1. The wastebins are back! The wastebins are back! Finally, that empty
bottle of Oasis Classic Lemon which you drank while walking down the
street has somewhere to go! I can’t remember exactly when it
was that they went – certainly the IRA was bombing for quite
a while before the drastic decision was taken – but boy, am I
happy for their return. It’s made central London cleaner, too,
not that it was filthy before.
2. London vs New York: New Yorkers are better looking. Londoners aren’t
exactly ugly, but they tend to be a bit quirkier: bigger noses, odd
features, that sort of thing. In New York everybody looks like a model
(and most of them are, it turns out); London is more individualistic.
Corollary: Londoners are more stylish. They’re not competing
on legginess and perfection, but they are competing on coolness, stylishness,
funkiness. They get away with a lot more in terms of what they wear
and how they look, and in general the (younger) population is refreshingly
diverse to look at. London hasn’t been Gap-ified yet, thankfully.
3a. Old London/Old England: It still exists. I went over for the opera;
specifically, I went over for Glyndebourne. And while certain parts
of London, like New York or Paris or Helsinki or Singapore, have been
taken over by the Internationally Wealthy, the sort of people who
jet from this hotel to that island with their Louis Vuitton bags and
their Gucci loafers, Glyndebourne is still a bastion of the old upper
classes, English gents and ladies with plummy accents and precious
little dress sense who have seen their effortless superiority turn
into effortless irrelevance, yet who still seem completely unruffled
by the transformation.
3b. Encounter With The Abovementioned OL/OE: My mother took me aside
while we were at Glyndebourne, and told me that my shirt was lovely,
but really she didn’t think that she’d be able to continue
ironing it for much longer. My dress shirts were inherited from my
grandfather, who’d had them made at Sulka on Bond Street. They
are thirty years old now, and the collars are a bit wrinkled and difficult
to iron. I had a brainstorm: I’d take them into Sulka, if it
was still there, and ask them to replace the collar. My father reckoned
that they’d do that, and said that Sulka was still on Old Bond
Street. Surely it would be cheaper than buying new dress shirts of
similar quality, and it would help preserve some sort of connection
with OL/OE.
Turns out my father was wrong: Sulka no longer exists, on Bond Street
or anywhere else. The venerable marque was taken over by the House
of Dunhill at some point in the relatively recent past; I’m not
sure if Dunhill itself isn’t part of LVMH or somesuch conglomerate.
But all was not lost. I walked into what used to be the Sulka shop
(it’s now a Dunhill shop) on Old Bond Street, and asked if they
still had Sulka shirts. It was a lazy Tuesday morning, and I think
I was the only customer. A man directed me to a woman, who told me
that no, Sulka has been done away with entirely. But, she said, they
did still have a Master Shirt Maker, whom they’d inherited from
Sulka… if I would just step this way and take a seat, she’d
bring him up and he’d see what he could do.
Eventually, a sixtyish guy in a sleeveless t-shirt and drawstring
trousers came up and introduced himself; I’ve forgotten his name,
although I think it was David something. He explained all manner of
interesting things about shirts and collars, tutted at the collar
on the Hilditch & Key shirt I was wearing – completely wrong
for my head shape, or something – and agreed to do the work;
he’d replace the cuffs as well. He also told me that they do
still make shirts like that, which start at about £220. So £25
for a collar and £25 for a pair of cuffs doesn’t seem half
bad, really.