LONDON—The London 4 bus starts from the north side of Blackfriars Station; a busy interchange near the western border of the City of London and an opulent end of Westminster. At the moment, I am the only passenger on the bus and am further of the mind that I might be for some time, not in the least on account of the difficulty I had in boarding, or rather, in determining where to board, that is, where the first stop of the route actually is, especially as it is in relation to the final stop of the parallel route that sits on the other side of the street, and also functions as a rest stop, so that the bus will invariably be sitting there as you wait where you think the bus should soon be coming. But here is where it gets messy. You believe you are in the right place, but you do so just long enough to think you might be in the wrong place, and because of this, you decide to slightly wander into the street to see that the destination board of the bus has already been updated to reflect where you are going, which is enough of an indication to perhaps warrant thinking that the driver maybe wants you to come over there—he doesn’t—but just as you do, the bus pulls out into the street you are now surreptitiously crossing and you jump back out of the way, scampering back to your original post, dreading the awkwardness of boarding that very same bus which has zoomed past you and is now making a turn around a distant corner to come pick you up at the place the bus was on its way to, and where you should have been, the entire time. The upshot is that others who were planning to get on this particular bus, who danced a similar dance, are now waiting for the next one, unable to muster the strength to face the bus driver, and I have been left alone.
And may be for some time, for further reasons for why this bus is quieter than usual are abound. For starters, our initial set of turns have taken us not far from where we have set off from. If you are meaning to get on the bus from anywhere in between the departure point and where we have come to now, it makes sense, especially in light of the whole rest stop confusion, to board the bus from where we are now. Second, the white-collar crowd around St. Paul’s Station and Bank are probably not in a position at 2pm on a Tuesday to leave the office to go anywhere with any leisure. Third, on that subject of leisure, well, the entire route is a bit of an inconvenience. Eventually, we will make our way north to Archway Station, semi-deep into North London, but this eventuality is shortened by almost any other mode of transit. For, it is a journey a car can make it in 17 minutes with moderate traffic, and one the tube can accomplish in less than half an hour. So, the prospect of an hour or so on the 4 bus doesn’t necessarily attract much fanfare. So, yes, at this moment, I am alone on the 4 bus. (Incidentally, as I’m now sending this out on June 29, the route has made its way onto TfL proposed list of cuts).
It is sort of a dreary day in London, a late March afternoon wherein the wind forces a constant exchange of sun and drizzle and the sun is losing. It is the sort of day where London can become quieter than you could ever think it could be. An elderly man with crutches decides to cross the street in front of the bus just as it approaches — I never understand this, I really don’t—and as he limps slowly across the windshield we lurch backward to yield to him. The one way road lies empty to our rear. As we wait for the path to clear like an elephant waiting for a slug to pass, I hear a woman that has just boarded confess to the bus driver that she is ‘bad at public transport.’ The flirtatious tone she has assumed has allowed her to receive more specific instructions than most would ever be privy to; the driver, after a long explanation I can’t really make out, plans to take her to the connection of the next bus that will take her nearer to where she means to go.
The woman continues, “Backstory is…”, I have never heard the lines backstory is out of a passenger’s mouth in conversation with a driver. The 4 bus has transformed into a pub and I half expect the bus driver to pull so he can get a drink and continue his conversation with more convenience. They battle on, except foolishly the woman now speaks of of another bus driver, who apparently ‘got her there is one piece’ to begin with. That seems to have caused more than some friction with this bus driver, and on account of the betrayal the driver now becomes less liberal in his responses, and then ceases to offer them altogether. I think fondly of the better times of when it was just us three, me as the fifth wheel on a four wheel bus.
We pass a portion of the London Wall, and head up Aldersgate Street, curving passed one end of the sprawling Barbican Estate complex. The Barbican. Speaking about the Barbican in London is like walking over a minefield. People will defend the Barbican to death. You are free to make your own judgment. My own view? It’s ugly. Which is not to say that some of it isn’t great—as a social projects it is revolutionary; the issue is its greatness is in concept and not in appearance. So, as a project to say, we should have living space and art, and fountains, and a few trees, and fund education, and the Arts, that there can be some historical restoration of say, a Roman Wall: great. As a project to say the government ought to invest in infrastructure, in building public space that invests in the human flourishing: great. When people criticize the Barbican, those defend it often hear an argument against public housing, public spending, etc. No, the plain, three-pronged (there are three high-rise tower blocks) issue is first that it is ugly, second that it is deteriorating rapidly, and third that on account of the first, we can’t address the second. When you build something out of concrete, and the concrete starts to break down, you can’t restore the concrete with a fresh coat of paint.
Admittedly, the project was quite impressive. The 16 hectare site in the City of London was destroyed during the Blitz and was subsequently left empty for 20 years before they started construction on the Barbican in 1963. Now, that’s wonderful and all, but couldn’t they have made it a bit nicer? A couple more trees? A bit less concrete? Better public access? A regular plan for a wash? I hear the defenders screeching at me again, “Backstory is…backstory is…” If you need a backstory for a building it probably doesn’t help excuse its present appearance. Again, people will defend the Barbican with their life. Good for them, really, if only they didn’t exhibit the same attitude and provide the same defensive warning to the people who were there to clean the windows.
