Tale guide

London in the winter of discontent

Working London today (January 2022)

Our recent visit to London had a rather unexpected effect on me which I ascribe to age, mostly.

We stayed in an ultra-modern hotel across the way from the Stratford International high-speed rail station just inside the outer city ring and north of the city centre.

I guess the best way of describing my impression is that it was like landing on a different planet.

Stratford (not to be confused with Stratford-upon-Avon) is an ultra-modern lifestyle development that caters for high rise apartment living interspersed with a simply huge, state-of-the-art, retail park and a high-speed rail link that takes you into London City center in less than seven minutes at 140 mph.

The landscape is dominated by steel and glass skyscrapers in which thousands of virtually identical cellular habitats offer modern comforts to yuppies from generation ‘Z’.

Young women can be seen pushing prams along clinically linear walkways that separate the structures, interspersed by patches of lawn and young oak trees that line the newly built roads.

On the occasional street corner one will find a contemporary eating place or bar lounge. The décor is simple and minimalistic and the limited cuisine on offer varies from Eastern European, Indian, Thai, Italian and a variety of so called ‘junk’ food to meet the needs of the large multicultural and ethnically diverse city population.

Long gone are the cozy, candle lit, restaurants where one would be escorted to your reserved table by a smiling, French or Italian maître d and presented with a luxurious menu that delivers a four or five course meal finished off with a complementary cognac; (although no doubt these can still be found in old London town). You’d even be hard pressed to find traditional fish and chips as well.

People seem to mostly wear black and grey kit, with the occasional splashes of blue denim.

First, second and third generation immigrants from India, Pakistan, Lebanon, Goa, Eastern European countries, Middle East, far East, the Americas, Jamaica, and the West Indies and many more, most of whom speak English with difficulty, make up close on 50% of this multicultural scene. 

It’s a far cry from the countryside which looks and feels so much more like the England of old.

Interestingly enough is the fact that almost all the hotel staff and much of the shop floor staff one encounters in the retail parks are from Eastern Europe even now, long after Brexit. To encounter a pukka Englishman with origins going back to the Anglo-Saxons, is a rare occurrence.

Inside the spectacular multi-level, shopping centre that stands in the midst of the Stratford development, absolutely everything the heart desires, (particularly for the young-at-heart), is presented stylishly and attractively throughout the widest range of specialty stores one can imagine. Multiple food shops are clustered in food halls on every level and offer an abundance of fast, heartburn material that the local crowds flock to daily, in their droves.

Long gone are the soft sounds of a blues quartet or Steve Wonder drifting through the rafters of the clothing shops. Today you will be met with the repetitive beat of electronic Rap, Hip-hop, K-pop and alternative rock, not that we could tell the difference.

But the people are generally friendly and warm. Life appears to be good; certainly fast, slick and modern and a far cry from the quiet villages in the country and to a large extent, life in Africa.

A load of rhubarb

Well, I don’t really know, to be honest.

The Russians are on the verge of invading Ukraine. At first glance it looks suspiciously like Putin has lost his marbles while on the other side of the planet, Biden seems to be looking for his.

Even the stock markets think we are on the brink of a nuclear war from which the world will unlikely recover. In the light of this potential reality, investors are breaking glass to convert unit trusts and Bitcoin into liquid cash. But they don’t seem to have figured that their banknotes are unlikely to be of any value once we have all been incinerated.

But in London this morning the unflappable English are collectively grappling with whether Boris should stay or go because he lied or had a loss of memory with regard to his mid-Covid birthday bash.

Strangely, Boris says that the reports of him providing his executive approval for the priority evacuation to the UK of an animal sanctuary in Afghanistan* at the height of the withdrawal, is a heap of Rhubarb.

You will recall when a crowd of Taliban herdsmen caught the world’s intelligence services fast asleep and chased crack American and British troops out of Kabul in less than a week.

*(In fact, authority was given to allow 126 veterinary personnel and their families to be flown out on a private plane and they loaded the animals into the hold. Either way it seems that if Boris did make the decision, it is more likely to be in his political favour to acknowledge the same, given that England is the universal home of animal lovers!)

If the media is a genuine reflection of the general mood of the people, Party-gate is way more important than world-war-three.

There are also suggestions doing the rounds that Boris could be sent to jail for attending parties at number 10 during the pandemic lockdown. And then, you may ask, who could step up and tackle the cost-of-living crisis?

Great flying crocodiles, suggestions that Jeremy Corbyn is on the way back are even qualifying for print media publication!

Come to think of it, if they hurry up and make the switch to Corbyn, the UK could escape Russia’s missiles given the ideological brotherhood that could see the UK become a Soviet colony.

If the Prime Minister’s tendency to be economical with the truth hasn’t caught the attention of most, then it’s the audacity of the ninth-in-line to the throne’s persistent efforts to convince everyone that he was never friends with an under-aged girl even in the face of compelling evidence of his association with her and a high class frolicking crowd who clearly had little less to apply their minds on, than satisfying their carnal urges.

His daily trials and tribulations nauseatingly dominate the pages of newspapers and television each day between every Wednesday’s Prime Minister’s Questions in the House of Commons.

Oh; did I mention the latest woke avoidance strategy which the board of directors at Mars Wrigley (Chocolate manufacturers) dreamt up! I loved the tongue-in-cheek introductory paragraph that Mss. Arwa Mahdawi from the Guardian wrote on this development:

Quote “No doubt I speak for every woman on Earth when I say this: thank you, Mars! When I was a little girl, I felt as if I could never be my authentic self because of the way the green M&M mascot used to dress. Every time I saw her tottering around in advertisements wearing white go-go boots and fluttering her long eyelashes, a little part of me would die inside. Although young, I recognised something profound: women would only be free when multinationals allowed anthropomorphized chocolate to wear sensible shoes.” Unquote.

Yes, believe it or not, it is a fact. Mars Wrigley announced last week that they have replaced the boots of the green M&M chocolate sweet for trainers and the brown sweet is swapping stilettos for kitten heels in their packaging. All in the interest of inclusivity and feminism.

Across the Atlantic, Walt Disney has announced that they are consulting with the dwarfism community to avoid reinforcing stereotypes and this could mean dropping dwarfs altogether from the up and coming new Snow White and the seven dwarfs production, which unfortunately, could have dissapointing unemployment ramifications! 

Oy vey! It’s no wonder leaders of the unfree East want to start a war!

I think I may have said this before, but you cannot make this shit up if you tried, which, this time around, I decided to resist.