The Square Mile - some memories from an old hand

 

London.  The Smoke.  The Capital.  Heart of the Empire. Best city in the world.  The Original.  That shithole.

There are many names and epithets given to my homeland's capital city - some less polite than others.  There are many Londons in the world as well - my Phillips World Atlas, paperback edition, from 2005, lists 3 others in the USA and Canada, as well as Greater London and the three "London" airports (Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted: Luton, City and Southend have all since been designated as "London" airports despite being nearly as far out of town as Gatwick which is 38.2 miles by road from Parliament Square).  There is also Londres (the French translation of London) in, strangely, Argentina where Spanish is spoken....  More current editions may have even more listed, who knows?

But proper London, the one sitting on the Thames in southern England, marking settlements that have existed there since pre-historic times, and recognised as the biggest and most important city in England (and latterly the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland) since at least the Roman invasion c.44 B.C. - they named it Londinium - and perhaps still older, is the one I'm familiar with.  And writing about here.

Not about all of London, of course - I know it well enough, but not that well.  I'm telling stories here about the City of London.  It's been the financial centre of London, Britain, and for a long time the entire world, for centuries, and considering its historical might is astonishingly small - hence its long standing nickname: the title of this piece.  It remains one of only a very few cities within a city in the world - the only other one that springs to my mind is the Vatican City in Rome (I've worked there too....).  Other suggestions would be welcome.

I've spent a big part of my life working there, been to inner and outer city areas to play and watch sports, driven through areas I wouldn't (then) have wanted to walk through.  But most of these were in Greater London, the metropolis that grew up into an urban sprawl on the wealth and opportunity offered by the emergence and continued financial genius of the City.  Everywhere I've seen the skyline change, as skyscrapers have smothered the lovely old Regency and Victorian and Edwardian blocks that were often born as upmarket residences and morphed over time into office blocks, places of trade like the Stock Exchange (itself now transformed and migrated to a modern tower of glass and concrete and stainless steel cladding).  I've seen the transformation of crumbling riverside wharves and warehouses into luxury shopping malls and dining areas, old and dingy markets into designer stores and museums and art galleries.  It changes every time I go there.  I wouldn't say I exactly love the place, but still after all these years I feel its pull, my connection to it.  It still fascinates me.

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In 1970, when I started work as a filing clerk in the back office of a venerable old stockbrokers, to the delight of my working class parents who viewed it as a job for life (I wish....), the office I was based at was in just such an old Victorian block in Finsbury Circus, on Moorgate, within walking distance of the grand old Stock Exchange building, the Bank of England, the Royal Exchange and that maze of little lanes and alleys that still make up a big part of the Square Mile.  Salisbury House (for such was its name) was - and still is - a lovely old building, one side of it curved around one quadrant of the circular gardens in the Circus, of 5 floors.  The offices and meeting rooms came in all shapes and sizes, linked by a maze of corridors, and all of the rooms, even our long and narrow, scraggy back office with big windows overlooking the gardens, were flock wallpapered and carpeted in the old style with heavy wooden doors and window frames, all dark varnished.  No open-plan floors for dear old Grieveson Grant & Co, the sixth biggest broker in the country at that time. The desks were proper wooden desks, the chairs we sat on proper dining room chairs, again dark wood and upholstered, and only the department manager's chair had arms.  Every desk was equipped with a couple of wire baskets, (named In and Out), and a big gray metal ashtray (everybody, me included, smoked and it was perfectly acceptable to do so: there was a constant fog in the room).  Oh, how times have changed!

The lifts in the building all had somebody operating them: they were open fronted with a concertina door that was opened and closed for you by the operator.  The one I used to use, that opened across the corridor from the door to our room, was operated by a little Jewish guy called Lou.  He was no more than about five foot five or six tall, balding, wearing tortoiseshell spectacles, and was probably about 60.  Despite wearing a very smart dark uniform with epaulettes on the shoulders, a yellow waistcoat, white shirt and black tie, he always had a smouldering cigarette dangling from a corner of his mouth and sometimes another, unlit of course, tucked behind an ear.  They were hand rolled, I remember.  He never said much: "Morning, Sir" and "Have a good day" about the limit, at least with me - but for a seventeen year old country boy, in his first job, fresh out of school where deference to adults was expected, being called "Sir" by an adult, was something I never really got used to.  It was possibly my first real exposure to the class system that was still clinging on, especially in the City.

But my main memory of working in Salisbury House had nothing to do with the work, nor the people I worked with (although I have clear and fond memories of both), nor even the fabric and decor above, but something incredibly trivial.  From my window I looked down on the gardens, and on the corner of the road that led in from Moorgate to the Circus and outside one of the doors of our building was one of the old red pillar boxes where in pre-internet times we used to post letters.  It was one of the double sized ones, with two doors (one for UK mail and another for Foreign mail) and stood perhaps five feet high.  There was nothing special about it at all.  One day, there was a stir of muted excitement in the room, and people started lining up and looking out at the letter box so of course I took a look too.  You could only see the base, the first foot perhaps, of the structure, the rest of it was completely hidden by a melee of people, men and women, all young and clinging onto each other grimly, the whole pack wobbling precariously.  They were surrounded by a crowd of other people, some of them holding clipboards and cameras, and everyone cheering and clapping enthusiastically.  At which point, the people on the post box started separating and dropping down to the pavement to much back slapping and hugging.  Show over, we all simply got back to work.  It turned out (we saw in the tabloid papers the next day) that the people were students from - if memory serves - the London School of Economics who had just set a Guinness World Record for the Most People Standing On A British Post Box  - I can't remember how many it was: certainly more than 30, a ridiculous number anyway - that stood for years.  It might even still be in there, because I can't see that many people would want to have a go at breaking it.

I went back there last summer, on one of my family visits, and the building was unchanged, at least outwardly, as was the post box, as you can see in the picture above.  It quite made my day.

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Salisbury House wasn't unique.  At that time the City was still full of low-level Regency-looking blocks, typically no more than five or six floors high.  Many were fronted by a variety of shops - stationary stores, newsagents, and clothes shops (pinstriped suits and camel hair overcoats, brogues and bowler hats the most common items on sale). There was also a huge selection of sandwich bars where the food was prepared for each individual customer using fresh ingredients while you waited in the queue.  There were no cellophane wrappers, no "sell by date" stamped stickers, and no lists of ingredients with nutritional values: you got a simple sandwich according to what you asked for, wrapped in plain white paper in a simple white paper bag (the bigger shops had their names printed on this).  And to me at least they looked and tasted infinitely better than anything on offer nowadays at Pret a Manger, Subway or any other of today's chain outlets - and way WAY better than anything in Boots the Chemist or WH Smith.  Only a few of the sarnie bars (as we used to call them) also did coffee, and then it was a simple black coffee or with milk (sugar was help yourself with a teaspoon - not a skinny wooden stick - from a china bowl) and none of this skinny latte or oatmeal milk or even semi-skimmed nonsense.  Proper tea and coffee and plain, filling grub.  I miss it.

Some of the buildings, Salisbury House included, had cafeterias in the basement.  Ours (and I assume the others were little different) were scruffy with peeling paint and the ever-present tobacco fog, long formica topped tables and stainless steel and wood chairs, and self-service.  I used to go there most days because the value-for-money was ridiculous.  I could (and usually did) have two beefburgers (not in a bun with salad and stuff as in today's McDonalds, just simply fried and greasy), a couple of sausages, a big helping of chips fresh from the fryer, a spoonful of peas or baked beans, the whole topped off by a couple of fried eggs.  To wash it down, a mug of tea.  The whole meal cost me no more than about five  shillings (25p) - in today's value that's about five pounds.  And I could offset that with a luncheon voucher (the only employment benefit I received then) for 15p.  So call it about two quid a day in today's money.  Not bad.....and not that healthy, either, probably, but it was filling and set me up for the afternoon's work (afternoons were invariably busier than mornings) and the commute home.

