Life in London

There should be a law against going to work in twenty toes weather. As a matter of fact, there should be a law against going to work on hot, sunny days also, days best left for trips to Maracas, bake and shark lunches and posing on the beach in true star boy/rude gyul fashion.

The platform at the train station carries the pink remnants of somebody’s holiday excess, which I notice only after I’ve stepped in it, of course. The mp3 player in my ears (good Christmas gift eh?) blasts Maximus Dan but as much as I love the gladiator who’s hotter than a radiator, I’m not in the mood for the sanity abandoning frenzy of soca.

I take in some jazz instead, the ultra cool, long time, old time, big band favourites where the chanteuse steps out in a slinky little dress that catches and reflects the house lights as she croons lovingly and more than a tad seductively into the microphone at the audience that nods appreciatively.

It would be easy to feel down today, to let the combination of English weather and laziness draw me into savouring the sweet melancholy of reminiscing about home. Too easy in fact.

Yes, it’s true that there is no place like Trinidad and Tobago, a fact all off us robustly agree to when soca stars appeal to our patriotism at various fetes.

Other times we eagerly bemoan our lot two tiny islands in an abused and now neglected part of the world which collectively hold very little economic and no real political power.

We speak longingly about "Amerikar" and the manna that falls from its heavens in the form of after Thanksgiving sales and a six to one conversion rate. England has fallen far from its former glory in our eyes but is saved by the even more dizzying ten plus to one exchange. And family and friends who call ask constantly, "Are you okay? How things? You sure everything all right?" I heard all the dire warnings before leaving, mostly from people who had never ever visited England, let alone tried to build a new life here that English people don’t like black/Chinese/Indian/mixed people, that life was HARD, to make sure I bought a return ticket so I could come back home if things got too difficult because their best friend’s tantie mother granny uncle knew someone who had to spend three years working four jobs so that they could come back home, things were that bad.

Some of us who came up here have taken all this to heart. It’s a strangle, slightly perverse source of comfort, even while they party and shop and sightsee along with the rest of us.

Everything is compared with back home and, of course, falls short.

The weather isn’t good (well, we know that!), the ground provision too dry, the buses too slow, the saltfish too salty.

And to an extent it is true that many things can’t compare with things back home.

But the opposite is also true. Salaries are better, strangers more polite, air travel much cheaper. The work ethic is much better.

People make it to work despite a 24-hour transport strike. I remember watching the reports of the July bombings on TV back home when it had happened, unable to believe the throngs of people shown walking to work after public transport had ground to a standstill. The trini in me couldn’t believe the wasted opportunity to return home and jump back in bed, maybe buss a small lime in the afternoon.

Over and over again I’d called my friend who was the first of us to arrive here. When I’d finally go through she’d seemed surprised at my anxiety. She too had gone on to work. Now I think if it were to happen again I also would make my way to the office.

They say if you can make it in New York you can make it anywhere. But I think if you can make it in London, then you’ve really made it.

London is many things to many people. When VS Naipaul first started living here he had a breakdown. But the city offered him an acceptance of self that he never found back home. And still can’t.

So on this cold, dismal, rainy (did I, by any chance, mention cold?) morning when everybody in my carriage is calling the office to say they’ll be late because the train is delayed I look at the girl next to me with the safety pin in her bottom lip and the green ras and I remember why I came here in the first place.

Happy New Year everyone and may all your experiences be learning ones.

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