Inma Zanoguera

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When someone says “London is hectic, mate!” believe they’re telling the truth

Yesterday marked my one month anniversary since I first moved to London. With no permission but my own, I now proclaim myself capacitated to write a little essay on what it means to work and live in London, based upon my observations and meditations as a street fundraiser.

The first thing that was apparent to me as an outsider was that Londoners take their work life very seriously. Speaking generally, the struggle for status and rank dominates both the work environment and the personal sphere. Such an environment has polarizing results: on the bright side, even an uninterested bystander becomes aware of oddities such as finding three Maseratis parked on the same street in certain neighborhoods such as Mayfair or South Kensington, working as evidence that there is compensation for the work being done. The downside of such competitive culture has to do with what one would expect out of the country that saw the birth of the Industrial Revolution: little time for leisure and not-so-little levels of stress.

I am especially concerned about the frenzy taking place on any given work day inside of the major tube stations (King’s Cross and Bank, for example) at alarmingly early times — say 7:30am. It is at those times that one had better obey the signs that remind all underground users to “keep left,” unless one wants to put themselves under risk of being run over by a Londoner “trying to get to work!!” or worse, one may be faced with three or five angry-Londoner stares, a gaze that encapsulates such level of disapproval that it could dissolve the confidence of a thousand monarchs. The tube station will, during the time period preceding clock-in time, look nothing like a tube station and every bit like a four-lane highway during rush hour — constant waves of people coming and going and speed walking in both directions, relentlessly moving, hyperventilating, racing one another as a way to say “hey, whatever you are up to isn’t as urgent as what I’m up to”, with the determination and sense of urgency of a police officer on duty. As a good southern European, pre-London me wouldn’t consider walking fast to anywhere unless I was walking away from a fire (and even then, I’d be temped to use the elevator) — those days are long gone. Solomon Asch called it “the psychology of conformity”: it is human nature to slip into conformity and blend in with the crowd. That explains why anyone who uses the underground on a daily basis will soon enough become part of the tribe by unconsciously adopting the “unspoken rules of the Underworld” (that’s the name I gave it) — namely, move fast, frown hard. After awhile, and with almost robot-like obedience, all of us tube users become indoctrinated by the chaos of the London pace, and because we have more important issues to worry about, we will just resign, conform, and keep on keeping left, walking at a pace unnatural for the human species, yet indispensable if one aspires to thrive in the “trying to get to work!!” game. (Isn’t this just the perfect metaphor for the rat-race that is life in a big city?)

Now the tube part is just the beginning, what is waiting on the surface is part two of the morning show. This second part is brought to you by white-collar workers minutes before they start the day — men in Italian-cut suits and ladies in knee-length skirts and neon pink running shoes (there is, I like to think, a better-matching pair of shoes inside of their purse which they plan on changing into once they have arrived to their destination). These hardworking humans can be found rushing in the midst of the crowd at a speed that neither I nor Usain Bolt could possibly match, or else booking it comfortably as they rest on the flat board of their kick scooter (yeah, kick scooter is what I said. But there is no need to panic, the size of its wheels evidences the fact that it is a specially-designed-for-adults kick scooter, and thus perfectly suitable for any respectable high-rank bank broker). Soon enough people (finally!) get to work, and I, a street fundraiser for a charity whose motto is “helping people in crisis”, spend the first ten minutes of the day hoping and praying that nobody faints from dehydration after such intense journey, because in spite of what my big red coat may depict, I am not the right person to turn to if somebody needs CPR.

The interesting part about my job, street fundraising, is that I am left with nothing but my own countenance and will of spirit to try and stop people on the street, folk who already know I will be asking them to give financial support to my charity.

When we are sent to a sight where the surrounding buildings are mainly offices, such as Tooley St. or Old St., we are pushed to our creative limits in order to convince those folk to talk to us. This task is no easier than finding the last character of the number Pi. Sometimes I wonder how, in a city where people literally risk their lives trying to cross from one side of the street to the other on a green light (in an attempt to advance their arrival time by 5 seconds), anyone believed it would be a good idea to invest in street fundraising. In order for my job to be done successfully (to tap into people’s altruistic urges), I need to find a way to convince the same person who didn’t have time to wait on the stoplight to turn red, yielding pedestrians to safely walk to the opposite side of the street, that their journey must be delayed indeed (not 5 seconds, but 5 minutes), just so that we can have a conversation about how part of their monthly income should go to charity — my charity, in particular. Whosever idea it was, it somehow worked (or so says the ROI), but it seems almost naive to believe it, even for me, who has successfully executed this seemingly impossible task many times.

