London Loves Lunchtimes: Living for the City

3 and half years ago I was fortunate enough to have my office moved from a business park on the edge of provincial Peterborough to a quite superb location just off The Strand. Landed in the tourist heart of the capital I had many enjoyable lunchtimes exploring my enviable new surroundings and writing about them in my London Loves Lunchtimes blog.

I’ve received more positive feedback from friends, family and colleagues about my London Loves Lunchtimes articles than I have about anything I’ve ever written: it’s an important lesson to learn that people are generally more interested in hearing about my lunchtime adventures in London then they are about my thoughts on music, sport, politics and life!

My company moved offices from just off The Strand to between Barbican and St Paul’s about 7 months ago and in the following months I haven’t really ventured too far and have fallen into a routine of  all too familiar trips to safe and comfortable Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Boots, M&S and Greggs. With my period of working full-time in London fast coming to an end coupled with my recent realisation that I need to do more with my life, I suddenly have a sense of urgency to make the most of my time left in the City.

In the last few weeks I have had a couple of highly enjoyable lunchtimes discovering the delights of Vietnamese French baguettes (pork with tasty fresh and spicy flavours all wrapped up in a comforting hunk of French bread) and the stunning array of sights and smells from wonderful Whitecross Street Market (a deliciously salty halloumi Turkish pizza wrap followed by an enjoyable mini Brazilian cheese bread thing).

I felt it was time for a new adventure so set out on Monday with two goals: that I was going to go somewhere I had never been before and eat from somewhere I had never eaten before. No more Sainsbury’s meal deals eaten outside St Paul’s for me! Speaking of Sainsbury’s, I have adopted one of their former brand campaigns as my new lunchtime mantra: Try Something New Today. It’s a simple philosophy and one that is perfect for the long overdue return of my lunchtime adventures.

Heading south I decided to look for a food market that a couple of colleagues had mentioned was near New Change. I hate shopping centres and walking though One New Change was no more fun than walking through Tower Ramparts in Ipswich. The only difference was that this shiny mecca of capitalism had higher quality shops – Bang and Olufsen instead of Dixons, Hugo Boss instead of BHS, basically everything to keep city boys and girls looking beautiful.

I walked through there because I thought it was the way to the market; soon I realised it wasn’t so I decided to continue walking south. I kept doing so until I reached the entrance to Mansion House Tube station where I saw a sign for a river walk route – perfect. Heading in the direction of the river walk I passed some of the many brutal building sites that seem to be a permanent part of the City, before coming to a statue of one of the strangest things I have seen in London: a statue to the historic role of the bridge master and swan marker. What a statue and what a job that must have been!

                            Image: Statue of the bridge master and swan marker.

To head further south and reach the river meant crossing a busy road via a steep concrete footbridge. Tentatively I made my way up and across, not helped by either my fear of heights or the aching muscles in my wobbly legs, caused by my decision to run 5 and half miles the previous day. I made it across in one piece and then there it was: the world famous River Thames.

Previously I had experienced the Thames via Waterloo Bridge (my favourite view in London), South Bank (my favourite place to hang out in London) and beautiful Victoria Embankment (one of my favourite places to walk in London); now I had a different take on this historic waterway and I liked what I saw. Directly opposite me was the dominating modernist building that is the Tate Modern and next to it was an instantly recognisable round building. The building looked natural, like it belonged to this part of London; I soon realised that was because this building was Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre!

Leaning against the wall I took in the amazing view around me: the striking differences between the glass of the Shard and the ornate iron detail of Southwark Bridge to my left, geese bobbing in the waves of the murky green river below me, the historic Globe Theatre and striking Tate Modern buildings opposite me, and the many more bridges to my right, towards the west and the South Bank that I had often visited from my previous London office.

Tourist boat cruises passed by and I instantly thought how much I would like to be on one of them, taking in the wonderful riverside sights of London on a sunny day like this. My daydream was soon shattered by a familiar London street smell – the ammonia hit me hard and made me take a step back as I realised that I was enjoying this great view from what was effectively a tramp’s urinal!

