Week 13 Impressions by Andrew Barnes

As everyone knows from previous blogs, my London experience has me travel across a vast expanse of the city to get to work every week. Good old Arnos Grove, a sometime terminus of the eastern Piccadilly line service thereby meaning that it’s in the cuts. An area of absolutely no touristic value. Most people in London probably have never been there and will probably never have a reason to and yet I head for it three times a week. It’s a quaint area. You only have three ticket barriers to the tube, and such modern technologies such as escalators and lifts are nonexistent. I speak of the Arnos because for some odd reason it has come to epitomize my realistic London vision. Not the posh surroundings of Kensington & Chelsea, the glittering lights of Piccadilly Circus, or the drunken debauchery of Covent Garden. I speak to a real London. A place that people call home, an area untrodden upon by countless tourists, a land that has escaped sidewalk 'reversal of fortune' landmines, and a place where you have to mow your lawn.

The Arnos Grove tube puts you out upon a street that I guess you could call their 'high street.' The Amos clearly is clearly a locale of depressed economic status, due to my highly scientific deduction that every other storefront is either a nail place, hairdresser, or dry cleaner. Along this road you also have eateries known thoughtfully to the office as the 'dirty Chinese place', the 'dirty sandwich place', the 'dirty chicken place', the 'seedy Irish bar', and the 'dirty kebab place' due to the high quality of service and cuisine available for sale. Mingled in along the stretch are two specialty Italian and Greek markets which offer an amazing selection of fine quality ethnic specialties. The demographics of the area are clearly multicultural. I mean this place couldn't better represent modern Britain. Here you have in a little stretch of suburban London the current identity crisis of Englishness. Arnos Grove represents this issue in a microcosm. Cuisine, markets, people of every imaginable nationality can be found on my little stretch of suburbia. However, you take not but a five minute walk north of this street and enter a transport to middle England. An area called 'The Green'. Home to a real ale pub called the 'Ye Old Cherry Tree', a cricket club, an ancient Anglican Church with a secret garden, and grass tennis courts. This place screams English. You know, that tea, fish & chips, cheerio-type environment. The English-ness and whiteness is palpable. Even though the economic status of nail and hair places are found in both locales, you couldn't be in two more different areas. On one side you have modern multicultural Britain, and on the other traditional Britain. The division is immediately apparent, and a complete realization of a multitude of our classes. My weekly trips to the Arnos have been a constant reminder that the issues of nationality and immigration are manifest outside the dialog of academia. I will once again head out to Arnos Grove this week eagerly awaiting the adult ice cream truck, and do my best to support every ethnic community in the neighborhood, not only because I believe they deserve to be in Britain, but its the also the best way to stretch my five pounds for lunch.