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Ah, yes....the commute.  

Edenbridge, my home town, was on the border with Kent and Sussex, and thus about 30 miles as the train clattered, from there to London Bridge Station (the closest terminus to Salisbury House).  The line, which extended south from Edenbridge Town station, a ten minute walk from my council house home, as far as Uckfield in Sussex, was not a main line, so there were very few fast - i.e. limited stops - trains and no express - non stop - at all.  Most trains stopped at every station (there were seven after mine) as far as East Croydon, then ran fast through the south London suburbs to the destination. Most trains went to Victoria, but one an hour ran to London Bridge.  Coming home it was a bit worse: the last direct service left London Bridge at about 6:15 so if you were a bit late (overtime or the pub) you had to make your way across town to Victoria to catch the one evening train an hour, which was divided at Oxted - half going to East Grinstead, the rest to Uckfield : a longer trip all round.

The trains weren't fast at all: they comprised two, sometimes three, three-car diesel units that were cold, drafty, loud and slow.  The morning run took just under an hour, the home run a little longer (if you went from Victoria a good bit longer, factoring in the time it took to divide at Oxted).  They were also very crowded, and most mornings by the time the train reached Oxted - so two stops up from Edenbridge Town - it was standing room only.  What made things worse was the majority of commuters, at least on the services I had to use, worked like me in the City of London or the Victoria/Westminster area and were thus stockbrokers or insurance  workers, or civil servants, which meant they read a newspaper on the journey (remember this was over 50 years ago, long before the internet put everything on-line to read on your mobile).  And because of their work and it has to be said the traditions surrounding it, reading The Times or the Daily Telegraph (and occasionally The Guardian) was expected, the papers of choice: broadsheets, not a tabloid.  It added to your education: how to fold up your newspaper so as to be able to read it without knocking the elbow of your seat neighbour (who was doing likewise).  It was an art form not unlike origami that I never mastered.  I used to read books, paperbacks I could stuff in my coat pocket or (later, when I started using one) brief case.  And that I have continued to do ever since - it's turned me into a voracious reader but rarely of newspapers.  I never travel on train, plane or bus without one.  

Sadly, physical newspapers are a rarity nowadays, having moved online like everything else.  It's a shame: in my later working life I used to buy (or pick up at the aircraft door) my Monday copy of, usually, the Telegraph (that's before it went totally downhill, becoming rampantly Right wing and deranged) with its Sports, Entertainment and Culture supplements, and it would usually keep me going for the entire week away.  I spent many an hour sitting in the sunshine at a pavement cafe somewhere, enjoying a coffee or two, perhaps a cold beer, and a pastry of some kind, and reading the paper.  

I remember one lady, very well spoken and smartly dressed, who used to travel to Victoria with three gentlemen - they all boarded one stop further out, I think, at Hever (as in the Castle).  They would sit on the same four seats together, two facing two, on the off-side of the train so they weren't disturbed by other people getting on.  They would then carefully fold their papers (all of them took the Times) to the page carrying the daily crossword puzzle, and then at the count of three start a competition to see who would finish first (or in the rare event of none of them doing so, who had the most clues completed).  The lady, I remember, always donned a pair of white cotton gloves to avoid smudging the ink on the paper's pages, and would complain bitterly about having to do so.  They were probably the happiest people on the train, in their own world, like characters out of a P.G.Wodehouse story. 

Alas, something else the internet and smart phones seems to have killed off....

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A final recollection: how different everything looked.  Yes, yes, I know it's half a century ago, so of course everything looks different.  But on this last trip it struck me even more than usual, probably because I was trying to explain it all to My Beloved.

For a start, the people I saw every day, at work and walking across London Bridge to and from the office, all looked by and large the same.  The majority - the vast majority! - of us tramping across London Bridge (and all the other bridges that served the Square Mile) were white Caucasian males.  There were very few dark skinned people, whether Afro-Caribbean or of Indian extraction, amongst the teeming crowds: there were for sure plenty living in Greater London but not many, at least that I can recall, actually worked in the City.  There were certainly none at all working at Grievesons in any capacity.  As far as I am aware, this was not because of any anti-immigrant bias by the firm's management, simply that none had at that time been employed.  It didn't strike me as being in any way odd: I'm not sure I had ever seen a dark face, anywhere, in my life at that point.  It was just....normal.

Most of the men wore dark pin-striped suits generally with a waistcoat, white (or perhaps with a blue-striped pattern) shirt and a dark tie.  Sometimes cufflinks and tie pins were worn, and there was a decent number of regimental or Old School ties, even the odd MCC striped one (especially in the summer and on Test Match days).  In the winter a dark or camel-hair overcoat or raincoat would be added, and a tightly rolled umbrella with a bamboo cane handgrip.  Many of the men also wore at all times a neatly brushed black bowler hat: it  identified the bearer as a senior manager or partner at one of the many stock- and insurance-brokerage firms that made the City's wealth.  Brief cases were invariably of dark brown leather and expensively finished with shining brass catches and locks: these carried the daily paper and, I assume, Important Investment Papers and Reports.  Possibly cheese sandwiches too - who knows?

This was a way of identifying their importance.  The hat would of course be removed in the office, but donned whenever the bearer left the office to head to the Stock Exchange (or, for insurance brokers, the Lloyds of London) Floor itself to do some business.  But there was one exception to this rule: the Government Broker.  At this time (and it may have varied from administration to administration) he was the senior partner in the firm of Mullens & Co. But whichever the firm, his job was to buy and sell shares and UK Gilts (government securities) as instructed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer for and on behalf of the Government of the day.  As an unmistakable means of identification, when he went to the Floor to do this, he would replace his bowler hat with a black top hat.  I remember watching from the Visitor's Gallery once the frisson of excitement when he strode purposefully onto the floor and began a circuit of the Jobbers' boxes to place his orders (which were never executed and were confidential between he and the jobbers used until he had left the Floor to return to his office).  I apologise for the terminology I've had to use there: I will have to pen another short essay to define it and explain how the business was done then (now of course it's all automated and online - the more's the pity!)

Anyway, we plebs, the back office wallahs, would dress similarly, but our ensembles were clearly of a cheaper and off-the-shelf variety rather than tailor made, from a chain store like Hepworth's or Burton's, and our umbrella would be less tightly furled (another trick of the trade I never really mastered) with a mock leather handle not bamboo.  We never wore hats: that was definitely a Bad Show, unless you were of an older age group and wore a grey trilby. Similarly our briefcases - at least for those of us pose-y enough to carry them - were typically a bit frayed round the edges from hard use at school and again of a lower chain-store make.  

The women I recall (and there were relatively few, mostly secretaries, receptionists and shorthand typists) were dressed smartly: invariably, it seemed to me, in floral dresses or swishy blue or grey pleated skirts (VERY rarely black pencil tight ones!), tights (I assume: but maybe a smattering of stockings and garter belts too....) and sensible shoes, which is to say black or brown, slip on, low heel: not a stiletto in sight.  Nor for that matter a pair of trousers (sorry: slacks). In spring and summer a thigh length light jacket or fine-knit cardigan would cover the white blouse and in winter this was replaced by a variety of longer, mid-calf affairs (some like macs, some trench coats and some like the men's overcoats).  And of course their jackets and coats always, but always, had the buttons on the opposite side to us men.  Why is that?  I've never been able to work that one out!  Any ideas?

