Richmond, Kew and the National Archives.
It’s Monday and I am alone in Richmond, South London in a pretty expensive ‘budget’ bed and breakfast. I am here for four nights, starting yesterday. So far it’s been - nice.Before leaving I heard on the news that Richmond has the highest rate of council tax in the UK. And I can see why. On arriving Sunday evening I set out in search of a kebab shop. A simple task in 21st century Britain, or so you would have thought.
No. I couldn’t find a single fast food outlet anywhere, not even ones that had closed early. They just simply didn’t exist. However, if at 8pm on a Sunday I had wanted to dine in a fish market/restaurant, or buy Belgian chocolates, or fine pastries, or relax in a specialty wine bar, then I would have been spoilt for choice! Richmond is a very classy place.
Yet it is not pretentious. This is the original article, when a town becomes pretentious it is because they pretend to be like Richmond, and fail. Richmond doesn’t try. It just is. The architecture here just oozes style (and money). Residential roads are lined with large, yet compact houses, and are complemented by a pleasantly surprising array of modest cars (Mercedes, BM’s and Audis etc). While the town centre is a series of small twisty pedestrianised roads with clean tarmac and tasteful storefronts. Internet cafés selling fair trade coffee exist in an unusually high number, as do lots of fashionably trendy people reading the FT. My long held conviction that intelligence and looking good were two mutually exclusive things may have to be revised. The girls here are pretty amazing too. I don’t know why, but there seems to be something in the male psyche that makes every town, except his own, appear to bristle with extremely tasteful young people. Yet on this occasion I don’t think it is just my psyche talking. Class, true class, brings a certain attractive elegance – and I dare any socialist to disprove it. This brief experience has made me add yet another bullet point to my ‘to do before I die list’. So now when I am a rich and successful postman I shall, among other things, be buying a property in Richmond.
Cont….
posted by Benjamin Nakizo @ 7:49 pm
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Getting away from the town itself, another thing that has impressed me is the sheer complexity of the software that must run Heathrow airport. As expensive as Richmond is, even it cannot escape nature’s flight paths. Did you realise just how congested the skies must be? The flight path above my room, and the one above the archive office, is constantly in use, planes are stacked up around (and let me just count…) 40 seconds after one another. Incredible. In the time it has taken me to write this several thousand people must have entered the country on this one route alone.
Then there are the National Archives themselves (formally the Public Records Office). They are actually well worth a visit. It is a huge building and is set in what can only be described as its own campus, with a big fountain outside. Built in two stages one appears to be from the early eighties whilst the other – at a guess, was the late nineties. The two styles work well together to make it a mighty impressive spectacle as you enter for the first time. Inside it looks like the pfi has been working it’s magic again (although I am not sure if it is a pfi, it certainly has that feel to it). Yet don’t get me wrong, this scandalous financial practice doesn’t half produce some good results sometimes. Glossy looking floors, friendly staff - the chap that talked me through the registration process was almost certainly Prince William - flat screen televisions and a Costa coffee nestles in amongst a large open plan seating area. Upstairs, in and amongst the archives themselves, I was instantly reminded of the University of Arkansas. That’s right. This place is so plush that perhaps only Wal-Mart could have funded it. Touch screen computers and card readers make ordering records a rather addictive process and a prompt delivery service allows you to get stuck into what were formally ‘Most Secret’ government files in no time at all. But what is even more amazing, and what surely must have cost millions, if not billions – is that they have helpful and friendly staff.
Now this might just be me, but I have NEVER met a nice librarian. From Ipswich County Library to the National Library of Scotland I have done nothing but run up against rude, arrogant and power mad individuals. Something about ‘being in charge of the books’ must go straight to people’s heads because they absolutely love it and more than that, they will never let you forget it: “You’ll have to fill in this form – and this one – and that one, and in the five minutes left before all thirty of us go on our tea break” or “What? This isn’t your book? You’re returning for a friend!? We can take your readers card away for this!” or “You found this where!? You want what!? Oh no sir. That’s not the way we do things here. Here we make things as difficult as possible – its library policy sir” etc.
I must have very, very few problems in my life since I can find the mental reserves to simply loath all librarians - and to devote time writing about it. Yet I fear I let this shape my preconceptions of the friendly and angelic race known only as archivists, these wonderful people are human beings of the most excellent kind. I love them all dearly.
But I am getting away from my point. Actually researching things, even the mundane things that one is required to research in a Masters thesis can actually be quite fun. Not in the “oh great, I am getting good stuff I can use in my project” but more in the “hehe, someone actually sat down and wrote this – when there was a war going on! Ha!” and “Oh wow, look here – this person read what this person said – and replied! It’s like a conversation – and here I am – seventy years on, eaves dropping on their private correspondence”. This too, can become quite addictive – and it can also take you off on very strange yet highly satisfying research tangents.
Whilst there I ran into Sarah (yet another Canadian) who is on my course, she is a terrifyingly brilliant individual. She works hard and plays hard, and yet still retains this likeable carefree attitude. Blah. I am insanely jealous.
Well, this has been going on for far longer than I ever intended. And if you have read all of one thousand and sixty eight words of this utter nonsense. Well, just think what else you could have been doing hey? Well, im off to watch ‘The Cruel Sea’, a WWII war film about the Atlantic – just to get me in the mood.
Come morning I am sure hundreds of thousands of people will have glided 500ft or so above my bed. The radio waves from next doors wireless network - which I can’t quite get on to - will have saturated my body with cancer inducing messages. And my television, which I can’t seem to get off ‘standby’, will have silently led to numerous nasty emissions that may, or may not, be indirectly responsible for the fatal flooding of northern England earlier today.
Yet down here in Richmond, the sun is shining and the people are still beautiful.
Funny new world.
Well, you've certainly added some incentive - as if any were needed - to visit London once again. Alas I have yet to even get close to Westminster and the parliament, but, if all goes well, I might be working there up until Christmas on that Internship I mentioned a week or so ago.
Watch this space.
We must visit. We must also go to the Edinburgh festival avec le comedy! We must do many things!
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