A Brief Epiphany

Posted on 2009/01/21 09:11:56 (January 2009).

[Sunday 18th January]
Went out in the afternoon for a spot of shopping in the centre of London, our main objectives being to buy some more plates, some haggis and a book of Burn's poetry. We achieved all three objectives quite satisfyingly. Yes, you guessed it, I'm planning another Burns Night which I'd been itching to do ever since the success of the previous one back in 2005. As my Mum pointed out, this year is in fact a particularly special one, being the 250th anniversary of the birth of 'wee Rabbie.

We also popped into the Korean shop near Centre Point to buy a few things including tofu, daikon kimchi, korean inari sushi cases and, best of all, some Momiji Manju (those little maple leaf shaped cakes filled with anko that are, a famous souvenir of Miyajima, where we got married).

We ended up with rather a lot of heavy shopping in fact, so I volunteered to go home first and carry it all back, allowing Chie to continue to browse clothes etc at her leisure. I got back to the flat some time after 4, but as it was such a nice day for the time of year and still not quite completely dark yet I decided to go for a stroll. I headed in the direction of the Houses of Parliament but rather than continuing all the way along the embankment I veered off into some of the little back streets - Smith Square, Barton Street and Great College Street - wherein are to be found some really fantastic grand residences in a surprisingly quiet, sleepy and charming little area within a stone's throw of Westminster Abbey and Big Ben. Given the gloaming and the fact I was there by myself it had an almost magical feeling about it.

From there I continued on over Parliament Square and on to Parliament Street (which turns into Whitehall). There's a pub there called the Red Lion, which I'd been past a number of times but had always dismissed assuming it to be a characterless pub for tourists. I'd read about it in my book on London pubs though, which had suggested it actually has an interior of some note. So I popped in to take a look for myself and was pleasantly surprised - it really is actually quite a nice little pub and not nearly as touristy as I'd expected (although this may be in part due to it being early evening on a Sunday in January).

Emboldened by this success, I thought I'd have a go at another of the Whitehall pubs I'd previously passed up for similar reasons - The Old Shades. Whilst I was almost certainly seeing it in a better than usual light, it was lovely and quiet in there, and despite being a Nicholson's pub with a lot of the fairly generic trappings thereof, it had a really nice interior with a lot of interesting (and presumably original?) features such as a big Victorian skylight (which the Victorians probably had a more charming world like "solarium" for) with a grand chandelier hanging from it. Given the presence of plenty of wood panelling and etched glass it easily met my pub qualilty bar, despite the presence of some regrettable modern touches.

Sitting in there, contemplating Life, The Universe and Everything, I had something which almost amounts to an epiphany. I'm not quite sure how it came about, but I think I suddenly came to understand art, and the place it has in our lives. It's about escaping the banal drudgery of our day-to-day existence - the exact same reason that I was now sitting in this pub. I hadn't gone there for the beer - there were plenty of other pubs I could have stopped off at on the way, and I even had beer in the fridge at home. I'd gone there to explore and to escape. Finding a pub I haven't been to before, especially one with a sense of history, is one of my favourite things about living in London, and addresses exactly the same need for escapism as reading Sherlock Holmes, only in a more tangible and therefore more satisfying way. This same pub that contemporaries of Holmes and Watson might have frequented is still here today, and beneath a thin veneer of modern marketing paraphernalia it still pretty much looks the same as how it would have appeared to my Great Great Grandfather's generation.

I had a rare sense of contentment for the short time I spent in the Old Shades.

I got the number 24 bus back to reality after that. At home in the evening we had Korean/Japanese food made from the things we'd bought in the Korean shop earlier. The Korean inari were particularly good.

There are moments in life where it seems that everything falls into place and finally you can grasp the subtle, invisible fabric that is behind life. There have been 2 or 3 similar cases in my life and it was a great experience to feel!

Posted by Lox at 2009/01/21 09:57:36.

John, thanks for introducing me to two new (and very useful...!) words in your posts this week: "conflate" and "gloaming". Here I am, an English teacher of 23 years' standing (and a native speaker, at that), and I doff my cap to you in thanks!! :-)

Posted by Bryan at 2009/01/21 13:22:50.

Comes of the family being Guardian readers!

Posted by John 's Mum at 2009/01/22 11:28:27.

Surely were the Guardian to have taken the credit for that Bryan would have spent a confused few minutes looking up "cornfalte" and "glaoming" in the dictionary (which of course are in fact Irish and Welsh placenames respectively).

Posted by John at 2009/01/22 21:09:19.

Ah yes, The Grauniad... I rebember it weel. A malverrous ogran :-)

Posted by Bryan at 2009/01/23 11:00:46.

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