What we very rarely encountered as we tramped across London Bridge to the office (and I'm sure it was the same for everyone coming into Fenchurch and Liverpool Street stations from Essex and East Anglia, and the various Tube stations) were tourists.  In those days, the City was a busy working place, with very few tourist sights to see: St. Paul's Cathedral was just beyond the City limits, the Tower of London and the Monument (to the Great Fire) were deep within, and that was about it.  HMS Belfast hadn't been moored up across from the Tower yet, and Tower Bridge was a proper working bridge, without a museum, bookshop or expensive pub under the south Tower, as today.  Of course at that time too tourism was not really A Thing - package tours to European destinations were just taking off (if you'll forgive the pun) and Citybreaks, so popular now, I don't think had even been thought of.  The only people likely to visit the City of London were there either to Do Business, or schoolkids on a day trip to visit the Stock Exchange, the Royal Exchange or Lloyds of London as part of their school Commerce or Economics courses.  I had done that myself a couple of years before,  and never for a moment thought it would lead to a career that, one way or another, kept me (and my families) in beer and bread for fifty years.

The hordes of Chinese, Japanese, Malaysian, American - let's be honest, the United Nations! - of excited people snapping away with their smartphones at everything while munching on Pret sandwiches or slurping Starbuck's finest, blocking the footpaths and shouting gibberish (to us Brits, anyway) just did not exist in 1970.  

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But the skyline: oh, my word, how different is that!  When I started there, on my first excited tramp across London Bridge, looking this way and that as I tried to take it all in,  Adelaide House at the northernmost point of the Bridge was the tallest I could see at I think seven or eight storeys.  It's still there, swathed in tarpaulin and developer's advertisements as it undergoes a complete refurbishment.  Beyond that, where King William Street (leading off the Bridge) meets Gracechurch Street was another fine old building, about the same height, with I recall a dome at the top.  The address, 42 Gracechurch Street, was one of the main City branches of, from memory, Midland Bank, but Google Maps now only lists it as The Folly, an expensive looking eatery. To the left, the view was dominated by the dome of the Central Criminal Court (a.k.a. The Old Bailey) and slightly closer its bigger and bolder cousin at St.Paul's Cathedral.  To the right lay the Tower of London and Tower Bridge itself, and Custom House on the north bank between the two bridges.  Looking beyond Tower Bridge, there was nothing but grubby looking semi-derelict wharf buildings on both banks of the river: the futuristic Wall Street On The Water business district of Canary Wharf was still twenty years or more away (thank you to the Divine Saint Margaret of Grantham for that...).

Closer at hand, again on the right (Tower Bridge) side, The Queens Walk linking London and Tower Bridges and thence along as far as Blackfriars and the new Millenium Footbridge didn't exist, and the various wharves and warehouses, including Hay's Wharf and Cottons Wharf, were semi-derelict, crumbling and deserted.  Now they have been totally redeveloped into a selection of tastefully modernised offices and high-end shopping malls and food courts.  And, my word, is it an improvement!  

In The City itself (remember, it lies on the North Bank of the Thames, so the developments I've just described aren't truthfully part of it - merely its southern gateway), the change has been if anything bigger.   I don't recall seeing skyscrapers at all in those early days.  The Barbican Centre, a few minutes stroll from Salisbury House, was still in the first stage of its construction: a low rise development of shops and a redeveloped (and still excellent) City Library, theatres, concert halls, galleries and cinemas and some outlying service buildings for the Stock Exchange.  The adjoining Barbican Estate, comprising some fourteen housing blocks of half a dozen floors each, surrounding a lake and parkland, was built as "social housing" - but a bit better than the council house I grew up in!   Next to that was a further luxury development comprising four towers (the first opening in 1971) that rise to 42 floors and 123m (in old money that's just over 400ft).  Not bad for 1970s London, and still among the tallest in the country.

But look now at the photo above.  As you can see, the buildings I remember are still there along Lower Thames Street, between the two bridges, but now the view is dominated by a series of new - some unfinished - offices that match, often exceed, the height of the Barbican Estate that has now disappeared from view, at least from the riverbank viewpoint.  Behind these waterfront blocks, and again obscured, are some of the older skyscrapers like Angel Court, just behind the Bank of England, where I spent an unhappy six month spell with a bunch of American sharks - the view from my 16th floor window towards Liverpool Street Station was probably the best part of my time there.  

Close to that stands the NatWest Tower, headquarters of the National Westminster Bank, and built to resemble from above (not that most people would ever see that view) the bank logo's symbolic triangular shape with rounded corners of slightly different heights.  It remains an iconic building, and won awards when new. Then on St. Mary Axe, close to Fenchurch Street, you have the Gherkin, a circular  black tower that narrows at the summit to give it its nickname.  I stands on the site of an older tower that formerly held the Baltic Exchange but was severely damaged by a terrorist bomb in 1992.  The old block was pulled down and replaced by the current 180m (that's 592ft) 41 floor tower.  It's unmissable, and in my view one of the more innovative buildings - some of the new ones, like the Cheese Grater at 122 Leadenhall Street (228m/738ft, 48 floors), or the Fenchurch Building (a.k.a. The Walkie Talkie because of its shape) at 20 Fenchurch Street -  relatively short at 160m/525ft and 37 floors, but topped by a three storey observation deck called the Sky Garden: a spectacular space apparently) to my eyes at least merely look a bit gimmicky.  But then I'm old school.

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To be sure, the City of London has changed immeasurably since my debut there 56 years ago, but under the surface retains some of its old charm.  Many of the pubs and restaurants I used to use are still in business, little changed inside and out and often serving the same food menu and range of beers: why change a good thing, after all?  There is still a buzz about the place, people dashing hither and thither, to work, to lunch, to a business meeting, even if they now increasingly wear jeans and trainers and tee-shirts rather than three piece suits, shirts and ties.  To be honest, that makes me very pleased: it always seemed to me that the important, crucial ingredient was the person inside the outfit, their knowledge and skills and attitude and simply not the Armani suits and Gucci loafers.  Sharing that view often got me into trouble... 

Culture changes, the same as everything else; it doesn't always work but clearly it has in the City, still a leading financial centre despite the nation's problems (that are rife and made worse by political mismanagement over the last twenty years...).

The little lanes and alleys are still there, and look the same as I remember, even if the brass name plates by the doors have different names now.  And the grand old buildings, the Bank of England and the Royal Exchange, across from each other on Threadneedle Street, right above Bank Station on the underground, are outwardly unchanged, solid grey granite monuments to Empire, with their pillared steps and oaken doorways, statues and gargoyles.  The Royal Exchange isn't an exchange any more, since 99% of the city's business went online, but remains home to a number of financial companies including the Bank of Italy, but the BoE remains what it's always been: the nation's lender of last resort, it's central bank - no tenants there.  And quite right, too!

Even the traffic, always appalling, has lightened now.  In my early days there was a non-stop procession of black cabs, red double decker buses (the classic Routemasters with an open platform at the back that allowed you to jump on and off at traffic lights or simply when the vehicle was stationary in a traffic jam), single deck coaches, delivery vans - you name it.  Upper and Lower Thames Streets, running along the north bank of the Thames from Westminster and out to Blackwall Tunnel and Docklands, was like a race track, especially around the turn of this century, when commuter coaches formed a viable alternative way for workers from Kent and Essex to get to and from work.  The whole length of the road was crammed with a fleet of multi coloured coaches of competing companies racing each other, and diving through gaps to the side of the road to pick up or drop off passengers, horns blaring and lights flashing - great fun for their passengers, less so for other drivers.  Now the inside lane, where the coach stops were (at least through the City) has been converted to a paved cycle lane and closed to all motorised traffic and when I was there not a coach in sight.

Many of the roads in and through the City have also been narrowed with specific bus and cycle lanes, and a new one-way system introduced, and this has reduced the amount of traffic too.  And of course there are now expensive (and unpopular) charges for all road users (buses and taxis excepted) who use the system to reduce the amount of traffic and hence vehicle emissions pollution - too little too late in terms of fighting global warming perhaps, but from a worker's or visitor's perspective probably making the place safer to navigate on foot and maybe more pleasant?  It seemed so to me, at any rate.  

