LIGHT-HEARTED OF LONDON

I’m in the London office today, for reasons that I’ll explain later.

I haven’t changed my mind about London. It’s cold and busy, and everything moves just that little bit too quickly. There are roadworks happening outside the building, and that’s resulted in the constant churning of a pneumatic drill down below, accompanied by the occasional builder’s yell. You only get that sound in cities where the noise reverberates from tall buildings, just as you only get that particular light on the shaded stone of narrow streets.

The train was packed. The tube, worse. I found myself shuffling off the station platform at Paddington, a nameless face, staring into the rucksack of the person in front. To be honest, we might as well have all been in shackles.

Anyway. It wasn’t all soulless. I helped a nice Indian lady find her way to Cannon Street.

“I’m on the same route,” I smiled, “You can stick with me.”

She was relieved. In fact she sat right next to me on the District Line and we chatted for a bit. I stayed with her at Edgware Road an extra four minutes, just so she got the right train, then both of us crammed into the tube - on its way, first to my stop, and then I hope, to hers. I gave her a nod as I left the carriage and made my way up to the frosty Capital.

The London Office. It is confusing. I forgot that you have to swipe your pass in the lift. The bearded gentleman let me go all the way up to level 4 and then back down to 0 without mentioning it.

Then, when I had finally got in and clambered under the desk to plug in my laptop, I realised I couldn’t connect to a wireless keyboard for some reason. There’s nobody else here yet. I just got on with it - though it is essentially dawning on me that I’ve come into London to work on my own this morning. There are at least two ironies lurking there.

Finally, I went to make a tea. No kettle. You know why? As I suspected, it’s all done by instant hot tap. Only, the two taps didn’t seem likely candidates. One’s over a sink like a normal kitchen tap, and the other, arching out of the marble counter has three settings: ambient, chilled, and sparkling.

None of those sound like they’d make a great cup of tea, do they? I mean, can you imagine?

In the end I asked someone, who showed me that the kitchen tap was the thing I was looking for. Only, you have to double pump one of its handles, then twist it to get actual boiling water out of it. I don’t think I’d have figured that out. I’d still be there, cup in hand, Twinings tea bag in the other. The guy who showed me seemed short on patience too. I wonder if living and working in London reduces your ability to be light-hearted?

Light-hearted. I don’t mean flippant, but I do think this is what I want to be here - and in both senses of ‘light’ too: not heavy and not dark. This city seems both of those things.

I’m here because later I’m going to be in the audience for one of the Brain of Britain semifinals - the show I’ll be on (but perhaps not as far as the semifinal) next year. I want to know exactly what I’m in for. And later, that means heading over to that there BBC to sit in the radio theatre.

I realised yesterday that quizzing is mostly about memory. That’s a thought I’m sure I’ll come back to, but when I dissociated the notion that it has anything to do with intellect or cleverness, I quite quickly realised that it was easier to hold it lightly. So, here I am then, trying to be light-hearted of London.

Though I must admit, that pneumatic drill is going to get old really quickly.