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I lost the moustache, but spent the day clean shaven, which is a fairly rare look for me too. It meant that I didn’t get bothered by fans and autograph hunters as I headed off into town for some meetings. They don’t bother me on my more beardy days either, but I assume it is then because they respect me and my work too much.
I had taken a chance and booked in two solid meetings at three and four and was hoping I’d have time for another appointment in between. It meant walking between Oxford Street, St Martin’s Lane and Piccadilly Circus. Could I do it?
As it turned out the first meeting was pretty quick and so I was able to hot foot it down the Charing Cross Road to Equity where I was going to have my photo taken for a campaign to encourage performers to join the Union. I used to come into central London a lot in the mid 90s as Stew and me and a tiny office here, but now daytime visits are much rarer and there have been some big changes wrought in this area. Not just because of the Crossrail causing loads of building to be knocked down (though that is a bit of a shocker), but also, Oxford Street, once a jewel of capitalism and commercialism has gone severely downmarket, especially at the Tottenham Court Road end. It’s mainly tourist tat and those shops where men pretend to be giving away perfume and big gifts but are essentially running some tat-based near con. To be fair those did start springing up in the mid-90s too (and I thought they had disappeared), but they were the exception not the rule then.
I passed by what used to be the Virgin Megastore, where I spent a lot of time and quite a lot of money on CDs and videos (and other obsolete technology) and on the Addams Family Pinball table in the basement. Look it was still there back in 2003 when I was unfriendly to a tourist (I thought about him again today and was sorry to have upset him). I think before then it had been a cinema that I had been sad to see go, but now I felt sad that the Virgin Megastore had been replaced with something else - I couldn’t even see through my tears.
Round the corner the changes are much bigger, with buildings destroyed for a new transport hub. Of course a city like London is forever regenerating and changing and the wounds will heal and be forgotten soon, though I know a lot of people are sad about the loss for now. It’s hard not to have an emotional attachment based on nostalgia and good times (even the mildly sad times of playing pinball and eschewing spectators). I’d have preferred them to knock down all the tatty shops to make their crossrail though. But maybe, when it’s here, those shops will return to something akin to what they used to be. What would a child born today think of a massive shop selling stuff that he or she will just download on to their devices (or probably in 20 years time directly into their brains)?
But I forgot all about this rubbish when I arrived at the photoshoot to see that Sylvester Mccoy was in just before me. I couldn’t remember if we had met before, or directly worked together (I nearly told him that we had both appeared in the great disappeared movie “Manilla Envelopes” together), but he certainly didn’t remember me if we had. He was very nice and Mccoyish and I was very glad to briefly share a room with him.
And London is more than any of its parts. I enjoyed my walk through the centre to see both change, destruction and continuation. And some change is good. The meeting I had in Piccadilly was at the cinema where my wife and I had had one of our early dates and seen the terrible film “Dan in Real Life” or rather not seen much of it as we were more interested in each other. That cinema had been pretty horrid and we’d been barked at by the usher for trying to go up to our screen too early. But now it’s a swish and cool looking complex, with a big cafe downstairs. It would be a place I’d consider hanging out now.
I loved whizzing round town in the sunshine, felt good that I had managed to pack all my meetings into two hours and also quite good that I had some meetings which is hopefully indicative of an upward turn in my fortunes.
Noticing the changes in London, I tried to ignore the changes in myself. Here as my 50th summer comes to an end with an unexpected September burst. I still feel like it’s my 22nd summer. I may be having a September burst myself.