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But for all the changes I've described, the City of London is still a unique place, not only in Britain but I would suggest the world.  I can understand (though not particularly like) the change in focus inevitably resulting from increased tourism, and decry and laud in equal measure the physical changes I've written about.  But it remains a business centre, and for all the trans-Atlantic bluster from the Wall Street crowd, or the claims from other important European centres like Frankfurt and Paris, Amsterdam and Brussels, or global outliers like Singapore and Tokyo and Beijing, there is absolutely nowhere quite like it in either value and importance or, for want of a better term, vibe, on the planet.  I'm not sure I'd want to work there now, nor spend more than the odd day there, retracing my ancient footsteps, to scribble about in essays like this.  

But it seems to me a year without doing so at least once is a wasted year.  The Square Mile gets you like that.

Venice

 

Venice is a place that has always held an appeal to me, a place to visit at some point.  An Italian jewel on the Adriatic coast, a destination on the Orient Express back in the golden days of luxury train travel that various nations and operators are trying to re-create (though not, it appears, dear old Blighty).  A major Mediterranean cruise destination all year round, depositing on most days tens of thousands of loud Americans, manically smiling Japanese and wealthy Chinese, all frantically scrambling through the narrow streets to get the obligatory gondola trips (and squabbling over queue jumping), madly snapping selfies with or without sticks to hold their iPhones, and blocking the bridges (and everyone else's chance of crossing the canal) while they do so.  Meanwhile harassed tour guides, waving little flags and/or umbrellas, yell incoherently in multiple languages as they try to keep their groups together and interested in the commentary.  Little back street bistros and bars, selling enticing plates of sea food snacks, pastas and aperol spritzers, sometimes surprisingly affordable and sometimes ludicrously expensive -  as a rule of thumb the closer the place is to one of the tourist hotspots (like St. Mark's Square for instance) the pricier the place will be.  Go to a little back alley, look for one packed with customers speaking Italian and the better and less expensive the place is likely to be: catering for the locals is always better value.  Street hawkers and stalls, mostly staffed by Indians and Tamil and Malays nowadays, flogging the usual selection of replica football shirts from Italian and Spanish clubs, fridge magnets, a variety of copied traditional face masks from the balls the city is famous for, and assorted tourist tat at exorbitant prices further block the narrow streets.  And let's not forget the bigger stores, the international outlets like Starbuck's, and Nike, Chanel and Desigual and the rest.

All life is there, for good or ill.  But there are quieter places, often stumbled across as you try to get from one tourist attraction to the next and avoid the cruise-ship crowd.  Within a ten minute stroll of the Sta. Lucia rail and bus terminus there is a small courtyard-cum-though lane, perhaps a hundred metres long, with narrow tenement buildings four and five storeys high, small balconies and high shuttered windows open and net curtains flapping in the light breeze: apartments all.  There were small gardens before the front doors, packed with trees some the height of the buildings, their boughs overhanging the balconies and providing more shade from the hot Adriatic sunshine.  The hustle and bustle of the island city was muted by the surroundings, and few people were passing through (mostly locals with shopping bags and  the odd lost - or more adventurous? - tourist).  As fine a place to live as I have seen,,,,,

At the end, it opened out into a slightly wider square, in the corner of which an unobtrusive door opened into the Leonardo da Vinci Museum.  It's a fascinating place, full of copies of the great man's paintings with plaques explaining their histories and techniques and the finer points of their composition.  Another section is dedicated to his scientific studies, including a big replica of his extraordinary Vitruvian Man figure that explains perspective and its relationship to the human figure, a separate small cabinet with half a dozen mirror walls that allow you see dozens of reflections of yourself from different angles, a 360degree view of yourself (without moving a muscle).....I felt quite dizzy.  Then there are exhibits describing his medical experiments and discoveries - the first to accurately map the system of blood vessels, veins and arteries that keep us allive, for instance, and the musculature system that keeps us moving - and the primitive tools (saws, scissors, pliers and so on) that enabled him to conduct his research....  The upper floor is dedicated to his engineering feats and gadgets: the first parachute, the first tank, the first machine gun (no, really!) are replicated and explained, as is a bridge that could be scaled up to cross rivers and streams, and easily assembled and dis-assembled without a nail or rope in sight. There are half a dozen small scale models that challenge you to build it yourself by copying the way the spars slot together on the full-sized replica....  I spent the best part of two hours wandering around, entranced by the man's genius and achievements in his 67 year life (for comparison I am 72 and apart from my kids have achieved bugger all really).  I can't recommend the place highly enough.

Opposite the museum, another discovery: back in Renaissance times Venice was the home of several schools and centres of learning, and here was the art scuolo.  From the outside it simply looks like just another of the big churches and basilicas that are scattered throughout the island. Go through the main doorway and you are in a cavernous open space, with a dark tiled floor, stained glass windows and paintings, dark and indistinct, lining all floor walls.  It's impressive, but I felt disappointed.  To the right, next to the obligatory book and gift shop, a marbled staircase leads to a wide landing and thence to a second floor - and here is the magic.  The upper floor, reached by a further impressive central marble staircase and a similar size to the ground floor, is much brighter, better lit and I suppose with clearer pigmentation in the windows.  Again, the tiled floor is impressive, and the seats lining all four walls and facing into the central space offer the chance to sit and take in the beauty of both the architecture and paintings mounted throughout.  The jewel in the museum's crown is a separate room leading off from the main space next to the stairs that houses a selection of works by the Italian master Tintoretto.  Central to the collection is a huge work depicting The Crucifixion, his most famous painting, and I have to say I've never been more impressed by a work of art.  Unlike most depictions of Christ's Passion that are typically dark and gloomy (as suits the subject matter), Tintoretto's is in brighter colours that paint a vivid scene.  The figures contained are superbly worked: the mucles straining and sweat standing out on the torsos and faces of the men straining on the ropes as they drag one of the Crosses upright and the agonised expression on their victim's face portray as no other depiction of the scene I've ever seen the sheer brutality of the action.  We sat for perhaps half an hour just looking at this painting, and absorbing its complexity and, yes, beauty.  Quite extraordinary and worth the admission price on its own. 

We made copious use of the vaporettos (the water buses) that criss-cross the canals and the outlying lagoon to the other islands: I hadn't realised the city was simply the largest (and man-made) central island. A three day City Pass ticket cost 40 euros amd provides unlimited journeys on the water and land buses, trams and trains serving the rest of the city, including those on the mainland.  Our airbnb rental was in the mainland suburb of Venice Mestre, and the number 12 bus that stopped right outside the building whisked us across the causeway from there to Sta. Lucia in not more than 15 minutes.  From there we were able to hop on and off the vaporettos as we liked, or stay on (depending on the route: there are several to choose from) for the length of the Grand Canal that twists through the island's heart past all the major landmarks like the Bridge of Sighs, the Rialto bridge (with its covered market stalls and shops) and Saint Mark's Square with the Basilica and Doge's Palace, and thence across the lagoon to the Lido (home of both a sandy beach and Venice Film Festival, Leonardo di Caprio's favourite), Murano with its glass factories and artisan blowers (free demonstrations and tours of the workshops) that produce stunning glass ornaments, vases and tableware, and Burano with its streets lined with pastel coloured houses (every one a different colour) housing family businesses of lace making, cafes and bistros.  The vaporetto to cover all three of them makes up an enchanting afternoon, and we chose the hottest and sunniest day of the week for our tour.  The home made pizza and cold (local) beer for lunch we had at a tiny cafe on one of the Murano waterfronts (the island has its own smaller canal system) was probably the best meal we had all week.

