I read Anthropology (and Psychology and English) at Durham. The origins of Man were hard to get a grip on and defeated me. However, I did enjoy Social Anthropology. It may have inspired trips in later years to the Middle East, Africa and the Caucasus.
I needn’t have bothered travelling so far; parts of London are tribal. Brick Lane retains a Pakistani flavour through its restaurants although earlier Spitalfields offered sanctuary to Huguenots. Finchley has a synagogue and a Jewish population. Koreans gravitate to New Malden. Because of the lycée South Kensington has more than its share of French and because of property prices Knightsbridge a disproportionate number of Arabs. Barons Court has a pretty mixed ethnography.
I have to travel a few stops east to the Sloane Square region to observe the Chelsea Set. They congregate at three restaurants: Caraffini, Manicomio and Le Colombier. Sometimes three generations of the same family gather round the same table to feed. I mention this not to mock but to affirm how comforting it is to be surrounded by a clientele among which I am naturally camouflaged and with whom I feel comfortable, as Hoof Hearted suggested in a recent comment.
Even if food and service are above reproach I do not enjoy sharing a restaurant with vulgarians. Once, at Scott’s in Mayfair, I had a rotund Chinese chap at an adjacent table whose two guests seemed to be prostitutes. At a Lebanese earlier this year all the customers were leather-jacketed East European hoods. Don’t get me wrong; if I go to the Palomar in Rupert Street I want to see Israelis and at Ognosko, Poles; likewise in Indian and Chinese restaurants. Londoners are spoilt for choice but it is comforting for me to eat in Chelsea surrounded by my tribe.
There is more to life than eating in quite expensive restaurants and over the weekend Radio 3 delivered a few winners. I mention this in case you are able to listen on the BBC Sounds app. I much enjoyed Sound of Cinema, devoted to music from Robin Hood films – great stuff – then on Saturday evening, Ariadne auf Naxos. Over on Radio 4 I am heartily fed up with Tweet of the Day, Home Front and The Listening Project but the BBC always has something up its sleeve, at least if you’re an insomniac. I heard Bells on Sunday for the first time yesterday morning at 5.43. It is a cacophonous two minutes that, yesterday, came from St Mary the Virgin in Bowdon, Cheshire, a church that has been much modified since it was in the Doomsday Book.
I am sure our well read author will be aware that Sir Hans Sloane, who has given his name to many thoroughfares around his favoured stomping ground, was a fellow Irishman. He was a most remarkable collector who generously bequeathed his collection to the British Nation, laying the foundations for what became the British Museum, The British Library and The Natural History Museum, London. Should the author or his followers wish to read further about this most prodigious physician and collector, may I commend a frightfully spiffing read: ‘Collecting The World’ by James Delbourgo.
As the author continues to splash around in the high social tide of The Royal Borough of K & C, I trust he will raise a beaker of drinking chocolate to the extraordinary Sir Hans Sloane.
What of the Irishry in today’s London? Kilburn still festooned with publicans or has suburbia and metroland exerted it’s appeal?
Well, I can only say that one of the most close-up and immersive Bohème’s I’ve seen was at a pub in Kilburn. Act II, set in Café Momus, was in the public bar and a well refreshed Irishman went up to the soprano to give her a kiss – it was his birthday – and she obliged. The performance was also memorable because two guests came on a bus (he drives a Porsche) and afterwards we went out to a restaurant where my guests’ cellar was plundered for my pleasure.