by Craig Taylor
In London there’s a lot of transport. There’s 273 Underground stations, 17,500 bus stops. The gap between the buses stopping at them will be at most ten minutes and often it will be only a few seconds. [The look of incredulity on my face passes without notice. He pours red wine and continues. We’ve walked from his office at UCL to a French restaurant just off Carnaby Street.] There’s a vast amount of transport moving. It’s very hard to see in any other city anything at that sort of level of transport. Paris has nothing like that.
In the programme in which I teach, the first day we say, what do you think is wrong with this city? Talk to some politicians, talk to some people, talk to the engineers and come back to us. Then we do a bit of teaching, and at the end of the fifth week, we close all the lectures off and say, okay, now you’re going to tell us what you think we should do with this city. Of course it’s going to be pretty naive, but it’s got them to realize that in the world there are messy problems with bits and pieces and all sorts of things that interact, and that’s what they have to grapple with.
At the moment we’re building some Tube trains in the laboratory so we can test how people with wheelchairs might be able to get on if we did something to the infrastructure. Last year we built some mock-ups of stations and bits of stations: we had a life-size train to test people going through doors. The environment is difficult for wheelchairs. There’s no question about that. Most wheelchairs are designed to be pushed around inside an institution. So if you started to think about a wheelchair that could go on a Tube train, what would you design?
If we could make London easier to walk in, it would be great. It would be really beneficial to think about how one does that. Because walking is the most natural way to move. If you think of transport on a personal scale you have the opportunity to understand what the environment looks like, what it feels like. Walking makes a city human, so cities ought to be for walking and yet we don’t really see walking as a means of getting around. The thing about pedestrians is that we tend to think of them as traffic. So we model them as rather like cars, but actually we want people to stop. That’s a good thing. People stop and they talk and they turn to go into streets: they’re not like cars. We don’t want cars to stop, but we do want people to stop. Finding some way to represent how we enjoy stopping is a really important issue.
Maybe we need to think a lot more about the quality of what we’re doing. To a certain extent, part of the quality is, do we ever stop? John Betjeman said, look up. I think one of the beauties of London is if you do that, on the whole, you will find something interesting to look at. If you look at the old maps of London from across the Thames, there are two famous views. One was in the sixteenth century and one was in the eighteenth century, and you see that Wren’s vision was that all the churches paid obeisance to St Paul’s on Ludgate Hill with its dome. That’s a phenomenal vision. If you think about it, this is a guy who could not get in an aeroplane and look at this place from up above. This is a guy whose idea of height was 1.3m above the ground, basically. Phenomenal. So all these churches pay obeisance to St Paul’s. They’re telling a story, and what a sense of space that delivers.
One of the great things about London is detail. If you go round the back of Baker Street station, the road by the Planetarium, there’s a block of flats from the 1930s or whatever. If you look at the top of that, there’s a whole set of train parts stuck in the building. Genuine train parts – the buffers and couplings and stuff like that. I think this is what John Betjeman’s about in many ways. Spend a few seconds to look up and say, those things are there, that’s very interesting. Why? What? How? All those sorts of questions. If you were to stand in the middle of Oxford Street and look very fervently at the top of the roof line, people would come past and they’d start trying to see what you’re looking at. It’s always a great game. If what they looked at was bits of trains or bits of something or whatever, maybe somewhere in their life something expands. Maybe we need to design a city around making sure that stopping is part of it.
