May. 27th, 2011

davywavy: (Default)
I read an interesting business statistic the other day. I'm not sure it's true but if it is it doesn't overly surprise me, and it's this: In 2010, more money was spent in London than in New York and Hong Kong put together.

The thing about living in quaint London village is that after a while you stop noticing what a staggeringly alien environment it is and start thinking that vibrant diversity is normal, which it isn't. As Waldo 'DR' Dobbs once decribed Hollywood, London "is a jungle where the little fish get eaten and only the vicious, evil and brutal sharks survive. So, speaking personally, I had a fantastic time." When I'm out of the city, it requires an shift in expecations not to assume anyone who talks to me either wants my money or has just excaped from Broadmoor, because that's what London does to you; it squeezes the common humanity from your soul with it's unremitting impersonality.

So, speaking personally, I'm having a fantastic time.

***

Sister and I were sitting in a cafe grabbing a quick bite when it became clear that we'd both picked up on the same thing: the flat, hard accents of South Yorkshire drifting over from a nearby table. Thurnscoe, I thought to myself. Maybe Wombwell or Rawmarsh. When you live away from where you grew up I think your brain attunes itself to reminders of home, like a SETI dish straining for any signs of distant broadcasts and filtering out the other background noise in the process. In this case we didn't have to strain too hard as whoever it was was talking in that clear, loud voice which is used by people reading something out which is nominally for their own benefit but in reality they'd quite like everyone else to hear as well.
"Thank yew", read the voice, "For your application to Britain's next top model, and we are pleased to invite you to...". She went on for a while after that, but it was clear that she was as pleased as punch to have been invited to London by a telly company and wanted everyone to know about it.

Looking surreptitiously around, we saw at a nearby table a group of three. Two of them I'd guess were sisters and the third the teenage daughter of one of the others. Obviously the daughter was the one who had been invited as she was a very pretty girl, and the mother and sister had come along for the big day. The only problem I saw was that it was clear none of them really had any idea of what they were getting into.

Britain's next top model, I stone-cold guarantee you, is not a fairly pretty girl from Thurnscoe. She's a staggeringly beautiful and willowy half cambodian - half somali girl who will be spotted on Camden Lock, and all the girl from Yorkshire was there for was to make up the numbers.

I'm not saying she was unattractive; far from it. She was, however, dolled up to her best in full South Yorkshire finery - fake tan, half inch thick makeup, bleached and straightened hair, and a bit of bling to top it off. When you're the prettiest girl at Rawmarsh Comp it's an ensemble which really works. When you're lined up with a bunch of hopefuls being deconstructed by North London TV people*, you're two minutes of camera time, a tearful backstage interview and an advert break. For this group down to London from Yorkshire it was plainly a huge, huge event in their lives - you could tell from the way they were talking about it. But what they really didn't twig was that for the people they'd be dealing with, it was Tuesday.

I wanted to go over and try to say all this, but of course I didn't, because they'd just think I was a smug big-city type who was patronising them. And they'd've been right. So I sat and drank my coffee and rammed a florentine into my mouth and just thought that what they should really do was have a nice day out; maybe go on the London Eye and go to see Legally Blonde the musical, something like that. That way they'd have a nice story and some decent memories of their trip, as opposed to an afternoon of being bullied round a TV Studio north of Kings Cross, being opening patronised and dismissed and (hopefully, dahling) goaded into tears for a few extra ratings points before being shoved out of the side door as the next hopeful was trundled up on stage.

The scale and impersonality of London is, I think, incomprehensible to anyone who hasn't lived here a good long while. It took me years to get my head around it and it still catched me on the hop sometimes. As it was this family plainly thought it was like a big version of Doncaster and the same rules applied. It was all kind of sad, really.


*I used to go out with someone who is now vice-president of a major international television network**, so I've some peripheral experience of the workings of pop-TV.

**Of course, she doesn't talk to me these days and won't be my friend on facebook. I'm too low-rent.

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