A brilliant sounding novel High-Rise is a 1975 novel by British writer J. G. Ballard may have been inspired by the Barbican, and describes the ‘disintegration of a luxury high-rise building as its affluent residents gradually descend into violent chaos.’ Now, the famous, affluent people have moved out and left the chaos behind them.
By the way, some have complained that I am too critical. As Julian Barnes has said, “I do not criticize, merely observe.” And I am of the mind that if you take what I say as critique, then it is a critique you already had.
We proceed up Goswell, one of the London’s great shortcuts by virtue of its curved slant through Clerkenwell and crucial avoidance of the Old Street roundabout (which is currently contracted to the construction firm that promised to make the biggest mess of it) and in no time we are at Angel, who many wouldn’t regard as being so near to the City as this route has proved it to be.
There really isn’t much going on. With every bus trip, I expect to have to dig deeper to find something worth saying, to find interesting observations to share, but I also realize that under dirt there is likely to be more dirt. So it goes. Sometimes you see colours and sometimes you see a painting. Today, I see colours, but really they mostly grey. Not everything can be extraordinary. Sometimes the ordinary accumulates and is given another name. Most bus routes, and trips, are like this, really. Expressing it as such is more accurate than doing the route 100 times until something interesting happens. I’m not here to invent anything, only pass on what I see. I suppose something interesting is always happening, it is just a question of whether I can pick it out. Most of the time I won’t, and I’ll be forced to comment on grocery stores instead. Though I might get better, that the mundane and ordinary is the beginning of complex patterns that never seem compelling until they suddenly do, and it was because of the mundanity.
Well, back to the grocery stores. An Amazon Fresh has infiltrated an old sort of warehouse off of Upper Street and covered as much traditional brick as possible in its plastic logo. It would make for a good cover to a novel. Upper Street splits at Islington Green where Essex Road juts off to the northeast. We follow Upper Street as it continues north. This portion of Upper Street is one of the nicest high streets in London. Smart storefronts, a mix of old and older buildings, parks, churches, and few, if any, fast food restaurants. Compton Terrance is an example of the iconic British backset townhomes, and the grand Union Chapel, now in the sun which has allowed the blossoming trees in front of it to be seen, stands stately in the middle of it.
A man sitting next to me and looks through bills, and begins to swear in a language I can’t recognize. A good percentage of the buses passengers alight at Highbury Corner, presumably for Highbury & Islington Station. Any London intersection named a corner is usually a disaster of some kind, and other than the fast-paced traffic, the tragedy here seems to the development underway on the eastern side of an intersection, where the equality of the council homes they are building and refurbishing, the utter fairness of them, is somehow allowed to overshadow their ugliness. How absolutely equal, fair, just must something be to overshadow its claim to be beautiful? Why is the beautiful always forgotten? We haven’t learned from the Barbican, and will build more Barbicans until beauty is important again.
The bus takes a sharp right turn east, then juts north onto Highbury Grove, whereupon sun drenched brick buildings in front of a backdrop of dark gray, menacing sky, is a very London-like image. The man is still swearing about his bills, on the subject of London-like images, or sounds, as it were. We wind through a gem of a high street along Highbury Park that seems out of the 1930s. It is amazing the quality to which can be achieved by simply having independent shops meant to sustain the local population, not profit from them in order to buy up all the competitors, then being in a position to have the local population serve them
The sun goes into hiding again, and the aesthetic mood shifts as we proceed through Blackstock Road. The buildings now are tired and worn though shops are still things like ‘Barberesso—coffee and haircuts.’ Much of North London shares this inconsistency, travelling five minutes sometimes looks like you have gone 30 miles from the leafy enclave you just found yourself in into an industrial warehouse district. There is not simply a nice part and a not so nice part, they intersect and intertwine everywhere.
Teenage girls are speaking three at once “In three months she hasn’t spoken to me so I guess we aren’t friends anymore.” She ought to talk with the bus driver, or at least the woman that was talking to him. We pull passed Finsbury Park Station out of nowhere, and I am certainly feeling fortunate to be travelling in this direction — the other side of the street is packed with cars, buses, and ambulances barely moving. We proceed through a worn down stretch of streets, not the least assisted, except through its weariness by complexes such as the Sobell Leisure Centre — by the way the bus driver has honked at the same car 7 times — and a massive council estate across the road from it, though fortunes improve, it could just be the bright sun, as we approach Holloway Road, and turn onto the five lane throughway.
An Odeon theatre at Tufnell Park Road features nicely reworked bricks, making quite the nice anchor for the street, and the crowd of 8 teenagers who always seem to enter and exist buses at the same time now leave. And it’s another massive stretch of council housing, which now turns into Victorian townhomes at Carleton Road, and the devastating mirror of what was versus what is shows itself again. The bus shakes its way down the poorly paved street, taking some air multiple times along it, and I’m disappointed slightly that the station announced as Tufnell Park is not Archway.
We continue the fight very much uphill on Dartmouth Park Hill—named as if its distinct geography qualities are not obvious enough— and I’m moving violently left and right now, somehow, even though the bus is going straight. Church spires and cranes and cell towers in equal measure can be seen in the hills in the distance. We pass Whittington Hospital which looks like about fifty buildings glued together, and sit just above Archway Station, our final destination. I am fast to get off the bus despite my sea-legs, a grateful a hospital is nearby should I ever take this bus again with a bus driver was feeling less conversational and more adventurous than he was today.
