Dead Man Walking

This morning my blog was going to be full of  happy chatter about the various things I had encountered this week, however as I came out of Holloway tube station to get to LCC’s HQ’s, I came across a scene which left me rattled.

As I started taping away a text on my phone, stopping to re-adjust the red poppy that I had just bought, I crossed the road absent mindedly and something on the floor caught my eye. As I slowly turned, and the rush of workers kept walking, I noticed a man in a football strip lying on his back on the cold London pavement. His ginger hair and pale skin a stark contrast against the claret shirt and dirt grey slabs. Whilst he had obviously been there long enough for rigamortis to set in, people were casually milling around watching, staring, continuing with their cigarette and idle banter. I slowed down to the point that I had practically stopped, and managed to knock into an older lady. The look on my face had obviously startled her as her eyes followed mine, and a similar look was mirrored on her own face within a moment.

The shock and apparent disregard of others had made me want to ask, has London become so volatile and has death become so common and available through experience and media that we have forgotten how to feel when we witness such a site? Have we become immune to daily occurrence and peoples emotions, and basic respect and acknowledgment when such an event occurs? Do we no longer notice death, even when it is just a few feet away from us?

The ambulance medic on a motor bike stands beside him, checking for a pulse, some chance of revival. As I slowly drift away, internally chiding myself because I am already late for work, my mind lingers over the thought that someone this morning is going to notice he is missing. A mother, a wife, child or friend will be reading the local paper, eating their breakfast, waiting for the phone to ring, not realising that the next time they hear something about him will be the last thing they imagined on this bright blue skied autumn day. At least someone had the decency to pick up the phone and call 999, but was that because they were as startled as me and wanted to help? Or was it because the body of a dead man on the grey slabs of London would be bad press for their area, and in turn their business? I would prefer to be a optimist and think of the first reason rather than the latter, but in this ever changing and evolving world, where people are scared to come forward and help another human being, in fear that they may get wrongly accused, I am saddened to say it is probably the latter reason to why this body was being carted away.

City Chic in Jordans?!

As the recession, the tube strike and the damp British weather settles in and the clocks go back an hour, the choice of the City girls footwear seems to falter.

Gone are teetering, heart stopping, sky rocketing wedges in acid brights. The beautiful vanilla Giuseppe Zanotti heeled gladiators which give the woman wearing it the power of Xena Warrior but sexiness a Roman goddess all tied up in leather straps and golden studs. The KG crystal “Love” sandals that adorned feet, which had been buffed and painted with Atomic Orange and Cha-ching Cherry, have been neatly stacked away in their boxes labelled Summer 2010. Instead, when I look around on my daily travels, I find my fellow City girls giving way to more imaginative footwear, ranging from the unsightly Ugg boots, to a pair of Michael Jordans! Ladies, what are you thinking?

Although many will say I am not one to comment as I love my ballet slippers, and that is just a cop-out of a shoe, what they do not realise the humble ballet slipper is a saviour of London chicness. One specific friend of mine may recall a birthday where my feet could no longer take the elegant, leg lengthening strappy heels worn earlier that evening and it was either her soft gold leopard print pumps or my bare minxed adorned feet skipping past a row of pilots and a dog down Shaftesbury Avenue at 4am in pursue of a kebab, whilst wearing an electric purple cocktail dress ... I will always be grateful, especially since it took four months to swap our shoes back. Also coupled with the amount of time I have had to run for trains, planes and taxi’s to get to appointments and meetings, the beautifully sculpted, elegant ballet slipper has held its own in the fashion stakes teamed with jeans, a work suit or the latest skirt trend. Fasionistas and Models all over the world slip their pedicured soles into these slip of a shoe, lightweight, easily transportable in a clutch bag and always in-vogue so why are my City sisters forgetting this? I beg of you, give the Uggs away!

When discussing this matter with a few colleagues, one piped up that when it rains or snows trainers keep all your feet dry whilst pretty stilettos can not provide the grip or support required, or when you have to go to the gym it saves you having to carry the weight of them, or when you have to walk a lot during London’s regular tube strikes they support your feet and ankles. Although all of these are interesting and somewhat valid points, what happened to London being a leader in the fashion stakes, not a follower? Does that moto not extend to footware?