Whenever I come back from a trip and we fly over the centre of London, this is what comes to mind: what a fantastically green place London is, what enormous history there is, what a huge variety as you fly over. You go over the barren stuff in the East End of London, over the Palaces of Westminster, over the parks and all that. You know, they have no idea of this, but the people in the aircraft that are flying down that flight path every ninety seconds, or whatever it is that they do, they could be getting a phenomenal education in the cultural set-up of this city. It’s the most fantastic way to understand it. And I almost think as I sit on this plane, I want to tell you about this. Forget all this crap about seatbelts, I’m going to tell you! I’m going to tell you about this! This is my city and I’m going to tell you why I love it so much and what it’s about. I wouldn’t be able to, but that sort of magic about it maybe you can only see from the sky. We tend to see people who are living and working here as they get stuck on the Tube, on the buses, on pavements that don’t have enough width, in traffic jams. They get stuck in that sort of detail and forget that actually all they’re doing is moving around inside some sort of mythical philosopher’s stone, which is this wonderful city. It’s a phenomenal place to be. I find lots of places exciting places to be, but somehow London delivers that piece of fifth dimension of which how we move around it is part. It’s not just a question of whether we’ve got red buses or green buses or whether they’ve got articulations or not – it’s not about the minutiae. It’s about a place where people can live, where people’s ambitions, people’s ideas, can thrive and we have a transport system which enables them, if they so choose, to make their ideas work. That’s why it’s been such a successful city for so many centuries.
SEEING THE SIGHTS
DAVID DOHERTY
On Buckingham Palace
He sits in his tidy ground-floor flat in Fulham drinking tea and watching the evening light fade. He doesn’t reach to turn on a lamp, so by the end of the conversation he is sitting in near darkness. There is a boxed set of Band of Brothers under the coffee table, and on the windowsill a photograph of Doherty astride a horse in full ceremonial garb.
I’ve been to New York, I’ve been to Washington, Texas, San Diego, LA, Beirut, New Delhi, Sydney, Perth and Adelaide. I’ve been to Ireland, France, Spain, Italy. There’s only one London. That’s it. We are what we are.
I’ve ridden around the streets of London, driven around the streets of London, walked around the streets of London. You can’t help but be a person of your time and you can’t help but be connected to your place. Wherever I go in the world, they immediately know where I come from. There’s no question. I’m a Londoner. Not a cockney, because that’s all a load of cobblers. The last cockney was born so long ago they couldn’t be around. The ol’ bells ain’t struck since the ol’ king died so I don’t think there’s any danger of too many cockneys about, but you’ll get plenty who tell you they are. The reality is you’re either from the east, west, south or north of London, and that’s it. But those differences can mean the world.
The beauty of London is that we’ve got such a rich heritage of people. My parents were from the south of Ireland before they came here. Friends of mine came from Paris during the war, or some were Jews from Russia who came before the war, and so on and so forth. You can’t help but notice how other people live. You can’t help but listen to what they say on the streets. You see how they adapt their lives to this place – east, west, north, down south, and you’ve got that river in there too, slicing through. That’s what makes London such a great place to live. The only thing that is truly Londonish about London is that it’s all bits and pieces of everybody else.
I’m from the west. I grew up in Fulham, in what my mum considered to be a posher part of Fulham, which was sort of West Kensington. I think I was there for seven months, eight months before we moved to Fulham Court, which is right in the centre of Fulham. From there we moved to Bishops Road in Fulham, which is
now £3 million houses but in them days were council houses. And then we all grew up and went different ways.
I never really left Fulham until I joined the Army at 17. I’d never been to Whitehall before. I didn’t have a clue what the Household Cavalry were or the Life Guards. All I knew was we’d go every year to the Royal Tournament and I’d see all these soldiers and that’s what gave me the idea to be a soldier.
The Life Guards are the most senior regiment in the British Army, not the oldest but the most senior. They escorted Charles II into London when he came back from being overseas in exile. Oliver Cromwell had died and a troop of cavalrymen or gentlemen cavaliers went down to meet him and that was really the beginning of the Life Guards. So they’ve had this superior sort of feeling.