We had a great trip.  Our flight deal on Ryanair was ridiculously cheap, even by O'Leary's standards, and landing at Treviso thirty kilometres or so away from Venice was no problem: it gave us the opportunity to try out an Italian regional train service into Mestre station (ten minutes walk from our airbnb rental) and it was fine.  We also used the rail service for a daytrip to Verona an hour and half ride away, which was a fun day out.  It's a nice city, with a colloseum that looked in better nick that its better known Roman equivalent, a street market next to it (at least on the day we were there: some excellent cheese and chorrizo sausage snacks a highlight), designer shopping, and a beautiful central Old Town square surrounded by its own array of small bistros and containing another open-air market.  Verono is also, of course, the setting for Shakespeare's classic Romeo & Juliet, and the city's government is unashamedly cashing in.  Close to the Old Town square is a small courtyard surrounded by medieval buildings: one of the small balconies is "identified" as Juliet's (on what basis I have no idea).  Tickets to view cost 40 euros bookable only in advance, for which you are sent a QR code on your mobile.  You join the queue - when we were there this was a good 100m long - and eventually your code is checked and scanned by security and you are allowed in in groups of half a dozen, given five minutes to take your pictures and selfies, then shepherded away for the next group.  We gave it a miss.

Venice met my expectations completely.  It's a beautiful, atmospheric place, with some stunning sights and excellent shopping and dining options.  Public transport is varied and sensibly priced and, let's be honest, iconic (even though we missed out on the gondola trip). Mestre, on the mainland. is quite different, and seems to be the area in which the large immigrant population are housed: there were many kebab houses, Indian, Chinese and Arabic cafes, bars and restaurants.  It's a grubbier, grimier part of town but for all that has a charm of its own, with many lovely old buildings (including our old and solid apartment block) and a superb street market that we spent an hour so exploring (and ended up buying a tee-shirt, over three kilos of assorted local cheeses and salami sausage that made packing to come home challenging - but we managed!).  Our accomodation was also considerably cheaper than we would have paid on Venice island itself, but although in an old and shabby looking block was very well sized, comfortably furnished and with a kitchen and two bathrooms shared with other guests, enabled us meet and talk to people visiting from southern Italy and France - it added to the fun of the trip.

I can't wait to go back!

Proper grub....

 

I'm not a big fan of fine dining (although I have enjoyed some very pleasant meals in expensive restaurants, even Michelin starred ones). It just seems to me that placing a couple of small pieces of fish or meat on a plate, adding a spoonful of mashed potatoes and a couple of carrots, topping it off with some leaves from an indeterminate plant and a few decorative smears of mystery sauces on the plate (always twice the size of the one needed) do not a meal make. Sure, it all looks as pretty as a picture, and tastes pleasant enough. But if the criteria of a "meal" is to dispel hunger, then sorry - not for me. I always feel the need for a kebab or a Big Mac or something afterwards, to be honest. I know, I know - I'm a food Phillistine with no taste. I readily admit it! Sorry.

So living in Poland is a good call, since the typical local cuisine could in no way be called fine dining (at least in the widely accepted sense of the term). That said, the two best fine dining meals I've had were here in Warsaw. One was in a new restaurant opened a few years ago in a converted factory or warehouse in the up-and-coming Praga district (formerly more famous for its Russian mafia connections) by a renowned tv chef - the atmosphere and food were excellent and Mine Host made our night by coming to our table for a chat, and presenting the kids with chef's hats - suitably autographed, of course. He has since opened two or three more outlets in other parts of the city, again all of them in up-and-coming districts, and all successful.

The other time was about 18 months ago, shortly before my cancer surgery, in another new restaurant in the centre of the city, and was a gift from one of my sons. It featured typical fine dining stuff, scallops, squid, venison and so forth, and ran to 7 courses, each matched with a specifc wine. Our waiter explained the composition of each dish and why the particular wine had been matched to the food, his knowledge (or memory) impressive. It was superb, and again we were able to have a chat with the head chef as we were leaving. I would happily go to either restaurant again, and I have no doubt thoroughly enjoy the experience - but that doesn't change my overall view of the fine dining product.

No, I like hearty, well cooked food that fills the plate and the belly. In my view you cannot beat a good plate of roast lamb with mint sauce and a selection of fresh vegetables. Or roast pork with apple sauce - indeed any roast: chicken, turkey, beef - and I could happily eat a plate of crispy golden roast potatoes with a splash of beef gravy every day. English fish and chips - yes, please. Bangers and mash with onion gravy - oh, yes. Pies, too - chicken and mushroom, beef and ale, a genuine Cornish pastie full of beef and vegetable chunks, all of them encased in a golden-brown pastry (and I'll take them with potatoes or chips or indeed on their own). Not keen on steak and kidney, though: my dad had a kidney removed when I was seven or eight, and the next day mum cooked a steak and kidney pie: the thought that dad might have donated the kidney freaked me out and I can't bear the damned things to this day.

Here in Warsaw there is choice aplenty.

For a start all the international fast food brands are fully represented - McDonalds and Burger King, Pizza Hut and Domino's and KFC for a quick and easy meal, Hard Rock Cafe if you want something a bit more substantial with cold beer and live music on the side. Within five minutes or so stroll from my apartment I can chose between three Italian restaurants, a couple of American diners, a couple each of Thai and Vietnamese, a proper Chinese Dim Sum cafe and two ordinary Chinese restaurants, a really good Indian (had an excellent birthday dinner there last week) and a couple of kebab houses. That's not to mention a handful of good patisseries selling fine looking cakes and ice creams and good coffee, plus some places specializing in Polish kitchen - soups, cutlets and roast meats with fresh veg or coleslaw and beetroot salad, pierogi (dumplings with a variety of fillings including potato, meat, cabbage, and cheese), savoury and sweet pancakes. So I'm not spoiled for choice. Go further afield in the city, and there are plenty of Mediterranean restaurants, Lebanese and other Arabic cafes, Balkan kitchen (notably Serbian and Croatian - seafood a speciality) and French restaurants. There really is something for every palate.

Then you have a distinctly Polish restaurant, typically found on the main roads between towns and cities throughout the country called karczma - in English, an inn. But these are not really like the inns I've been used to back home: basically a village public house in which to enjoy a beer and scampi-in-a-basket or ploughman's lunch with perhaps a game of darts or bar-billiards. No, the karczma are more like proper restaurants by the main road, not necessarily in a population centre, often surrounded by fields and forests. Think of an old fashioned Little Chef....

The buildings tend to be old and traditional Polish architecture, all wood beams and low ceilings and solidly built benches and cushioned chairs, and tables with white linen and table mats. From the outside, they can look like converted barns or stables (and probably are), surrounded by gardens with a kid's play area and a car park, and perhaps access to the surrounding woodland and countryside. I've seen many on our car journeys to the coast and elsewhere over the years, but we've always tended to grab a Big Mac or something at the service station when we're tanking the car for the next leg of the journey.

But the other week, I finally got to try one. We visited some friends out of town for a weekend, and on the Sunday piled into her car for a drive out. We visited a small town close to the Mazurian lakes that she had taken us to a couple of years ago (it stands on a river, and was an old Jewish village decimated in World War 2, its population virtually wiped out; its synagogue is now a museum portraying its past history and tragic end. There are many such places scattered throughout the country) where we bought a delicious cake, made of overlapping layers of crisp pastry, smothered in a sweet honey layer and powdered sugar - my mouth is watering at the memory! On the way home from there, a mile or two outside the village, we pulled into a karczma that was signed to be adjacent to country museum.

We strolled through the gardens and down a short footpath bordered on each side by rows of sponsored trees, each one marked by a small plaque with the name and effective date of its sponsorship - there were some quite famous people on them, I noticed: a couple of politicians, some actors and musicians. The path led out into farmland, past a lovely wooden cottage on the bank of a sizeable pond with a couple of areas marked off for fishing, through reed beds and hedgerows to an old farmyard with a couple of barns - the museum: it was closed. On three sides, perhaps a mile across the fields, lay woodland that in the green of spring and summer is without doubt a lovely place to wander.