French Sole was founded on the belief that London women could be chic and still look trendy whilst being comfortable. Or has the accessibility of global footware trends (and mistakes) via the internet diversified the belief that chic-ness is still important? Is it all about comfort now?  

If you need a bit of height there are always other alternatives. The slouched or wedged suede ankle boot, Balenciaga’s  industrial-style bracketed heeled loafers, heeled brogues which seem to still be gracing the a/w catwalks and of course the Mad Men classic 1950’s style thick heeled court shoe which is in every colour and texture imaginable.

Ladies, Uggs should be worn by Soldiers and Surfers (its original use) and not by chic, coiffed women of the City, so please do us all a favour, put them back in the closet and put your best foot forward by popping down to Bond Street.

The Unspoken Language of a Londoner

I have written this blog in my mind this morning on my journey from Catford to Kings Cross St Pancreas...Why is it that Londoners can indicate what they feel in one short, sharp cough, or muffle, noise, or look whereas it takes others around the country lengthy words and expressions?

It is fairly obvious to every Londoner on the 7.49am Kings Cross bound train, when the 52 year old balding man wearing a beige Mac coughs at you, he is non-verbally telling you to get-out-off-his bloody-way-as-he-has-to-still-drag-his-arse-onto-the-train-in-this-freezing-weather-to-go-to-work-for his-unappreciative-31-year-old-boss-who-has-just-rolled-out-of-his-nappies-and-thinks-he-knows how-to-do-his-job-better-than-him. Funny how we manage to decipher things by a nano second sound.

On the same 7.49am train two lovers board and sit right opposite me. Obviously in the first throws of a relationship, as he stared at her and she giggled like a school girl. To be honest she probably was one, but you can’t always tell now days, so it’s best to err on the side of caution when addressing people /giving up your seat...Is she pregnant or is she chubby? Am I going to get a slap if I ask when the baby’s due? Everybody else in the carriage is visibly greying at the sight of these two lovebirds as they look longingly, wishing they still felt like that in their relationship, or had held onto the person who had made them feel like that. Was it to late to change? Would she still be interested if I picked up the phone and apologised? As my eyes met several staring back at me, a flicker of recognition, and then... gone. “London Blackfriars next stop, please mind the gap”.

The other day I was sitting on the train to Liverpool Street and saw a middle aged woman looking at another female with a frown on her face that would stop most children dead in their tracks, even the unruly ones you get now days. The woman in question was feeding her child rice crispy breakfast bar on a train at 8am. Now, I do not have children, but even I know that is not the most healthiest thing to give a child in the morning, but who am I to judge? I am no expert... but after a few moment I realised it wasn’t the rice crispy bar that was causing a frown, but the fact that the mother was young, with the fresh wash of youth still on her face, fully made-up, hair immaculate, nails manicured and tapping away on her blackberry, something which I realised that this woman with the knitted frown on her face did not appreciate in the slightest. It may not have been her youth, waif like figure or her apparent disregard to her child’s breakfast needs, but the fact that her personal grooming appeared to come above the need to ensure her child had eaten well in the morning. Which brings me to the question...once we are mother’s do our own needs stop? Should they stop? Was this mother wrong for feeding her child a rice-crispy bar, or had she been up all night with a child who had a fever who had refused to eat anything, and she was trying to bribe him to eat with something that resembled a treat before she went to drop him to a government funded nursery whilst she ran to college and stood on her feet all day at beauty college so she could get an education? Despite the fact I am childless the “look” penetrated my soul and my Dior mascara wand was quickly put back in my Gucci handbag.

Through daily interactions with others, walking past people at terminals, a polite but firm cough to ask them to move out of the way, a glance to say I want you, I stare which says I wish I had that, a nod to say thank you for letting me pass you on the stairs, a knowing look to say I understand you are late in this rat race we are all living in... London is like no other city, polite niceties and thank you’s are found in a nod, a look and a cough...which only a true Londoner will understand and others will always find baffling, because how can you understand a language that can not be taught, but is lived?