Lunch time is a fun time in the streets of London, for those same folk of serious, business-like expression, have to face the fact that they too need food, just like the rest of us humans. The idea of taking time to eat seems to be, more times than not, in conflict with their daily schedules and to-do lists, and thus a sit-down lunch followed by coffee followed by post-lunch small talk, something my southern European fellows are very familiar with, simply isn’t an option. The result? A very comic sight for us street fundraisers; a midday entertainment show featuring big-fish eating small tuna sandwich whilst rushing up the street back to the workplace. There are also the patient ones, those who keep their food inside of their Pret carton bag, to be eaten later in the office, and when tried to be stopped, they object: “sorry, hot food!” This last bunch are lucky if it is me who they run into, as opposed to any of my co-workers, for I never get pushy with them — I feel pity for people who, for one reason or the other, wind up having cold soup for lunch… I refuse to be that reason.

Another big realization I came to as I was meditating on the madness of life in London has to do with answering the question “why do people walk so fast in this city, all. The. Time?” Answer is, according to my theory: the weather. Full disclaimer: I am usually keen on cold weather, but the conditions in the UK strike me as damn near unbearable (the sun comes out no more than 20% of the time (in Spring!), the rest is either rainy, windy, or flat out too cold to happily slow-walk and stop to smell the roses.) The lack of warm temperatures and rays of sun is annoying in and of itself, but it isn’t he grayness and the constant need to carry and umbrella that trouble me most — it is the abrupt manner in which the sun and clouds and wind decide to come in and out of the picture. At 10am, sun and mild winds are engaged in a serene, cheek-to-cheek dance, a perfect mixture of chill breeze and sunshine warmth that serves as a reminder of winter being over, of the changing of seasons, in the background a soothing melody of singing-birds and springing flowers. At 10:01am, the dance is over and the symphony goes on strike and the entire place crashes down and the wind gets mad and boom! Snow! And the weather Gods go: “But, London, it is April, you do realize..?” But London does realize, and London simply does not care.

“Sometimes it snows in April,” said Prince, “I am going to make these folk walk fast through my streets,” said London.

As with every curse, there’s a bright side to this weather phenomenon. On the one day out of five that the sun does come out and the temperatures stay at a reasonable degree for a semi-consistent period of time, people in the city seem to appreciate the anomaly of the event. That does not keep them from walking fast, though — even on sane-weather days Londoners walk as fast as Tiger Woods would if his past was chasing him — that can be explained, it is called habit.

But those days, the sunny days, are my favorite for other reasons: people showing cheek dimples and straight-toothed-smiles become easier to come by, the hue of the buildings reveals a new, more appealing architectural sight, the gentlemen who so proudly wore their suits earlier in the day have braved to leave their jackets at the office as they break for a quick cigarette, unveiling the sharpness of their designer belts, the crisp whiteness of their perfectly ironed shirts, and — my favorite — the ambitious patterns and colorful designs of their ties. But these days, as I said, happen once or twice a week at the most, and I wonder what London did in a past life to deserve such a harsh punishment.

So far the average day of a London worker doesn’t sound like the most fun, what with all the rushing and the struggle to keep tuna salad off the day’s outfit. But that, too, has a bright side — it is called “drinks-with-friends no-matter-what-day-of-the-week” tradition. Also known as “Happy Hour,” this evening ritual encompasses everything that is exciting about the workday in London: music, laughs, £5 cocktails, and an international selection of beers, along with friendly servers behind the bar, cricket tournaments on the TV screen, and, of course, a green light to talk about anything but work.

Now, THAT’S more like it! If I ever worried about the all-too-serious lifestyle of the thousands of people inhabiting this marvelous city, all was swept away when I first encountered, at 6:30pm on an ordinary Tuesday evening walking through Euston Square, a crowd of men in untied shirts and women in skirts and Nike running shoes lining up (queuing) at the gates of a bar, throwing their arms in the air and around each other as they soak in the happiness of the hour — 60 minutes of 90s music and reduced-price spirits that make the stress of the day oh, so worth it! Cheers!