We decided to eat in the karczma, and for me it was a revelation. The door opened into a sizeable dining area, and right by the door stood a big (perhaps five feet high) monstrosity that looked for all the world like a creature out of Tolkien but was in fact simply several years' worth of wax dripped and shaped by gravity and the run-off from the four or five candles the now completely hidden candelabra held. We sat at a corner table and ordered from a good menu of typical Polish country fayre, and when the food arrived (the service quick and efficient) it was superb. I ordered gołabki (rolled minced pork wrapped in sweet cabbage leaves, boiled and served in a thick herby tomato sauce - one of My Beloved's specials) served with a pile of mashed potatoes, fresh carrots, peas and shredded pickled beetroot, and washed it down with a large bottle of locally brewed craft beer. And for sweet, home-made szartlotka (apple crumble) served hot with a couple of scoops of vanilla ice cream. It was delicious, and I barely managed to eat it all. The roast duck My Beloved ordered looked equally fine, as did the pork and chicken cutlets (fried in breadcrumbs) that our friends had. Our friends picked up the tab, so I'm not sure how much it all came to - my feast cost about 120zl I think  (about £20) so was really good value for really good food.

For me, it was great discovery after all these years, proper grub in proper portions. Certainly worth going out of the way to find on our journeys around this big and fascinating country, rather than diving into the nearest McD or whatever at a motorway service area somewhere by the busy motorway. Yes, a country karczma for me every time now.

Stratford, East London

 

 

I don't know east London that well.  Areas like Bow and Whitechapel, Hackney and Stratford, East and West Ham are just names on a map (either the good old A to Z, Google Maps or the Tube network). I've heard more about some areas than others.  Bow for instance: it's common knowledge a true Cockney is born "within the sound of Bow Bells" - at least according to local mythology.  And Whitechapel was where the unsolved Jack the Ripper murders took place in late Victorian times.  West Ham has a decent enough football team that provided three key member of England's 1966 World Cup winning team.  And Hackney Marshes is part of football folklore, home to 88 full sized pitches hosting 200 odd matches on any given weekend, a place that in times gone by was crawling with club scouts trying to unearth the next Martin Peters or Geoff Hurst or Jimmy Greaves.....whether they still do so, given how much development has been lavished by professional clubs on their academies, is questionable.

East London, and Stratford in particular, was also a place to drive through: coming from Kent the A2 through the Blackwall Tunnel deposits you in Blackwall, part of the London borough of Tower Hamlets (formed of the old boroughs of Poplar, Bethnal Green and Stepney).  Keep driving northeast, through Stratford, and eventually you hit the A11, A12 or A13, all heading into Essex, and eventually the 11, morphing to the M11 beyond Leyton, up past the M25 and Harlow, through Cambridgeshire to the Norfolk and Suffolk North Sea coasts. Or you could pick up the old London Ring road that circles inner London, and further out the Road to Hell, the M25, that will link you to the M11, the M1, the M3, and M4 (amongst other major roads) and thus speed up your drive to pretty much anywhere in the country.  Even with the M25 gridlocked, as it often is, it's quicker than driving across Central London - and cheaper now that fees are charged to reduce traffic there (the hated Congestion Charge and even more disliked Ultra Low Emissions Zone charge, introduced over the past few years to reduce traffic and get knackered old petrol and diesel polluters off the capital's roads....but since when have successful Green policies been popular?).

I've driven through it many times, and travelled by coach and tube or mainline train, but always to get somewhere else.  It always looked grubby and dark, inhospitable and downright dangerous, and not somewhere to stop for a stroll.  

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But all that has changed.  Over the past 30 years or so - since Thatcher drove construction of the Canary Wharf business district on the Isle of Dogs, London's very own Wall Street-on-Thames - the area has been cleaned up and gentrified, and nowadays is a sought after area in London's obscenely expensive property market.  It must be good, because my second son, an Alphabet-employed whizz-kid with impeccable taste (he's my son, so that's to be expected, right?) bought a place there....but I'm getting ahead of myself a little.

London hosting the 2012 Summer Olympics also gave the area a huge boost.  Wasteland was turned into a sparkly new development, with a 60,000 capacity sports stadium as its centre-piece (now the home a re-located West Ham United) sitting in a nicely designed and green park that houses the obligatory Olympic Rings installation, the velodrome for cycling events next door to another complex housing the Lee Valley Hockey and Tennis Centre.  Beyond that lies good old Hackney Marshes, linked to the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park via a couple of graceful bridges, and the River Lea runs through the parkland.  There is a wide network of foot- and bike-paths running across the land and round the entire perimeter.  

The surrounding area was also very well developed.  The Athlete's Village, once the Games were finished, was converted by the Council into essentially a new town, known as Stratford City (very grand!) that includes a big and modern shopping mall (Westfield), adjacent to an expanded Stratford Station (a confusing hub for a selection of rail, tube and bus routes) and a brand new Stratford International station that is home to Britain's only existing high-speed train lines that serve the Channel Tunnel and Kent Coast lines, although the international services from Eurostar no longer stop there - a victim of Covid cuts, apparently.  This whole new complex and parkland is labelled East Village.

Then there is  old Stratford, reached from the new Stratford City/East Village area by a big old bridge with steps (the moving ones never seeming to work) down to the old and shabby Stratford Centre shopping mall and yet another, even more confusing, entrance hall to the station, that at least houses a manned ticket office rather than being reliant on a variety of (often broken) ticket machines.  Strolling around this area looking for Santander bank (eventually found hidden by scaffolding) is markedly different to Stratford City.  It's older, of course, and shabbier, with fewer road signs - which didn't help my search - and alive with people crossing the roads every which way, largely ignoring the pedestrian lights and dodging between honking cars and buses (the traffic is heavier and hence slower moving, than in Stratford City).  The shops in the mall are also scruffier, not the sparkly designer outlets and large department stores of M&S, H&M, Diesel, Foot Locker and the rest that fill Westfield, but smaller stores, budget supermarkets like Lidl and Sainsbury's, a string of fast-food outlets like McDonalds and Burger King and Taco Bell, all mixed in with a selection of cheap and cheerful market stalls.  They're both lively malls, but with different clientele - older and somehow poorer looking in Stratford Centre, younger and more prosperous looking in Westfield. 

 

But in both malls, and in the streets, the crowds showed the multi-national multi-cultural society of Stratford and the East End of London very clearly.  Afro-Caribbean, Middle Eastern, Sub-Continental and Asian are all heavily represented, with white Anglo-Saxon/Caucasian seemingly in the minority.  I know people who would be upset, even angry, at this population demographic, but to my mind it's a tribute to the area, the city and the country that, historically, people of all nationalities have been welcomed and (by and large) become a productive part of British society.  Not so much nowadays, perhaps, but that's a discussion for another day and another essay.

The housing is also different.  Old Stratford is still terraced housing mixed with older mixed shop or office premises, with flats and bedsits above - slate roofs, pillared entrances, red-bricks and all. I haven't scoured the area, admittedly, but I haven't seen any gardens to speak of, as you would see in typical suburban areas, but then this is very much an inner city community with space at a premium. They may well exist, of course, hidden away in streets I haven't seen.  

The Stratford City East Village, by contrast, is a very modern and smart looking conurbation. The blocks surrounding the parks are mostly three, perhaps four floored modern boxes, each apartment with a balcony (some tiny Juliets, others big enough for a couple of chairs and a table), in streets with names reflecting their Olympic heritage - Peloton Way, for instance, that runs past my son's flat up to the velodrome.  The flats, to judge from my son's which I think is typical, are pretty well appointed: which is to say a good sized living area, a kitchen/dining area, one or two bathrooms, and two to four bedrooms. The blocks are in a network of quiet roads and cul-de-sacs, with parking spaces and underground garages, and a scattering of small local shops and supermarkets.  I dare say other amenities like doctor's surgeries, dentists, schools and so on are there too, but I haven't noticed them.  The population is again multi-cultural, but younger.

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I've spent the last week looking after my lad's apartment and it's been fun.  