I didn’t have a clue about the history. Where I signed on in Great Scotland Yard I walked out into Whitehall and there was a whole crowd a hundred yards down on the side. I thought, what are they doing? These blokes on horseback, I wonder what that’s all about? I never realized that six months later I’d be sat up there on a fucking horse. I didn’t know about Horse Guards Parade, I didn’t know it was the official entrance to Buckingham Palace and all state occasions, all state visits go through there and come back out. I didn’t know American girls used to come on spring vacation and dress up in boots and try to fuck the daylights out of the Guards. I didn’t know we could drink on guard. Queen Victoria came through there one day and the guard were drunk, so she said every afternoon at four o’clock the guard must be inspected by an officer. So at four o’clock an officer rides down the Mall from Knightsbridge Barracks on his own to do the four o’clock inspection, and after four o’clock they open the bar. How was I to know that?
The reason I joined the Guards was very simple. The commanding officer said to me, ‘What do you want to do?’ It was the first time anyone had ever asked me. I wanted to learn how to drive, which was a real big deal because no one in my family drove. No one had a fucking spare tire, never mind a car. And I wanted to go abroad. They said, ‘Right, look through this book’ and they gave me a brochure on all the different regiments in the Army. The one thing that stuck in my mind was this guy sitting on top of an armoured car looking through a pair of binoculars with a palm tree behind him. I knew palm trees meant desert or coast. Little did I know it was just a fucking drawing. The officer said to me, ‘You like that?’ I said, ‘Yeah, who’s that lot there?’ He said, ‘That’s the Life Guards.’
‘Where are they?’ I asked.
‘In Hong Kong.’
‘Right, can I …’
He said, ‘Yeah, if you join them you’ll get posted to Hong Kong.’
‘Will I learn to drive?’
‘You’ll learn to drive.’
I said, ‘Right, where do I sign?’ And that was it. I could have had an easy life, a million girlfriends, I could have learned to drink like all my mates did. I could have learned to smoke drugs, could have got nicked for breaking and entering, I could have been a bank robber or thief or murderer or fucking nutcase or whatever. But I didn’t. I joined the Army.
But then later they said, ‘Right, Doherty, we’ve reviewed your education qualifications and we’ve decided that we don’t want you to go to the armoured regiment, the armoured side of the Life Guards. You won’t be going to Hong Kong or Singapore or any of these other places. We’re actually going to post you to the Household Cavalry squad.’ I said, ‘Oh, that sounds interesting. Where’s that?’ I asked.
‘They’re in London.’
I said, ‘Ah.’
‘You’re going to become a member of the Life Guards Squadron up there and you’re going to do ceremonial duties for the next three years.’
That’s exactly what happened. After that wonderful dream of learning to drive and going abroad, I wound up sitting on a fucking horse in London.
Second night in, down at training, outside London near Guildford in a place called Pirbright, we were put in this big room, twenty-four men in a room, all getting to know each other. Wear this, wear that, stand up, sit down, shit. Yes, shit. Go shit now, have a shave, have a wash, no time for yourself. This nice man, a squadron corporal major, he came in and his name was Swift. Big tall man, had the forage cap, the britches, the boots, the riding crop. He called us all into the NCOs’ room in the middle of this spider of blocks down in Pirbright.
We were the newest there. He said sit down on the floor and he got out two packets of fags. He handed them around. He went round the room one by one asking the guys, ‘Where are you from, son?’ Son! He relaxed, he took his hat off, he undid his shirt a little, and he tried to get to know us – Baden-Powell, Boy Scouts, let’s sing the happy glee song, and all that shit. Anyway, coupla stories went by and he come to me and said, ‘Where are you from, boy?’
I said, ‘I’m from Fulham, sir.’
‘Oh, you’re a Londoner are you? You’re a know-all then.’
Straightaway I thought, fuck me! I said, ‘I don’t know about that, sir.’
He said, ‘That’s what I mean. You’re a fucking know-all. You think you know you ain’t.’
He tripped you up.
