I have a bad habit of always rushing between two points as quickly as possible, even when I’m in no hurry at all, so after speed-walking, running up the escalators and taking steps two at a time when changing between the Northern and District Lines at Bank and Monument, I was pretty puffed out.
“You look red, do you have a tan?” this prompted from the Italian hairdresser I sat opposite from, and I spent the 10 or so minutes I talked to him trying to cool down and stop sweating. It was pretty hot down there but I also still get a bit flushed with the embarrassment of approaching strangers.
Hi, how’s your day been? was my opening gambit after walking down the carriage and finding that he was the only person both on their own and without headphones on. “Good. Long,” he said laughing. He had neat hair and what novelty fake moustache sets call a ‘partyboy‘, a neat thin one that runs along the top lip. He quickly (maybe too quickly) asked where I was getting off, but in a friendly manner.
What have you been doing today? I asked, moving across to sit next to him to hear him better. “Working,” he told me that he worked at a salon in central London. I actually cut my own hair, I said truthfully. “You cut that yourselves [sic]?” he asked incredulously. Yeah, what do you think? “It’s not bad!” he laughed, “With clippers no?” No, with scissors, I told him. “Oh my God!” he exclaimed dramatically in his musical, high pitched Italian accent.
I asked if he had any tips for me. “Go to a hairdressers! I’m training for 10 years… for men, 15 years for men and women.” And do you like it? “Yeah I like it very much. I don’t upset people!” I should hope not, I laughed. “Maybe you should try with clippers,” he said, looking at my hair more seriously now, “You have quite a lot of steps at the back actually.”
I was only going a couple of stops but the train was creeping along slowly and we kept talking about hair and my methods of self-pruning for a while, which I’ll spare you.
So what are you doing in London? I asked eventually. “Trying to be happy,” he said after thinking for a second, “and if not then make money.” Good answer. How does it compare to Italy? “I like here, it is better to me [sic] than when I was in Italy. I am completely free…. The relation here with people is, I think, is maybe better…”
This was just getting interesting, and I was about to ask what he meant when we were interrupted by one of those very English service announcements by the driver on the intercom: “Sorry ladies and gentlemen, we’ve been held because of a train coming across the junction ahead, just a train coming across the junction ahead, er, ah that’s actually, we’ve actually got green now so we’re actually on the move now. Thank you.”
Unfortunately, this threw us back to square one and talk about the tube (which he thought was great) and transport differences and so on but I just had time before we reached my stop to ask him what he thought of Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s scandal-mired prime minister. “Berlusconi? Oh my God,” he said, rolling his eyes, “Another time! I can’t believe he still being there [sic].”
I couldn’t imagine David Cameron getting away with the same kind of thing I said, getting up to leave and we said goodbye laughing.
[11th October]
I started talking to an Italian from Rome working in an architectural firm (he’d been there for four years and although it was “good because it was stable” he was “very, very much” sick of it) who had come over because “there’s not much job” in Italy, but he got off before we really got going so I turned to the young woman sat on the other side of me.
So far I’ve largely avoided the ‘young woman’ demographic, in large part because I’ve been worried that they’d think I was coming on to them, but I said I’d try and cover all different people on this blog, not just people I feel comfortable with, so I went for it.
This was an awkward conversation, maybe the most awkward I’ve had, partly because the girl was so, so quiet and softly spoken with a really strong African accent that I often had to get her to repeat herself to hear what she was saying. Also, it was 5.30pm by this time, and she was on her way back from work, as was I.
She was from Ghana, and had come here three years ago with her mother and sister. I asked why they had come over, joking about the cold weather. She looked thoughtful but didn’t say anything so I prompted her, for a job or…? “Yeah,” she said, although I got the feeling she would agree with pretty much anything I said.
She worked in a nursing home, caring for old people. What are the old people like? I asked. She thought I’d asked whether she liked it (this kind of misunderstanding happened repeatedly as we talked). Sometimes she was happy and sometimes not she said, it depended on the day. What about the old people? “They’re always happy. I care for them well,” she said, rather sweetly. Some of them must be interesting, I ventured. “Yeah.”
We had to change trains at Mansion House, and I added to the awkwardness by thinking I was staying on the platform, saying goodbye, realising I had to go to the other platform, and rejoining her. So what’s Dagenham like? I persisted. “It’s full of people.” London’s full of people! “It’s full of black people.” Oh, right. Did she like living there? “Yeah.”
So, “yeah”, pretty awkward, but not awful or overly uncomfortable. We talked for about 10 or 15 minutes altogether, I made her laugh a couple of times and we had a less boring time on our way home than we otherwise would. One of the most satisfying aspects of this project so far has been making these tiny connections to other people and getting a little glimpse of their lives that you otherwise would never have. I would probably have never spoken to this girl in any other situation but we both came away having connected a little bit with another person, and that’s a good feeling.
London Talking 