I had a set of Nordic Walking poles for Christmas and I've made good use of them in the Olympic Park and the Marshes, getting my steps in in the chilly sunshine.  I've seen many families taking their exercise there too, enjoying their Festive break, walking a variety of dogs, kids on sparkling new bikes and scooters, electric skateboards and roller blades - but not one other person using poles like mine.  I admit to receiving some funny looks....  

 

I've taken the obligatory photos of the Olympic Rings, and various competition areas like the velodrome, the panorama across the park towards the stadium and impressive (but weird) ArcelorMittal Orbit tourist attraction close by, and the ducks paddling along the river Lea.

 

 

 

I've wandered around some of the 88 football pitches and the low slung but modern changing facilities and idly wondered how you can recognise what pitch you're playing on, given the apparent lack of any identification markers by their sides.  I used to play on a similar multi-pitch facility back in the day, in Tonbridge, where there were perhaps ten pitches laid out, and that was bad enough with the little numbered pegs by the corner nearest to the changing rooms.  But I suppose you get used to it....

I've ambled around Westfield Mall, window shopping and browsing the shelves in the two good and sizable bookstores that are there without buying anything (I have a big backlog to read back home that was increased by another three at Christmas) and sampled the coffee and lemon drizzle cake at the Starbucks stall.  They tasted exactly the same as they did at any other Starbucks outlet in any city in any country that I've used Starbucks - a lot of them! - and for me that's a Good Thing.  I've shopped at Sainsbury's in the old Stratford Centre and found the selection of Cornish pasties, pork pies, sausage rolls, scotch eggs, breads, chocolate and Polish kabanosy (chains of long thin smoked sausages) satisfactory and competitively priced. 

And I got lost in Stratford Station travelling via a very scenic and indirect route (courtesy of the Network SouthEast ticketing app) that routed me to Gravesend via Abbey Wood and Dartford. What it didn't specify was that to get to Abbey Wood I would need to change trains at Whitechapel.  This means that to travel east you first need to travel west.....  Not at all obvious, and I asked no less than six staff on three platforms before I got on the right train - thus adding over half an hour to the trip.  Far easier would have been a simple one-change routing through London Bridge using the Jubilee Line then Network SouthEast.  New technology, eh?

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So it's nice here, and I've had a good trip so far, with another week to go.  I plan to go into the City later this week, to meet up with a couple of old friends, and at Kings Cross seek out Words on the Water: it's a rather fine converted Dutch barge moored on the canal five minutes walk from the station that has been converted to a new and second hand book shop, complete with armchairs and settees to rest on while choosing your purchase, a coffee area and, on deck in good weather (not likely this week unfortunately), live music.  Now that is how books should be sold.....

The East End isn't at all what I expected, and Stratford (whether old, City or East Village) an interesting place.  Would I live there?  Nope.  It's still an Inner City area. and I'm a country boy at heart.

But I'm happy to visit.

One year on.....

 ...and still the slaughter in the Levant continues unabated.

Today is the first anniversary of the Hamas atrocity in southern Israel, in a kibbutz a couple of miles from the border with Gaza. Over a thousand Israelis, men women and children enjoying a music festival, lost their lives.  A further 200+ plus taken hostage.  It was by any criteria an appalling act of terrorism by Hamas. Anyone in their right mind, no matter their nationality or religious beliefs, would condemn it - and did.  The Israeli government vowed to respond in kind and get the hostages home, and governments world-wide made supportive comments. A couple of weeks and it will all be over was the general feeling. 

Well, no actually.  A whole year has passed and over a hundred hostages are still being held in Gaza.  Talks between the two sides for their return have ground to a halt.  Others were found dead amid the rubble, and some shot dead by IDF troops in friendly fire accidents.  My sympathy, as with everyone else's, is with the victims and their families, who are all suffering unimaginable pain, with no apparent end in sight.

Two thousand victims.  It's a lot.  BUT they are not the only people to suffer, not by a long chalk. 

 

Gaza itself, for years nothing less than a heavily fortified concentration camp (to all intents and purposes), strictly guarded by IDF troops that restrict access to everybody, not just Palestinians, with its citizens denied full democratic rights, has been reduced to a wasteland.  Over these months a continuous air and artillery bombardment and land incursions have reduced something like 80% of it to piles of rubble.  Housing, schools, universities, even hospitals have been destroyed. Over two million people have been rendered homeless. men women and children, living on the streets under whatever shelter they can find, lacking basic sanitation, food and medical supplies.  They are moved from safe area to safe area, and each time, sooner or later, that area becomes unsafe and they are moved on as another bombardment starts. To date, over 42,000 Palestinians living in Gaza have lost their lives according to statistics compiled by UN agencies and others like the World Food Program and International Red Cross.  Most of them are women and children, civilian non-combatants with no known link to Hamas or its aims.  I make that at least 35 Palestinian deaths for each Israeli victim in the atrocity last year.

The numbers do not take into account the aid workers of several nationalities, nor the medical staff and press who have lost their lives trying to save Palestinian lives and bring comfort and aid to the refugees.  None of these people had any connection whatsoever with the Hamas terrorists. 

International law and UN Charters provide for nation states to be able to respond to terrorist attacks like that on last October 7, provided the response is targeted and proportionate.  Clearly this has not been the case: a ratio in excess of 35:1 can never be considered either "targeted" or "proportionate".  For me it's nothing less than mass murder.

It doesn't end here, of course, because Israel has shown no sign of easing up in its revenge actions. It has now turned its attentions to Lebanon, its northern neighbour that harbours another militant (for which read terrorist) group, Hezbollah. This is a close ally of Hamas though much stronger and both are armed and trained by Iran. Israel has launched attacks on Lebanon, first through an apparent covert operation that led to a couple of thousand pagers used by Hezbollah members for communication to explode.  As well as maiming and blinding the owners, innocent passers-by, including children, were killed.  Not content with that, air strikes on villages and towns in southern Lebanon, allegedly hotbeds of Hezbollah actiivity, have led to many more deaths and an exodus of over a million refugees - warned by Israel to evacuate or "face the consequences".  The capital Beirut (a city I spent a year working in and thoroughly enjoyed some 15 years ago) is now overflowing with people seeking safety - and is predictably now itself under attack.  More deaths by the day...

Iran has responded by launching missiles at Israel, whose air defence, its Iron Dome provided and funded by the USA, destroyed most of the incoming and kept casualties to a minimum. Israel is now considering launching an attack on Iran, perhaps targeting the country's oil infrastructure and nuclear facilities. 

 

There are fears that the entire region is going to be dragged into this slaughter.  The US has already pledged its "unswerving support" for Israel in its "self defence".  Britain and the EU, though perhaps less forcefully, have done likewise and issued their own warnings to Iran. Putin has so far said nothing but for years has been backing and arming Iran and its allies (like Hamas and Hezbollah) and no doubt is quite happy to see the West drawn into the conflict.  Would he order Russia to take action if that happened, given the Ukraine conflict?  God knows. but he is mad enough.  And if he did, how would the West - the US, the EU, Britain, the NATO Alliance - respond?  And what of Iran's and Russia's other allies, China and North Korea?

I have no idea how this is all going to end, but without doubt it's a tragedy and a conflict that could have been avoided or ended, but for the stubborn vindictive leadership from both the main combatants.  For the first time in my life, I am genuinely fearful that we are close to a Third World War. 

The Grunwald Monument

 

The Teutonic Knights (more correctly, the Teutonic Order) was a German Catholic company of knights founded during the Crusades in the early 12th century, and under the control of the Pope. It was initially based in Jerusalem from whence, through conquest and bloodshed - copious amounts of each - it spread throughout the Middle East and ultimately through northern and eastern Europe. At its peak it controlled a trading empire that stretched around almost the entire Baltic Sea coast. By the late 14th century, at the height of its power, it was the dominant European force and incredibly wealthy, ruling that huge territory from a network of massive castles spread thoughout the coastal towns and cities it controlled. Their castle at Malbork in Poland remains the biggest of its kind in the world when measured by square meterage and is a UNESCO World Heritage site and one of the countries most visited tourist attractions, housing a museum, extensive grounds and a hotel within its massive walls.

