Day 8

Villages and Cow Paths

The appeal of London is legion, varied, and personal. It is also, sometimes, self-contradictory: what draws one may also be what repels.

One aspect of the city that I have found fascinating as well as difficult is the apparently unplanned layout of roadways. A younger me might call it "random."

A few days ago, my wife and I went in search of St Martin's Theatre, hoping for a matinee of The Mouse Trap, an Agatha Christy mystery play that has been running continuously for 58 years. St. Martin's is in the heart of the theatre district, just a short walk from the National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, and Charing Cross -- landmarks I have used many times already to orient myself as I head out for other places.

We found St. Martin's without a lot of fuss -- but no matinee for The Mouse Trap. Just steps away, however, we discovered the Ambassadors Theatre with Stomp on the marquee and a matinee about to begin. As Stomp was also on our short list, we bought tickets and went inside. Our seats were perfect in every way in terms of seeing the performance, but were clearly built for people closer to my wife's height, 5'4", than to my own six foot one.

I don't know how genuinely tall people manage the short spaces between rows of seats in places like this; but once I had gotten myself wedged in and the seats next to us filled, I was locked in. I need movement to keep my joints from hurting, but there was none here. In a 100 minute performance of wordless drumming, dancing, and pantomimed vignettes I was not able to get into it with so much as a toe tap. The theatre was cramped and temporarily crippling, but the show itself was nothing short of masterful entertainment -- precise, inventive, funny, and astonishingly performed.

When we emerged from the theatre both energized and exhausted, we decided to wander around the neighborhood shops before heading home. Ambassadors Theatre is on one of seven street that converge at a roundabout, or circus, called Seven Dials. Cars zip through the intersection as though randomly syncronized. The shops, small and ecclectic, offer interesting displays.

We wandered about, ducking into a few book stores (because we are readers) and into a few toy stores (because we are grandparents). We found a store with inexpensive books, rare in central London, so we bought a few (because, in fact, you can never have enough).

Tired now both from theatre and from discovering this new, interesting neighborhood, we tried to find our way out -- but couldn't. We knew we were only a 3 or 4 minute walk from Charing Cross Road and another 3 or 4 minute walk to the bus stop we wanted, but it took us a good twenty minutes to find our way. We were thoroughly disoriented.

Initially the problem involved locating familiar street signs. That is a story in itself. Some streets are a hundred feet long. Or less. Many appear essentially unmarked. Many are bisected at odd angles by other tiny streets or alleys. I am good with maps, but the map I was carrying omitted many of the streets and alleys because there are simply too many for space. The detail is overwhelming.

Then once we managed to locate Charing Cross Road, I could not tell which direction I should head. I had gotten so thoroughly turned around, I could not make my way even though I had managed from that very spot many times. In such circumstances, I am generally able to use the sun to give me headings -- that is the country boy in me -- but here too I was lost. In late afternoon, with partial clouds, in a canyon of five or six story buildings, I could not tell with certainty where the sunlight was coming from.

Guidebooks explain the layout of London by giving capsule versions of London history, which by American standards is very long and very complicated. We don't commonly have the patience.

But I have another explanation, which if not entirely historical at least allows me to imagine how the city came by its present layout. I live in a village in western New York that owes its present shape to its geography, that is, to its many hills and to the river that runs through the valley. It also owes its shape to its main industries, namely, dairy farming, the canal and railroad that once ran through and beside the river, and education, the college and secondary school that have given the village purpose and focus for the last 125 years.

My village, Houghton, has a logical layout only in relation to its geography and its present industry. Multiply this village by one thousand, fill in the farmland and the hills between Houghton and Fillmore to the north and Belfast to the south with new villages, each with its own road-shaping industries. Then double, triple, quadruple the population of each village in the process. Build rows of houses where single houses stand and business along the central streets. Let the towns grow into one another.

Eventually, you will have a metropolitan area that resembles the labyrinth of London.
My ninety year old London neighbor explained the London tangle this way in response to my comments about London roads: "Oh, they're all paved over cow paths, you know."

I have never seen cows wandering through my home village, but I can imagine it easily enough. Our agriculatural past is still present at the edge of town. I have a harder time imagining London developing from the city planning of cows.

Still, my neighbor claims to have lived in the same flat for 69 years. That ought to be long enough to know a place. Long enough to have weighed the charms against the frustrations of London street. History may be more complicated than that but who am I to argue?