Love & Hate in Soho by Alan Wakeman

This description of one day in the life of London's favourite
village was originally published in London Scene, GMP 1987.

Apart from the gentle chinking of the wind chimes hanging in my bedroom window, the only sound at dawn in my flat behind the Coca Cola sign in Piccadilly Circus, is our blackbird singing. In his view, the Circus is his patch (I'm not being sexist it's the male that sings) and he performs to proclaim it. Later a crow sometimes comes to join him. It perches on the golden pineapple on top of the dome of the London Fire Assurance building on the corner of Regent Street and Glasshouse Street and caws impatiently away at the world for a while before flying off earth knows where. A few of the miriad species of wild fowl from St. James's Park sometimes pay us a visit too, streaking past our windows in a stunning display of vivid colours, and I once saw a pair of yellow hammers investigating a puddle in the Ham Yard. There's always the chatter of sparrows and the gentle cooing of pigeons, of course, but I've also heard hens apparently proclaiming the arrival of eggs in Wardour Street. At certain times of the day, flocks of starlings and seagulls swoop overhead, filling the air with excited cries. And gently purring behind this chorus of local fauna, is the distant hum of London going about its business. I don't expect any of this to be believed, but I promise you it's true. It's speed that makes noise, you see, and no one can go through Piccadilly Circus at more than a gentle glide, so traffic noise seldom intrudes. We are the calm at the centre of the storm.

In fact I originally moved to Soho because I hate cars. Of course in my youth, like most downy teenagers, I loved them and dreamed of streaking along in sleek Jaguars with tinted windows, but long before I had realised this dream, it had become impossible for me to ignore the personality change I underwent as soon as I got behind a steering wheel. My normal, lovable self evaporated and was replaced by a hateful, macho fiend. Now, while it was important to have discovered the existence of this subterranean beast, if only to learn how to tame him, it finally became obvious to me that the mere fact of owning and driving a car was encouraging him and doing my wise, gentle, androgynous self harm. But what could I do about it? Well, I thought, no one who lives in Soho can possibly own a car and people who live in Soho don't need cars anyway because most of what London has to offer is within walking distance.

So I sold my fallen idol of the time. (By then I had a handsome, thoroughbred Triumph TR3A in British racing green and it fell to this sexy hunk of la dolce vita to suffer the humiliation of rejection when I suddenly saw the stop light and all cars fell from grace in my eyes.) I found a little flat just off Piccadilly Circus, bought a yellow bicycle and moved in.

Twenty-seven years later, (now 42 years later!) I still ride a yellow bicycle, I'm still here and I still love it. No matter where I trot on this gorgeous, infuriating globe, it isn't till I see Eros, in Piccadilly Circus, that I know I'm home and can restart my passionate love/hate affair with Soho, the best little village in town.

Because, yes, it's true, I also hate the place. Well for a start, there's the behaviour of visitors. Those on foot are bad enough. They treat our village as if it were a cross between a municipal rubbish dump and a public lavatory. Every day they are to be seen promiscuously littering our streets with their discarded refuse and every night urinating and defecating on our steps and against our front doors. Occasionally, one of them even has the gall to complain how dirty the streets are!

I assume this behaviour is the result of our media image. (Say 'Soho' to the average citizen and she or he will say 'sex' back at you.) So, for the record, let me point out that Soho has a residential population of over 3000, which includes tailors, musicians, designers, barrow boys, architects, writers, MPs, old age pensioners, pop stars, film directors, publishers and local business people as well as many families with children who go to our local primary school. Nearly all of London's commercial, and many of its fringe theatres are here. Soho is the centre of Britain's film industry and all of its important first run cinemas are our locals. The craftsmen who make Savile Row suits live and work in Soho. We have the best fruit and vegetable market in London. We are the centre of Britain's video, recording and graphic design industries. Of Britain's 50 best restaurants, more than 20 are in Soho. We have the best jazz club in Britain. We have beautiful, tree filled squares and terraces of Georgian houses. Among the famous people who've lived here are Karl Marx, Canaletto, Thomas Gainsborough, Haydn, Mozart, Johan Christian Bach, Thomas Sheridan, John Dryden and William Blake, who was born here. Oh, and incidentally, the first ever demonstration of television in the world was conducted by John Logie Baird in 1926 in Frith Street. In fact, there's hardly a street door in Soho you can open without finding a hive of creative activity going on behind it.

But the chief source of my discontent, and I'm aware of the irony, given my original reason for moving here, is the daily plague of motorists who park day and night all over our pavements, who ignore pedestrian streets, NO ENTRY signs and even fire doors so that, sooner or later, hundreds will be burnt to death because some halfwit has parked his car across the escape doors from a cinema or a theatre. Our pavements have been damaged to the point that a quiet stroll has become a safari over sunken pits, cracks and pot holes. Many residents have been struck by cars while walking on the pavement. All of us have been hooted at, sworn at and abused. Thank god for wheel clamps! So that's what you think of us: a car park with sex. At least now you know what we think of you.

Having got that off my chest, let me return to love. If, like Spinoza, you 'strive not to laugh at human actions, but to understand them', then the everyday parade through Soho provides food for much speculation on human vanity. Let me limn it.

At dawn, Mrs Mop's cheerful black and white Cockney army marches in, to be followed a few hours later by regiments of smart secretaries, clerks and shop assistants. By mid morning, trendy advertising yuppies are spilling out of our four tube stations and tubby publishing executives are sliding in in chauffeur driven limousines. Gaping, map clutching tourists and boozy, loud mouthed journalists are the next to arrive (by opening time) while film producers and pop stars surface for tax deductable lunches.

From then till tea time is the most hazardous for locals as squads of suburban shoppers hack their way through to the latest bargains, wielding bags of loot as weapons. This is definitely the time to withdraw for a cuppa to the Patisserie Valerie, or any of the dozen other places of civilised gay retreat, because the shoppers leave as suddenly as they arrived just before the evening exodus of office workers and, by happy hour, Soho is left to its own residents' private use for an hour or two.

But by early evening another neurotic troupe of theatre goers is arriving by the coach load to see caricatures of themselves in the latest Ayckbourn or be bored silly in the name of 'art' by the latest Lloyd Webber. From mid evening the serious business of dinner is all that signifies and this continues till long after the theatre goers have vanished back to continue their Ayckbourn dialogues in Carshalton, Chingford or Croydon. At closing time the streets suddenly fill with eloquent drunks searching for somewhere to be sick, while around midnight the streets are flooded with the trendy young, desperate to find the trendy venue of the day's trendy party.

A new day is heralded by the street cleaners' clean sweep, followed an hour or two later by the rent boys, a rare nocturnal species this, that emerges in the small hours when the clubs and discos close down and sling their punters out for the night. (Female prostitutes are around all day, of course.)

Then suddenly all is silence and the streets are left to the police, insomniacs and other lost souls till, at dawn, the office cleaners reappear and the wheel begins another turn.

But what about the gay scene, I hear you ask. Well, a glance at the listings will reveal the wealth of venues available and even I occasionally go for a drink in the Kings Arms in Poland Street. Certainly I'm most appreciative of living in Soho on those rare occasions I go to Heaven or The Hippodrome or some other club and having got bored and left, am back in my warm bed ten minutes later. And as I snuggle down to sleep, how wonderful to know that 'our' blackbird will be around to serenade me again at dawn!