How Do I Love Thee London? Let Me Count The Ways...

I learned something horrifying today...


There, glaring at me from the pages of my Evening Standard was a small story on page 6 that made my blood run cold. The borough of Kensington council have given the go ahead for a large section of Portobello Road Market to be pulled down to make way for modern apartments.
STOP!!! WHAT??? EXQUEEEEEZZEE ME???
What is going on? What kind of brainless, cultureless, cretinous, money grabbing, souless, artless, loveless, barren, imbecilic, moronic nincompoop would look at such a proposal and not laugh at the ridiculousness of such an idea? What is happening to London? Our beautiful city needs no nip-tucks!


Call me biased, but London to me is the centre of the world. The epicentre of art and theatre and fashion and literature. All the best tales are set in London. After all, only London can boast that under its silent gaze, Peter Pan flew in through the Darling's Nursery Window, or Cruella De Vil stole 101 dalmatian puppies, or Ebenezer Scrooge trudged home through the snow to discover Marley's face had replaced the door-knocker, or Mrs Lovett baked wonderful pies using the finest cuts from Sweeney Todd's victims, or Oliver Twist was taken under the wing of Fagin and his band of pickpockets. It is the cosmopolitan metropolis to rival all others. She has been blown up and burned down. She has seen plague and pestilence and war and murders and riots and pollution... BUT... my god she's pretty.
Henry James got it right when he said: "It is difficult to speak adequately or justly of London. It is not a pleasant place; it is not agreeable, or cheerful, or easy, or exempt from reproach. It is only magnificent."


I may sound like one of the rambling types that stand at speakers' corner and rave about the fact that we are all descendants of a long line of extraterrestrial beings... but... how far is this going to go? With the sad loss of Spitalfields Market (which is more like an American shopping mall than the hub of the Victorian east-end cauldron) and other popular markets following very closely in its oh-so-shiny footsteps, are there going to be any places of true historical originality left? 


Forget the shiny, mirrored, inverted, abstract, post-modernist buildings that have started to dominate our beautiful city's ever changing skyline. Give me the bare victorian brickwork and the the winding, twisted alleyways of Whitechapel and Brick Lane. Give me the grime and the drains and wonky, grubby walls. Give me the cobbles and the yelling and the fish smelling corners of Borough Market. Give me the chipped paint of Wilton's Music Hall. Give me "Maria's Bubble and Squeak" and a cup of milky tea. Give me the filthy, polluted Thames.


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