London is a city with two faces. On one side of it’s head is the face of your favourite celebrity – who greets you with a warm smile and invites you into their grand and sprawling abode. You cannot help but be overwhelmed by the grandeur and the palpable essence of the fame and fortune which lies all around you, and you are instantly seduced by the feeling that right around the next gold-paved corner could be all of your wildest dreams come true.
Brick Lane, London (On a Good Day)
On the other side of it’s head however, rages a primary school football match. A charging, heaving, relentless mob which infects and disfigures the beast in an ever changing manner. Within the mob, everybody has the same aspirations of glory, but the rules are strictly every man for himself.
Should you decide to partake in the game, it will become instantly clear that the majority of the players will stop at nothing to get just a touch of the ball, and so as a result, right there in the back of your mind, is the fearsome knowledge that at any given moment you may be barged mercilessly to the floor – and trampled to death.
As with a juvenile football match, the goal is always in sight; just as your wildest dreams are always around the next corner. Unfortunately though, the odds of it being you who navigates the ball between the sweatshirt goalposts are very much slim to none, and most of the time you may well feel like you are the bookies’ favourite for a face full of dirt. You are at the mercy of the players around you, and just a few hours in London will teach you that most of those players would gladly foul their own grandmother for the chance of scoring a goal.
The thing about London though, is that it is not a question of loving it or hating it, regardless of which side of it’s head you are looking at. Instead it is entirely possible to simultaneously love and hate the city at the exact same moment in time.
On a bad day London will chew you up and spit you out, yet on a good day, the thrill of the game combined with the the constant proximity to prosperity is what makes this thriving urban playground such an exhilarating city to discover. Whatever the outcome, the two-faced fiend lumbers triumphantly on.
A sophisticated, snarling monster with Buckingham Palace crowning it’s head, this city is not merely England’s capital city – but also one hell of an exciting place to visit.