Taking a step back I turned my attention to the many riverside runners also making the most of their lunchtimes. I myself had ran (well jogged with a little bit of walking) alongside a river the previous day, and although my Norfolk river was far removed from the Thames of central London, I felt I could still relate to them a bit with their choice of running alongside a river. It’s no surprise that people who live in cities flock to the few natural environments that are left – that’s why the most expensive houses in New York are the ones opposite Central Park.

Walking east briefly I soon found the way to Southwark Bridge and started my way back north towards my office. Over the bridge and back into the City I passed many of the pubs that must have made a fortune in keeping city boys (and it is always mostly men in this part of London) refreshed over the years. It was St Patrick’s Day so there were plenty of city suits outside Irish chain pubs with their obligatory pints of Guinness. My favourite scene was of a well fed city boy in a regulation dark blue suit taking it in turns to eat his takeaway sushi with chopsticks with one hand and slurp from his pint of black stuff with the other. If ever there was a scene to describe the City, this was it.

Leaving the Monday lunchtime drinkers I continued north to St Mary Alderman Church where I had passed a few pop-up takeaway stalls on my way down. I had planned to get a burrito from one of the stalls on my way back but there was a large queue and time was fast running out on my lunch break so I continued heading north until I found myself on Cheapside. Crossing the road and then turning left to make my way back to the office I was fast running out of having somewhere new to get my lunch from. I then saw a small kiosk called Deli Box and decided that this was a good a choice as any. Bewildered by the choices on the menu I went for chicken on top of rice with sweet chilli sauce on top of that. I ate it when I got back to my desk and it tasted exactly as chicken, gravy and vegetables on top of egg fried rice coated with sweet chilli sauce tastes like – not unpleasant but perhaps not the greatest combination in the world.

The important thing for me however was that I had tried something new today! I’d been somewhere I’d never been before, seen things I’d never seen before, and ate something I’d never eaten before. I felt good for these new experiences and wanted to have this feeling repeated again and again. There’s so much more I want to do in London, so many things that I haven’t experienced, so many opportunities that I have missed out on. Not all of this can be completed in a lunch hour from the City of London but I’m going to try my best to do as much as I possibly can before my time working full-time in London is forced to an end. London: I’m not finished with you yet!

The Joys of Cycling

“I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride my bike,
I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride it where I like.”
Bicycle Race - Queen

Almost everyone I know seems to be into running at the moment. Many of my workmates are, and quite a few are even in training for the Richmond 10k or London Marathon. Even two of my oldest and best friends, neither of whom I would describe as particularly athletic, are currently training for the Great Manchester Run and the Ipswich Half Marathon respectively. I’ve been asked many times over the years by friends and colleagues to join them for such running events, and for a second after being asked I often consider what would happen to me if I entered – the sense of achievement, the physical and mental benefits, the shared experience with friends – and then I quickly think of the reality of it – how hard I would have to work to get my level of fitness up to standard and the sheer physical pain that would be involved with this.

I’ve tried to get into running before: about six years ago when I worked in Cambridge I decided to get up half an hour earlier every morning and go for a run along the riverbank near where I live. Seeking motivation I bet my girlfriend £10 that I’d do it every day for a week: I successfully ran the just-under-2-miles route from Monday to Thursday, then on Thursday evening was told that the bet was off! Disappointed, I gave in and cancelled Friday’s run. I haven’t been running on a regular basis (more than one day in a row) since. 

Due to my recent epiphany of realising that I won’t be young forever, I have given quite a bit of thought of trying to get back into running again and planned to go for a run last Saturday. I got my trainers out, thought about the stretches I would need to do to get my stiff body ready for the physical challenges it would soon face, and even downloaded and registered with the popular Nike + running app. I was all ready to go, then on Saturday morning I woke up and thought about the choices in front of me – I could either spend about 15 minutes running nearly 2 miles in pain or I could spend just under an hour cycling 12 miles in relative comfort. I’d get about the same benefits in terms of exercise, so cycling won and I got my bike out of the shed.

