Susan Buckland: Searching for art and culture in London

COMMENT


I don't want to give the impression I travel the world chatting up strange men outside pubs. The reason for sitting down to share a warm beer with two men called John and Brian was because I needed directions. I had been scanning the crowds in the West End for a face that looked like it belonged to London and settled on this pair, who were having a quiet ale in the noonday sun.

"Do you know the way to the Wallace Collection," I asked, half expecting a "Wallace who?"

"End of the road and first on the right, love," said Brian. "It's a lovely day, Christmas is coming, why not join us for a beer?"

He explained that he was born in London during the Blitz and had lived there all his life, but hadn't got round to visiting the wonderful collection of paintings and antiques.

"We are impressed," said his friend John. "All the way from New Zealand and you are going to see the Wallace Collection before us Londoners. The Laughing Cavalier by Frans Hals is one of my favourite paintings."

I told them I had guessed that they were locals.

"We born-and-bred Londoners are getting harder to spot among all the residents from the warmer parts of the Commonwealth," laughed John. "And a man can feel lost in the crowd with so many foreigners about."

London, he said, was also a favourite city of asylum-seekers and hundreds were arriving every week.

John and Brian were cockneys. Dyed in the wool Labour lads, I presumed. Wrongly, however. They had started out being fans of Tony Blair but were going cool on him. Made a few mistakes lately, he has, said Brian.

I could see that a diversion was needed, otherwise they could become entrenched in anti-Blair and anti-foreigner sentiment.

How did the cockney dialect come about, I asked. Blair and asylum seekers were instantly buried under a barrel of rhyming slang.

"To outwit the police. Cockneys invented their own dialect so the boys in blue didn't have a clue what they were up to. We'll give you a little taste," said Brian. He leaned towards John. "What do you think of her barnett and minces?"

Barnett turned out to mean hair, which rhymes with fair, as in Barnett Fair on the outskirts of London. Minces derives from mince pies, cockney rhyme for eyes.

"Want another pig's ear (beer)?" asked John. "Look out for your dicky dirt (shirt)." They then gave me the rundown on body parts: north and south (mouth) iron lung (tongue) pants and vest (chest), German bangs (hands), scotch eggs (legs) plates of meat (feet) until my head was spinning.

There was talk of another pig's ear to celebrate the approach of Christmas. But I said I'd better get to the collection before it closed. John asked me to give his regards to Perdita, the renowned 18th-century beauty. Thomas Gainsborough, he said, was lucky to paint her.

We wished each other compliments of the season and I set off to discover Perdita's exquisite north and south and mince pies.