Saturday 9 July 2016

London: My Monopoly Board Come To Life: Part 1

Goodge Street Graffiti London UK Travel Blog

“I like cities with a story.”

Ever since I was young and moderately literate, I’ve been a hopeless aficionado of storytelling and storytellers. If you’re into underrated Bollywood movies and have managed to expose yourself to the visually and mentally stimulating odyssey that is Imtiaz Ali’s Tamasha, that little kid gaping with open-mouthed amazement at the apparently magical storyteller with larger than life yarns could have easily been me (spoiler: he was full of shit).

Stories are my thing. If being funny was Chandler’s thing, and getting divorced was Ross’, then stories are definitely mine. Storytelling is an unacknowledged art, and a good story the masterpiece. There’s an aura of magic engulfing the creation of fictitious realms, and their ability to transport you away, oblivious to mundane realities. 

I’ve come to terms with the fact that such profound musings from me have the probability of appearing daft or worse, pseudo-intellectual, so let me allow Hugh Jackman (you’re welcome, ladies) to say the exact same words, but now with credibility - "... but if you could fool them, even for a second, then you can make them wonder, and then you... then you got to see something really special. You really don’t know? It was... it was the look on their faces.”

Having spent my teenage years in Dubai, a city that I initially resented for the superficiality that it happily celebrated, I was a parched little mind ambling aimlessly through the immaculate streets of the city that cared. It was not until I stepped foot, ‘way on down south onto London Town’ that I came to terms with my infatuation for cities with a story. London, beautiful old city London, had many.

I had been to London on numerous instances previously, but it took a loner trip for me to really see it. I have lived a childhood engulfed with Western influences, primarily the enchanting works of Enid Blyton and one JK Rowling. Sometimes I wonder whether it’s just the serene beauty of it or the fact that it was featured in my favourite chapter of one of my favourite book series, but King’s Cross station has always held an indescribable aura to it. I’ve clearly got my priorities right since I could happily whisk past the Buckingham Palace without a second glance, yet gaze, until the end of time, at King’s Cross. 

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on Earth should that mean it is not real?”

Kings Cross Railway Station London UK Travel Blog


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