I love cycling, I love playing football and I really love walking (definitely a subject for a future blog). These are my three forms of (fairly) regular exercise, none of which I get to do quite as much as I would like to, but all of which I get a great deal of pleasure out of. I think the reason why I enjoy these forms of exercise more than any others is because they all seem natural, two of them help you get closer to nature, and they all involve a sense of freedom – all things that mean a lot to me.

When I tell people I enjoy cycling they instantly think I have got a road bike and wear lycra – nothing could be further from the truth as I am very much an amateur cyclist. I often get odd looks from my fellow Norfolk cyclists as I pass them (or to be more precise, they pass me) on the country roads surrounding the sleepy town I live in. They all very much fall into the stereotypical view of a cyclist – shiny helmets, luminous lycra and expensive looking road bikes. I’m not sure if the look they give me is disdain, pity or sympathy but it’s probably due to how I look compared to them – no helmet (I wouldn’t think of ever cycling in London without one but in the country on quiet roads I don’t feel the need for one), jeans and a fleece, and instead of an slick road bike I ride…a woman’s mountain bike! As the saying goes my bike is definitely built for comfort rather than speed.

 Image: My bike leant against an old fashioned road sign on a typical Norfolk country lane

I’ve promised myself a proper bike for years but like many things I promise myself it’s not something I’ve got round to yet. I’m very pragmatic anyway so I don’t really feel that I’m missing out too much by riding the bike I do. I’d like to be able to go faster and look better as I do so, and I could do without the bell comically chiming as I go over bumpy bits of road, but it does its job. I quite like the fact that it doesn’t look like I’m taking it seriously anyway. I compare my approach to cycling as similar to that of the brilliant sports and nature writer Simon Barnes' philosophy to bird watching. Barnes describes how simple it is to be what he calls a 'bad bird watcher' – look out of the window, see a bird, enjoy it. That’s my view on cycling – jump on your bike, go anywhere you like, enjoy it.

I’ve always lived fairly close to the countryside and cycling has been the best way for me to explore my surroundings. I was fortunate to grow up in the East side of Ipswich, where fields, farms and villages like Martlesham were only a 10 minute bike ride away. When I lived in Cambridge (where cycling is by far the most popular form of transport) I was even closer to the country, with the River Cam just a couple of minutes from my house. From there I enjoyed many long bike rides along the river to the surrounding villages. Now in sedate Downham Market, I’m also within easy reach of the countryside. I’ll be honest in saying that it’s not exactly the most picturesque countryside in England – Constable Country, the Cotswolds or the Yorkshire Dales, West Norfolk certainly is not. But it’s still the outside and it is freedom.

I’ve got a nice 12 mile circuit that is becoming a regular weekend routine. Starting at the railway station I cycle up the small hill (heart and lungs going already) into town, past the newsagents and the pensioners with their copies of the Daily Mail, and turn left to join the road to King’s Lynn to the north. After a couple of miles I turn west towards Stow Bridge, stopping when I get to the bridge itself and taking in the view, and often also taking a photo of, the River Great Ouse. 

Rivers can be very emotive places; they look inspiring in the sunshine and moody under a murky sky. One of the great things about the Fens is the sky and on a sunny day it appears to go on forever as there are very few landmarks amongst the miles upon miles of flat farmland. From there I continue west along quiet country roads before then heading south towards Barroway Drove, along a few miles of completely deserted road. I’m more likely to see a country bird then I am a person or a car and this is probably the most enjoyable leg of my route. It is here, in complete isolation, away from everything and under the huge Fenland sky that I feel the most free. 

