Hydeing in the park

Every landscape has its emotional analogue.  The sunlit Tuscan valleys suggest a life-affirming indomitability of spirit; the velvety fells of Cumbria are almost religious in their eternal, ascetic beauty; and the impossible world of Kashmir can only be called ecstasy.  As such, the devastation of the great winds has at least allowed those who have been similarly rent and uprooted to find their external equivalent.

Perhaps this is partly why Hyde Park, for all its tragic scenes, proved so popular on a cold Sunday afternoon.  To be sure, there were the usual dog walkers and amorous couples; but as the twilight descended and the mists began to rise, their presence became more and more ghostly for the other, solitary, more serious walkers.  As people stood on their own by the Serpentine, and the babble of foreign voices rose and fell, confused in the distance, it seemed like a vision of hell: lost souls wandering aimlessly, hoping they had found Lethe, the river of oblivion.

The size of Hyde Park allows you to feel away from the world, and alone with yourself.  Traffic - quiet on a Sunday anyway - is reduced to a vague rumble. The high-rise buildings are mostly dark, or twinkle like lights on spectral Christmas trees.  The great globe lamps strung out along the lake glow dully in the obscured air; everything has a very Victorian feel about it, enhanced by the brooding presence of the Royal Albert Hall and the crazy gothic spaceship of the spotlit Albert Memorial.

The fallen trees lie neatly trimmed and ready for cutting up; their branches are piled impotently alongside them like limbs lopped from a cadaver.  It is more than just the sense of desecration which attends this sight: what could be more disturbing than to see woods meant for pleasure felled and trussed up?  It is as if the sanctity of the ancient trees has been violated, and the outraged wood spirits are abroad, chilling the air as they move about sniffing for vengeance.  Certainly, as evening tightens it grip, the whole mood of the park gradually changes.

All the wildfowl have grown strangely still, even the raucous honking geese.  They sit on the water at the edge of the promenade, watching the last few lonely walkers.  They maintain a respectful silence in the face of this other, deeply-felt silence.  Details of the landscape are lost in an inky blackness which pours over everything.  Only a few of the tallest trees that survived point their spiky fingers heavenward, in a last supplication.  Sunday is supposed to begin the week, but its evenings are always the saddest; and it is this final moment before the gates are locked which the solitary visitors have come for, the ultimate correlate of themselves.

But elsewhere in the park, something has been fighting against the darkness.  In one of the closed-off areas used by the park authorities, great sections of the trees, with their attendant branches, have been formed into a huge pyre.  It burns, as it must have burnt for days, and will do for many more.  The heat it gives off is of a curiously wet and living kind; for a few metres it seems to fight back the cold and the dark.  Even fallen trees have their uses. 

(29.11.87)

Index

A week in Gourmandy

One of the pleasures of travel is the sampling of local cuisine.  Even the simplest of fare is imbued with subtle local characteristics which raise it far above its nominal station.  So the mind retains forever the salty sensation of fresh oysters in Bayeux, the baked barracuda in the Gambia, the freshly-slaughtered lobster in Loggos, the tuna fish bap in the canteen of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.  In their savours and smells they become neat parcels of memory: just add water and bring to the boil and your various vacations rise up before you.

But it is by no means necessary to travel to distant climes to sample these culinary delights.  An interesting indication of the level of yuppification of London is the number of restaurants which have sprung up in recent years.  In this, of course, London is merely aping New York, a city where rich hedonistic professionals seem to live to eat rather than eat to live. When I first moved to Abbeville Road, there were two restaurants.  Today there are five, with a sixth opening in two days.

Normally you restrain yourself.  However much eating may degenerate into excess, it is important to ration the experience itself.  In the last week I have broken this cardinal rule, though not always through my own greed.

Take last Monday and Tuesday, for example.  At lunchtime on both days, I had business lunches; in the evening, social engagements.  On Monday I was regaled with stockbroker’s fare.  To be precise, I was entertained by a pair of analysts in their modest but acceptable directors’ dining room.  After aperitifs, we went straight into the Beef Olive, followed simply by cheese and mints.  In contrast, Monday evening was a get-together chez Ahmed’s, with a fine hotchpotch of some ten or twelve dishes, not forgetting nans, raitas, parathas and dals.

Tuesday lunchtime was more directors’ dining rooms, this time on home ground.  We began with smoked salmon, proceeded to chicken in a rich sauce, and finished with lethal profiteroles.  Tuesday evening was American, with a fine clam chowder, then a pork kebab, rounded off with – but already the gourmand’s curse has struck: I cannot for the life of me remember what I did round it off with.

Friday lunchtime is easier to recall, because quite idiosyncratic – The Bombay Brasserie, reputed to be the best Indian in the land.  And the buffet-style food, placed by ourselves on quite the largest plates I have ever eaten off, was equally memorable, if not nameable.

And from there we begin the long haul of the Bank Holiday weekend.  That Friday it was the Metro, the first but not the last of the Clapham wine bars.  Sunday was Just Williams for the evening – just another wine bar.  Monday saw us at the fine new Pizza Express Clapham Junction for lunch, and in an atmospheric hamburger emporium opposite the ABC in Fulham Road in the evening.  But now the gourmand’s curse has done its worst: in the maelstrom of overeating out, not only can I not remember the details of the food, but even the name of the venue has gone.  Voyages in the land of Gourmandy, if too frequent, lead to the River Lethe.

(6.5.86)

Index