Mind the gap!
“Mind the gap!” Exhorts the man in charge, as soon as people get off the tube at the station…
“Watch your step!”
That is the way I’ve always pictured London when I was young: a metropolis that, with its citizens, its vices, its virtues and its eccentricities, would always turn out to be “a cut above”.
It was a gap I had to fill, a goal I had to reach, a dream I had to make come true.
And then, her language, so global and melodious: I had to learn it. So, we set off, my sister and I, for a month of full immersion at John and Daphne’s house, back in 1983.
Music was everywhere, I had just started playing the guitar so… sheet music and vinyl records galore.
His Master’s Voice in Oxford Street, Virgin not far from there and plenty of other little shops that urged me to get in.
Which band above all? The Beatles of course, the quintessence of the UK’s imagery.
And so, eventually, I agreed with my father-in-law who kept, completely in love with London, a mug above the fireplace that cited a sentence from Samuel Johnson: “When a man is tired of London, he’s tired of life”.
And then, I started taking pictures of the city.
During the day, but mostly at night, the moment when its authentic and genuine features emerge, cleaned from the extravagances of the day.
Now, will Brexit widen that gap? …
Let’s see what the blond-haired Boris has in store …
In the meantime, “God save the Queen!”
Paolo Pelosi Bonini