From there it’s onto the small village of Barroway Drove and back to signs of humanity as I pass large farm houses with names like The Forge, The Birches, and The Old Saddlery. Then it’s back east towards Downham Market, often stopping at my local charity bookshop, before back home for tea. From the corpses of rusting farm machinery to huge flocks of birds singing and dancing in the endless sky, I get great enjoyment by the sights and sounds that accompany my bike ride. You don’t get to see the first blossom on trees or even dead birds by the road in the robotic spinning classes that are favoured by many time-precious Londoners, which is why I think going for a bike ride beats spinning in a gym every time.

Freedom is a common feeling associated with cycling – from kids riding their first bikes away from the safety of their parents and onto unlimited new adventures, to Situationist inspired students holding their bicycles in the air as a symbol of protest during the 1968 Paris riots – riding a bike means to be free. Katie Melua sang that there are 'nine million bicycles in Beijing': that used to be a strength of the hardworking and dedicated Chinese – self-reliant and with no need to rely on the western addiction of oil. Sadly, with the economic and social booms happening in China, it’s probably more likely that there will be nine million cars in Beijing soon.

I’m an explorer: wherever I go I immediately want to check out the surrounding area. Walking is a great way to do that and I certainly do a lot of that, but to really get out and about, to explore places that you’ve only seen on a map, to get a better understanding of your tiny little corner of England, then getting on your bike is by far the best way to do it. It’s also great exercise, makes you feel good inside and lifts your spirits. To paraphrase the former Tory M.P. Norman Tebbit, if anyone is fed up with life then there’s not much better advice than to 'get on your bike!'

Mini Book Review: Straight White Male by John Niven

Straight White Male by John Niven
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I'm a big John Niven fan and have now read all his novels except for his thriller Cold Hands. Kill Your Friends was an amazing debut, like a British American Psycho, I liked it so much that I didn't think he could better it. Then I read his next novel The Second Coming and thought that was equally as good. His third novel The Amateurs was also good but I didn't enjoy it quite as much as his first two, so I wasn't sure what to expect from Straight White Male.

There's a quote from Catlin Moran on the cover: "I cried three times and laughed fifty. Magnificent." That's quite a cover quote to live up to but the book does so and more. I came close to crying three times and I lost count the number of times I LOL'd (or at least inwardly smirked to myself).

Niven's writing about the minds of men is magnificent. Some of his phrases are stunning, especially when he writes about the wiring of men. I didn't think it would be possible after his debut but Straight White Male is the best thing John Niven has written and is one of the best novels I've read for years.

View all my reviews

The Trials of a Commuter

I drove to work yesterday. That’s a standard practice for millions of British workers but it hasn’t been for me. Not since my company moved down to London 3 and half years ago. In that time I have only driven to work 3 times previously, so I enjoyed the variety that driving gave me yesterday.

When I used to commute to Cambridge I got bored of having to rely on the unpredictability of trains, train drivers, fellow commuters, train tracks, British weather and those who thought that jumping in front of a train would be a good way to end it all. Not being in control of my destiny (or at least my journey back home) frustrated me. When I got a job in Peterborough and had to drive for the first time it was exciting. Certainly scary as despite passing my test 2 years previously I hadn’t driven regularly since then and definitely not for long distances. I literally had to teach myself to drive again.

But once I got the hang of it driving was exciting. I am by no means whatsoever a car fanatic; people who talk about cars bore me. But once I got over the nerves and anxiety I found driving enjoyable. I enjoyed the fact that I was in control of my own destiny (or at least my own destination) and the sheer buzz that I got from being in control of a potential one tonne death machine. It is testament to the wonders of the human subconscious that millions of people can drive harmoniously every day, without incident and without even really thinking about it.

The fundamental difference between driving to work and getting the train to work is adrenalin. Driving along a winding fenland road, an icy river to your left and an articulated lorry coming at you on your right produces adrenalin. Overtaking a tractor at 50 miles an hour in fourth gear (I drive a not-even-a-one-litre Vauxhall Corsa so need to drop down a gear if I have to accelerate quickly) in fog with ever brightening foglights coming at you produces adrenalin. Making a split second decision on whether you should pull out at a junction and then having to press the accelerator pedal hard down to the floor when you realise you probably shouldn’t have as there is a much faster car behind you produces adrenalin. Adrenalin is fun. It makes us feel alive. I am by no means an adrenalin junkie but I enjoy the small thrills of driving my (very modest) car. Sitting on a train for hours every day does not produce adrenalin. It produces the opposite of adrenalin.

