Eighteen Straight Whiskeys

I love London! To be constantly imbued with the sense of wonderment!


I have gone through the motions with our nation's capital since moving here three months ago. I find that it is both the most creative city in the English-speaking world and yet the one most likely to oppress any glimmer of such creativity. Its exorbitant expense often makes me think twice, being currently 'between jobs', at whether I should even leave the house some days for fear of bankruptcy.


However, sometimes on those warm London afternoons when that frigid, frozen, baron bunch of hopeless accountants and clap-trap politicians haven't managed to wade in and destroy our creative temperaments, we can see London for the bohemian metropolis that it is and has been for so many years - if only one knew where to look.


Saturday afternoon was one such time, when my boyfriend and I embarked on The Literary London Pub Crawl (refer to: https://www.facebook.com/LiteraryTour?fref=ts). Pubs are one of the things I often avoid in London because I am far too tight to enjoy them. However, I have found that subject-specific walking tours are a way to see the city that one wants to see. They have walking tours for just about any interest and this means that everyone can find their own London - the city that boasts their own personality.


The tour took us around Fitzrovia and Soho describing the regular haunts of Mr Orwell, of Dylan Thomas and even Sir Paul McCartney (a personal favourite). The two actors leading the tour, one Mr Charles Dickens and the other Mrs Virginia Woolf, take upon different characters as they sift through centuries of English literary giants. However, the highlight of the tour is definitely watching the reactions of the general public, who stand aghast, as the actors spontaneously burst into song or fall, as a drunk Brendan Behan, to the floor and then struggle to get back up. The beauty of it being, of course, that it feels like everyone is involved. Even the passers-by will have comments to make, although sometimes I'm sure the actors would prefer that they didn't.


The tour is a pub crawl because the public house is, historically, where people would gather to talk philosophy, or politics, or just plain shit; depending, of course, on the amount of alcohol consumed. It can, therefore, be an expensive day if you are partial to eighteen straight whiskeys, like Mr Dylan Thomas. However, it is affordable even for the other unemployed writers out there if, like me, you are captivated by the idea of digging up the past to mould the future (and you stick to tap-water).


And that is what life in any city is like: one must make of the city what one makes of life. My London is inherently different from anybody else's, just as my Liverpool or my Leeds are what I see them for. This truly is the most spectacular place with something for everyone; the trick is to find that something and milk it for all it's worth before the rent-man sells your creativity for magic beans that don't turn out to even be magic at all. What a waste!


Mike.xx