Making an empire that big and maintaining it is no easy task, especially given the animosity and, perhaps, hatred felt by conquerers from the ordinary people in the lands they had absorbed. This was certainly the case within the eastern Baltic area, where the proud peoples of Poland and Lithuania rebelled against Teutonic rule, and in 1407 launched a war against the Teutonic Knights to regain their lost territory. The conflict came to a head in 1410, at the Battle of Grunwald, where the massed armies of Poland and Lithuania, led by the Polish and Lithuanian rulers, King Władisław II Jagiełło and Grand Duke Vytautas respectively, allied to several groups of vassals and regions of their countries, as well as a number of groups of mercenaries from countries even further afield (including today's Ukraine and Belarus) engaged with the Teutonic Knights led by their Grand Master Ulrich von Jungingen. It was one of the biggest battles ever fought in Medieval Europe, with Polish forces numbering up to 39,000 men and the Teutonic Knights up to 27,000 men.

The conflict took place on 15 July 1410, and no accurate number of dead and wounded has ever been calculated (record keeping not being considered important in those times). What is certain is that the Grand Master and most of the senior Knights were killed, and the previous invincibility of the Order destroyed. It continued its trading activities until its final disolution in 1810, but never again with its pre-Grunwald strength and power. The battle is still celebrated every year with mock battles and chrch services at Grunwald, and also in Ukraine and Belarus.

 I had been aware of some of this history for some time, since I read Norman Davies' superb two volume God's Playground: A History of Poland (which deals in detail with the battle and its aftermath) when I first moved to Poland twenty-odd years ago, and Malbork castle has been close to the top of my Places To See In Poland List ever since, but I still haven't managed it. I've been past the castle several times, on trains between Warsaw and Gdansk (the track runs right past it) and it is certainly a very impressive building still. Maybe next year...

There are also excellent and informative Wikipedia pages dedicated to the Knights, the Battle itself and some of the leading participants, with maps and diagrams describing the entire bloodbath - they are for sure worth a look (and I am indebted to them in preparing this essay).

Anyway, back in May this year, I was fortunate enough to spend a weekend in Olsztyn and the nearby rail junction town of Dzialdowo visiting friends, so on our way home we took a detour to visit the Grunwald monument. It was a nice drive on a hot and sunny Sunday afternoon, through rolling farmland, dotted with pretty villages and forests. It's a nice part of the country. The Monument and battle site stands on its own, a few kilometers away from the surrounding villages, and from the specific route we followed it appeared quite suddenly on our left, with little forewarning. 

  

 There is a big car and coach park that at that time was quite empty, so we were able to park in splendid isolation a few paces from the gift shop, cafeteria and toilet block. We didn't use the cafeteria but spent some time looking at the stuff in the gift shop. Replica Polish knight costumes and helmets in a variety of sizes, up to and including adult XXL, were hanging on rails both inside and out, and many replica swords, proper metal ones as well kid's plastic toys, were in a kind of umbrella stand: the best of them was, on closer examination, actually an umbrella - I'd love to see someone try to take it on London's Central Line to the City on a wet day. There were, too, many postcards, fridge magnets, coffee cups, beer mats - all the usual tourist tat - and quite a big selection of hard- and soft-back books dedicated to the battle, histories of the Teutonic Order and of Poland, but not a single volume was in English. I found that very disappointing, considering the importance of both the site and the battle.

 A little further along the block, next door to the obligatory Church, was the entrance to the Monument site itself. This is a quite extensive park on the green rolling hills where the battle took place, and throughout the park are scattered various monuments. These not only commemorate the battle but also other notable historical sites and events from more recent Polish history. Most notable (to me, at any rate) is a monument, essentially a pile of rubble, that commemorates an action taken by the Nazis during the War. To them, the Teutonic Knights were heroes, examples to their own dreams of conquest, and when they occupied Krakow and made it their administrative capital in 1939 a statue and momunent celebrating the battle of Grunwald was a target and duly demolished. Its replacement at Grunwald uses rubble taken from the city post-war, and it is labelled accordingly, describing what happened in Krakow and why.

 A little further along the block, next door to the obligatory Church, was the entrance to the Monument site itself. This is a quite extensive park on the green rolling hills where the battle took place, and throughout the park are scattered various monuments. These not only commemorate the battle but also other notable historical sites and events from more recent Polish history. Most notable (to me, at any rate) is a monument, essentially a pile of rubble, that commemorates an action taken by the Nazis during the War. To them, the Teutonic Knights were heroes, examples to their own dreams of conquest, and when they occupied Krakow and made it their administrative capital in 1939 a statue and momunent celebrating the battle of Grunwald was a target and duly demolished. Its replacement at Grunwald uses rubble taken from the city post-war, and it is labelled accordingly, describing what happened in Krakow and why.

 At the top of a rise and overlooking the battlefield is a big paved area that depicts the place as it would have been in 1410 from that particular view point. There were three or four hamlets, not much more than individual farms but expanded now to small villages and towns, more or less atthe corners of the battlefield and depicted by small blocks representing their buildings. Marked clearly were the pre-conflict locations of the various combatant armies, cleverly done to indicate the size and numbers of each army. Each muster was on an elevated spot of land, so to fight the armies would have had to charge downhill and meet in the natural bowl of the fields. Here and there single points indicate where major turning points of the battle happened - the key one is probably the spot where the Teutonic Grand Master met his end, leaving his forces leaderless and doubtless demoralized. With the battle plan as a guide, finding the spot was easy: it's marked now by a single large stone with an engraved plaque commemorating the incident, and lies in a small dip in the rolloing countryside, close to a fence separating the Memorial site from a vast field of btilliant yellow rapeseed plants.

 I stood in the middle on the hollow at the centre of the battlefield and surveyed the battlefield from the perpective of a participant, looking around. It was not hard to imagine what it must have been like (I've seen many movies where the kind of bloody hand-to-hand fighting that must have occurred is depicted...some good, some bad), nor to have an inkling of the terror and uncontrolled bladder and bowel voiding that probably happened as the yelling and cursing participants clashed arms there in the summer sun, nor to feel the pain of limbs suddenly severed, heads crushed and bowels ripped out. But perhaps I have a particularly active imagination, because no-one else in our party seemed to be so moved...

We spent perhaps an hour wandering around, then returned to the car park - a couple of coach loads of tourists had by this time arrived and more cars, so the place was getting more crowded: we probably had the best of it, as it had been quiet and mostly empty to allow for free and undisturbed thought - , and headed home.

 The Grunwald Monument is the sort of thing Poland does very well. Perhaps because of its turbulant past, the country remains very aware and proud of its history. Its literature is full of works that relate to the way life was back in the day, the epic poem Pan Tadeusz, set in a manor house in the glory days of the old Polish-Lithuanian Confederation that was at the time the biggest such alliance in the whole of Europe, is probably the most famous example (it remains still a mandatory text in schools and Polish kids can recite entire segments of it word perfect). Lists of its past monarchs, good and bad, are equally Must Have and form the basis of many a tv quiz question (rarely answered incorrectly).

 Other Poles who have gone on to make their mark in the wider world - like the astronomer Mikołaj Kopernik (Copernicus), the composer Fredric Chopin and the scientist Marie Curie - are revered. Even places of tragedy are still respected - the tragic but resepctful museums at the concentration camps of Majdanek and Auschwitz; Wolfschantz, Hitler's bunker deep in the Mazurian forest; even Chopin's birthplace and childhood home (a small unassuming cottage in rolling farmland west of Warsaw) are fascinating and well-travelled detinations that tend to receive as many, sometimes more, Polish visitors than tourists and are worth the journey and admission fees.

Grunwald is rightly celebrated as a major victory that altered the future of Europe itself, and deserving of the splendid Monument that commemorates it - and the site is well worth the trip.