What’s the opposite of adrenalin? Calmness?  Depression? Lethargy? Probably lethargy.  Sitting on the same train for hours a day is bloody tiring! Whist it is easy to just sit there and be transported to your destination as you do whatever stationary activity you like to best – reading, writing, listing to music, eating, drinking, sleeping, talking, knitting, doing your makeup, marking your student’s work, doing your own work, or playing on your smartphone (by far the most popular choice of my fellow commuters) – it is often just so, well boring.

Sitting on a train for hours every day really takes it out of you. For the last 3 and half years I have spent nearly 4 hours a day travelling to and from work. People ask me how I do it. People ask me if I am mad (I’m not quite sure if they are actually joking or not when they ask this). People ask me why I do it. The last question is the hardest one for me to answer.

Hardness, that is what it comes down to – you have to be mentally very hard to be able to take this daily punishment for a prolonged period of time. I see it in the eyes of my fellow long-distance commuters – the same steely determination, the same black rings around their eyes, and the same sense of resignation that this is how their life is and that it will probably always be like this.

 Image: the solemn faces of every day commuters

But it’s not all bad of course. If like me then you enjoy solitary activities (reading, writing, listening to music, attempting to play the guitar), then the long distance train commute is like escaping into your own private world every day. I’ve done almost everything it is possible to do on a train – read many books, magazines and newspapers, listened to hours of music, listened to dozens of podcasts, written blogs, done work (official and unofficial), watched films, played games on my iPad, made calls to friends and family, chatted to fellow commuters, attempted to sleep (with their horrid florescent lighting, hard seats and minimal leg room it is as if trains have been designed specifically so it is impossible to sleep on them) and messed around with the various phones I’ve owned over the years. I would have liked to have been able to have practiced guitar on the train but that would have had to involve the guarantee of a completely empty carriage to myself every day.

Variety is the spice of life however and despite my attempts to add as much variation to my train journeys as possible it is always good to have a change. That’s why the rare thrill of driving to work gave me so much enjoyment yesterday. The best bit? The car stereo. My stereo is as modest as my car but I still had great fun in selecting the 2 CDs that would accompany on my 2 hour round trip to Peterborough and back. From my Blur 21 box set (released to mark the 21^st anniversary of the band 2 years ago) I chose the Modern Life Is Rubbish rarities CD for the way there and the studio album itself for the way back. Motoring up the A47 in beautiful sunshine I got particular enjoyment from blasting out the Wassailing Song and tapping the steering wheel to the 3/4 time of this unique song. It was certainly a unique experience.

The reason why I drove to work yesterday? Because the ever-changing powers that be in my company have decided to move my team back to Peterborough from London. So it looks like I am going to have to get used to driving again: I know that I’ll enjoy it to start with but eventually it will become a chore. That’s how it was before for me – after 2 and half years of driving for nearly 2 hours a day I welcomed the change that commuting on a train gave me. Now after 3 and a half years of commuting by train and Tube for nearly 4 hours a day I welcome the relief and difference that the shorter car journey will give me. Despite the relocation it looks like I will still get to visit London regularly for my job – perhaps not as much as I would like to but still enough to break up my week.

I look forward to revisiting my CD collection and blasting out my favourite albums in my car, and to also being able to continue enjoying the solitary hours on the train where I can read and write. It’s been very hard work to get to where I am today – the physical and mental pain, the frustration, the sleep deprivation, the reliance on caffeine and paracetamol, the missed opportunities, the sacrifices, the swallowing of pride, the sheer stamina required to get through it all. Finally after all of that I feel like my hard work is starting to pay off.