I was the only Londoner in the troop of twenty-four men. They all thought I knew everything but the reality was they knew far more than me. I lived in a space with a 2-foot-6-inch-wide bed, six foot long, with a locker, and in the next bed was a fellow from Newcastle, a Geordie, who used to wake up in the morning at reveille, and I’d look round and he’d go, ‘How you gannin’?’ And I used to think, what the fuck’s he talking about?
Once you’d passed out of the riding school you became what they called the Mounted Dutymen – one of the chaps, no longer one of the recruits who got the shit kicked out of them every night. It was like going back to the time of the Charge of the Light Brigade. Behind the facade of Wellington Barracks we went back two hundred years. Blokes walked around in riding boots with britches and spurs, caps and whips. Everyone wore a uniform in there. You saw a guy with civvies and he was an officer visiting the place or somebody in on leave, but during the day you never saw anybody in civvies. For me it was like being on a movie set. I thought I’d gone to a different world. All of a sudden from being a hunch-shouldered mod living in London, to this. You had a uniform for this, you had a uniform for that, you carried this, you saluted this way, you turned right that way. It was a completely different world.
At Pirbright you weren’t that close to officers, you didn’t get to see their uniforms and all the rest of it. Now all of a sudden you saw these San Browne belts all highly polished, one or two service ribbons, you saw the crowns and the epaulettes on their uniforms and the real gold braid on their peaked caps. Their beautiful ironed shirts and there’s us dirty poor bastards scrubbing to get an iron together. They had batmen to look after them, orderlies to serve them their food and grooms to groom their horses, which I became in the end. I myself became a groom. But it really was Victorian, Edwardian times.
I spent the three years doing ceremonial duties, out on watering order with the horses early in the morning, going through the old Covent Garden, the old fruit and veg market. We’d ride through there in the morning and the men would stick carrots in the horses’ mouths. They’d stop and talk and all that. I didn’t have a clue about it, I was a Fulham boy. All of a sudden up there at half past six in the morning sitting on a great big fucking eighteen-hand horse and leading another one. Blokes looking up at me and saying back to them, ‘All right, boys.’ These big tough bastards who have been out loading lorries since two or three in the morning. Rough buggers and they respected me. Whether they like it or not, a lot of Irish people in this country still got an inferiority complex because they were always getting the shit kicked out of them, whether it was verbally or physically. Fortunately that’s changed. Now Irish people are the flavour of the month ever since Riverdance. Prior to that it was ‘no blacks, no dogs, no Irish’ in London. My mom and dad – certainly my mom felt there was some animosity towards the fact she
was Irish. All of a sudden it was like we were rated, we were reckoned, and all of a sudden I’m riding a horse. I’m not riding a dog, not riding a pushbike. I’m riding a great big bastard that will kick the shit out of you and eat you for dinner.
Our base in those days was Wellington Barracks opposite Buckingham Palace. Knightsbridge Barracks was the original cavalry barracks. It had been flattened and rebuilt but wasn’t completed until 1970. I joined in 1967 so what they did was move our regiment – the Life Guards and the Blues and Royals, the other side of the Household Cavalry – to Wellington Barracks. They built a riding school on the actual barracks parade ground itself, just in front of the Guards Chapel and we lived in the barrack blocks above the beautiful Regency facade, columns and all the rest of it. Nice from the outside, but when I was there the place had been condemned for eighty years. You couldn’t light a fire because all the flues had collapsed inside and it would cost too much money to fix them. So we survived the winter wrapped in fucking blankets, drinking tea from the cookhouse, and sleeping with a blanket over our faces because the rats would come out and bite the shit out of us. This is in the centre of London across the road from Buckingham Palace – the lap of luxury in this country. Here is the Queen’s personal bodyguard, sovereign escort, in helmets and horses and swords and silver cuirasses and boots worth a fortune. When you got on top of a horse you were worth the National Debt. But at night you were sleeping in this fucking old iron bed with a dodgy old mattress and a blanket over your face so you wouldn’t get bitten by the rats.
