the beefeaters at the Tower of London and the ‘gherkin’ building (which you can see in the centre of the image), St Paul’s cathedral and the former millennium dome (now the O2 arena) are just too iconic to be taken seriously. I mean them no disrespect, but not many other cities boast such enchantingly ancient and diverse trademarks. Each one is unmistakably recognisable in it’s own right, one could never confuse St Paul’s with a different cathedral or Tower Bridge with another.
Perhaps it is my ‘Britishness that provokes such a reaction. I would no doubt see these things differently as a foreigner – it would be another place I had visited and taken my holiday snaps, but for me, London is a little bit more special than other capitals. There is something essentially English about it in a way that is difficult to pinpoint. There is something rather twee and particular about the buildings snuggled together in the city of London, and it is that part, the centre of it that is so copied, so caricatured that I enjoy visiting once in a while, just to remind myself it really exists. Anyway, I leave it all behind today to meet my family who are based in Suffolk for the week. Perhaps we’ll get up to some mischief there that I can tell you all about.
– Today Rosie is going eastwards to meet her family in Suffolk, UK –