Why I Love Books

It’s Valentine’s Day so I thought I’d write about my love of…books! When I say I love books, I really do – I have an emotional attachment to them and cannot imagine my life without them. I love everything about them – how they look, how they feel, even how they smell. I love how they look stood together on a bookshelf and one of my proudest ever purchases was my recent shiny white IKEA bookshelf, where finally after years of being anonymously stacked in cupboards and any free spaces, I now have a space to admire my book collection.

 Image: my book (and music) collection proudly displayed on my IKEA shelving unit

One of my dreams is to have a house where there is a massive wall that has built in shelves full of books. It would take a lifetime’s dedication to book buying to fill it but that sounds good to me. I regret selling, giving away and lending (to people who never returned them) many of the books that I have read – my current collection is of course only a fraction of all the books I have ever read. A person’s bookshelf tells you a lot about them – mine has everything from sports and music biographies (lots of cricketers and 90s musicians) to modern classics (1984, American Psycho), football programmes (games I have been to and some from the year I was born) to educational books (from website management for my job to the brilliant Succeed For Yourself by Richard Denny).

I love exploring other people’s bookshelves and whenever I visit my mum I usually find myself picking up a book she inherited from her mum – the Modern Housewife's Encyclopaedia. Published in the early 1950’s, it is a brilliant instruction manual for the ‘modern’ housewife – well the housewife from the 1950’s. There are instructions on how the modern housewife should behave towards her husband and even better there are illustrations to explain the point. My favourite of these is of the husband mowing the lawn and smoking a pipe whilst the wife is in the kitchen wearing a pinafore and getting dinner ready. I think it is beautiful. It is a historical document of how people lived (or at least were expected to live) but more than that it is a physical piece of history. When I pick up the book it is like I am connecting with my nana. I am holding something that she once held. The orange staining of the pages is from the cigarettes that she smoked. It is the closest thing I have to being able to travel back in time and understand how my nana lived her life.

A few years ago I discovered an even more precious book than this. After my nana died, my granddad carried on living in their council house until his death 10 years later. My uncle then took over the tenancy until he then died 8 years after that. Helping my mum to clear out the house I found a very exciting discovery – my nana’s diary from 1983. I don’t know why my nana kept a diary in 1983, and as far as I know she never kept one from any other year, but I am very glad that she did. I burnt my arm in 1983 and thanks to her diary I am now able to know exactly when it happened. More importantly I have an insight into my nana’s life – daily trips to the shops, cooking every day, worrying about her son (my uncle) and the hard work that she did every day to keep her house in order. It sounds like a very boring existence and it probably was. I felt quite sad for my nana when I finished reading it.

My love of books is down to my mum and I will always be grateful to her from that. She read to me and encouraged me to read. Most significantly my mum used to work part-time in a library. Being a single mother my mum was unable to organise or afford to pay for anyone to look after me when she worked during the school holidays so instead I used to hang out in the library all day. The children’s book section of Gainsborough Library in Ipswich was like a home from home to me in the early 90s and I read a lot of books there. I also learnt about categorising books and even the Dewey catalogue system, I used to stamp books for customers and helped put the books away correctly. The most memorable book I read from this time was called Jeremy Blew It. Naturally I picked it for the title but I enjoyed the story – from what I remember it was set in America and was about Jeremy and his friend Yo-less (so called because he never said ‘yo’) as they negotiated their way through the challenges of High School.

Children’s books are magical things as they open up the wonder and beauty of books to children. If I ever have the pleasure of having a child of my own then I will make sure that they have a bookshelf with as many classic children’s books as I can fill it with. From Spot Says Woof to Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl and C.S. Lewis I would get great pleasure out of passing on the love of books to the next generation. 

