Strade

That Saturday morning I left Kendall’s flat early enough to give myself the time to have a huge breakfast and a slow stroll in Portobello Road to calm my hangover before work. At 8 AM everything was already set for the market, it smelt of bacon all along the road and people were joyful and full of energy, perhaps thanks to the very sunny morning. The café I went into was a pretty place with orange walls and a big blackboard with messages from members of staff saying good bye to the customers. Evidently, the cafe was just about to close down, (not to be replaced by a brunch of another big chain, I hoped). The guy at the counter was clearly Italian, I could tell because of the accent, and because of the perfect, bubbleless cappuccino. The best thing about Portobello Road is that any shop you enter has got its own personality...the orangeness of the walls enchanted my confused mind. The 50’s looking seats all had a space underneath them to store books, handily available for the customers’ use. It was busy, for a Saturday morning, but Portobello Road always is, as local residents come out early to be able to shop in the market avoiding the Saturday tourist crowd. A shame, I thought, it would have been nice to see that road empty, and feel it was mine for at least an hour.

I got to thinking how in Sardinia getting back from a club was always the only way to see the “city”, Cagliari, just as it is, with no people around and no cars and transport. Driving around Cagliari in the early morning, when the sun is not totally out yet, gives you the feeling of being a ghost town. The absence of people makes you see the town centre as a whole, intact object, as if it was sculpted from the same rock. And on the other side there is the port, and the reflection of the first shy ray of sun on the sea. Sometimes we used to go to a club called Paradise, in a little island on the South-East side of the coast, Sant’ Antioco. The highlight of the after party was to always to have breakfast in front of the sea, watching the sunrise while stuffing our drunk faces with a bombolone alla crema or any other delicious local pastry.

There I was instead, with my BLT sandwich, failing to make the pretty Portobello mine. The city is so big and active that it would be very difficult to catch it in a moment of silence and peace. Also, it is rare to be able to see it from the inside of a car, like it would be natural to in Sardinia, where transport is not efficient enough to give people the choice not to drive.

In fact, unless you take a taxi, the average Londoner who moves across the city usually experiences two types of dimension.

You could be moving very fast, underground. This is very typical of cities, especially the large ones. I believe it’s here that you learn that a city’s inhabitants do not have time to waste. Underground everyone is in a hurry, even those with nothing to hurry for. Walking in the tunnel you become the main character of an imaginary videogame, where anyone in your way is the enemy to be finished off. Try to walk opposite to the crowd’s direction underground and you’ll see how scary the zombies with no eye can be. When I see a multitude of people running fast towards the escalators to go underground, especially in very busy stations, such as Victoria and King’s Cross, I understand why the graffiti artist Banksy chooses a rat for many of his works. He says in his book “if you are dirty, insignificant and unloved then rats are the ultimate role model.” I believe that we are just like rats, in our race to get through the first train into the dirty tunnel.

But the very peculiar side of travelling underground is that you are moving across the city without seeing it with your eyes. Many have the habit of looking in front of them, to the colourful straight line representing the route of the tube they are on, and follow their path, maybe counting down stop by stop. I wonder if they imagine something at each stop, or if they stare at that line just to pretend they are not watching me...just in order not to look at me in the eyes.

 

The other, rather opposite dimension of the London traveller is the double decker bus. Here is where your iPod actually becomes a real soundtrack to the city. You can choose anything that suits your day or your imagination (I normally listen to this Subsonica’s tune: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lc16RoozYys&feature=fvw) and you can let your curious eyes explore around you. On the upper deck of a bus you see much more of anything you can in a car. You face the buildings, you see inside the houses. You can see people stealing and running away, hugging each other after mass outside the churches, singing in a choir on the second floor, dancing cheek to cheek on the pavement. You almost feel able to touch them with your fingers and for a second you think that, whilst on a significantly bigger scale, being God must be a little bit like that.