I moved to London in 1984. Despite being almost 40 years after VE Day, the place remained squashed in the deflated brownout of that make-do-and-mend era. To an American whose imperfect grasp on the national psyche was based on repeated spins of Jethro Tull’s cynical masterwork, Aqualung, as well as the sadistic interpersonal relationships at the heart of great British films like The Servant and The Red Shoes, I was excited by the seedy ennui of this world capital. Even its dangers were enervated: the bowler-hatted curb crawlers in Grosvenor Square; the cheap thrill of falling off the back of an open Routemaster
As I toiled through the years doing hard time as a Londoner, the dangers began to sharpen their focus. A small IRA bomb blew up a phone box outside Paddington Green Police Station across the street from where I lived. A huge IRA bomb turned Bishopsgate into a snarled wreckage of steel and uttering office papers. A neo-Nazi nail bomber targeted Brixton, Brick Lane and Soho. Islamist fanatics destroyed peoples’ lives on 7/7; the Westminster Bridge and London Bridge attacks. It’s the kind of violence that instils the plucky stoicism I wildly misinterpreted as wan giving up when I first moved to that bedsit off Baker Street.
Because living on perpetual edge is bad for one’s mood and digestion, Londoners have mastered the skill of fuzzying out actual horrors by dolly zooming in on quotidian niggles. No more squash and sage slice at Gail’s? Unacceptable. Lunchtime downpour sans umbrella because the weather app clearly showed a smiley sun? Fewmin. Oxford Circus southside Tube entrances closed again at rush hour? Oh my gay god. But these minor irritants serve to supply the white noise which mercifully drowns out threats of a more serious nature.
My imperfect grasp on the British psyche was based on repeated spins of Jethro Tull’s cynical masterwork, ‘Aqualung’
Setting the tone for the city’s constant, low-grade anxiety are the beloved subterranean soundtracks: ‘Mind the gap’ and ‘If you see something that doesn’t look right’. This is social conditioning at its best — stoking paranoia, hinting at ever-present peril, and keeping our hindquarters subtly tensed for quick response. In fact, The Economist’s most recent Safe Cities Index listed London as 15th safest in the world. Okay, so we’re not exactly flouncing around with our phones poking out of our back pockets like those smug show-offs in Copenhagen (No1), but we’re also not comparison shopping for which revolutionary army faction to join in Yangon (No60).
All things considered, No15 is pretty good, but try telling my friend Ollie. He was working as a pointy-hatted, curly-toed elf at Hamleys one Christmas when amid a swarm of children, a dastardly cutpurse relieved him of his phone. This shit doesn’t happen in Narnia, but I suppose it’s the tax you pay for living in such a vibrant city. A tax I’m unwilling to pay is the cost borne by Americans stuck in America: gun violence. Already this year there have been more than 200 mass shootings across the US. These grim statistics account for increasing numbers of Americans moving to London.
Scott Galloway, potty-mouthed marketing professor and podcast dilf, described his recent relocation on his pod with Kara Swisher, Pivot: ‘I had the strangest feeling on the street here in London… I couldn’t put my finger on it. Then I realised — I felt safe.’ A friend’s son and his wife made the decision to switch shores as soon as their toddler was enrolled in active shooter drills at his Brooklyn nursery. And just the other day I caught up with my friend Mary Anne, visiting from Virginia with her three gorgeously glossy-toothed, flossy-tressed granddaughters. The girls were the same age I was when I first moved to London, and I could see a very different city reflected in their shining eyes. ‘It feels so safe here!’ one of them exclaimed. ‘Is it?’