Blyton’s Secret Seven and Famous Five Books and Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia books really connected with me when I was a child. The books were regrettably probably sold at car boot sales for pennies – I wish I had kept them instead as would love to pick them up again today. One of the few children’s books I still have is called the Book of Myths and Legends. It was a favourite of mine in my early teens and has been read so much that the spine and cover has completely fallen off. Picking it up again takes me back to my early teens and reading the book at a time that I should have been asleep. Over the years I wrote little notes in it so it’s great to look at it now and get an insight into my younger self.

Because that is the thing that most connects me to books – their physical presence. That’s why I can’t get into e-books. I have tried – I have Kindle installed on my iPad and have downloaded some of the classic novels that you can get for free. But I just can’t get into it. I want to hold a book, I want to feel the pages as I turn them, and I want to feel a connection with it. I just don’t get that with e-books. I think they’re a great invention but they aren’t for me. That’s because I love books. Not just reading. I love books and I wouldn’t want to live in a world without them.

Margaret Thatcher and Hitler are in a lift…

"Margaret Thatcher and Hitler are in a lift. You get in. You’ve got a gun but only one bullet. Who do you shoot? Margaret Thatcher."

- Primary school playground joke, Ipswich, circa 1989.

I was about 8 years old when a boy came up to me in my primary school playground and told me this joke. I didn’t get it. How could the leader of our country be hated more than the worst person in history? That question is what got me interested in politics.

The boy who told me the joke had no doubt heard it from his parents but it sums up how passionate people were about politics in the 1980s that such a joke was told by children under the age of ten.

The 80s was about extremes: the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, the decade when capitalism undoubtedly defeated socialism for good in the western world. The person most responsible for that in Britain was Margaret Thatcher – this is why she is loved and hated in equal measure and with so much passion.

Divisive is the word that best describes Thatcher.  In the last decade those extremes of feeling were buried deep in society, long forgotten until she died on Monday and they bubbled back up to the surface again. The range of emotions from the British public is as extreme now as it was when she was in power 30 years ago – it’s either ‘a great lady has died, very sad’ or ‘ding, dong, the witch is dead!’
 

The response in the British television and print media has largely been favourable – you only remember the good bits when someone dies of course. It is good timing for the Conservative-led government as it has distracted public attention and media coverage from their recent welfare cuts to the poorest people in society. Cameron is only likely to benefit in the short term from association to this mainly favourable media coverage around Thatcher.

Social media is this decade’s fundamental form of communication and it’s funny that there is a third kind of response to Thatcher’s death:  who’s Thatcher? I was one of ‘Thatcher’s children’ – children born into a Britain who have only ever known Thatcher as their leader. Now of course, there are millions of Twitter and Facebook users who were born after she was kicked out of Number 10 by her fellow Conservative party members. The best tweet I’ve seen about this was “Why is everyone saying that Cher’s dead? #thatchersdead”. 

A genius response to the Twitter generation’s lack of knowledge about the Iron Lady was by @beardedgenius who has produced Thatcher for One Direction fans:

There are of course many jokes doing the rounds, my favourite being the coal related ones:

‘Margaret Thatcher’s final wish was to be cremated. Unfortunately, we’ve no coal left.’

‘Mrs Thatcher arrives at Hell and is greeted by Jimmy Savile who says to her “Now then, you’re here for screwing minors too?”’

Thatcher pretty much destroyed British industry, privatised everything and taught us that the most important thing to be in life is to be greedy. The quote that sums her up the best is by her in 1983:

 "There is no such thing as society". 

In other words, look out for yourself, don’t care about anyone else, do whatever it takes to get to the top.

Many people admire what they see as the beneficial parts of this philosophy:  the single-minded, determined, go-getter mentality that will get you far without any interference from the State. An equal number of people hate the negative parts of this philosophy:  if you’re not able then you don’t matter, you’ll be left to yourself and if you can’t make it on your own then the State isn’t going to be there to help you.

Thatcher is a woman who created a country of extremes and of divisions. Britain in 2013 is as extreme and divided as it has been since the 1980s. That is why Thatcher’s recent death has provoked such a diverse reaction from society (if of course, it exists).