Reflections 31. Rebel Corners

Call To Action

I’m sitting in a hotel lobby in London as I write this, my favourite hotel lobby, a place where my children used to bang on the metal stools like drums on Sunday mornings. The guests of the hotel, mostly childless, were still in their beds, and those of us with toddlers, living in small flats nearby, had to venture somewhere, anywhere that was open, because our babies woke at 5am, so that’s when the day began. 

It’s a corner of London which many think of as cool, or hip, or aloof, but if you live here it’s not like that at all. It’s populated with people who came searching for something, or maybe they ran away from something else. You’re surrounded by people pushing for things, trying things, seeking something or creating something. Because of that, there’s an acceptance for non-conventionality which has always felt like freedom to me. 

I first found myself here on a lonely Christmas Day, perhaps the loneliest of my life, the break-down of my first marriage, a relationship which was never right but seemed sensible at the time; something rational at the end of a series of personal tragedies that left me without a lot of self-worth. At the end of it all I sat on a sofa in this lobby on Christmas Day and read a book, feeling cocooned in anonymity, in the knowledge that this hotel had seen far more interesting and more scandalous downfalls than my own. 

I stood in the same lobby for 8 hours straight one day, years later, with my second baby in a harness, rocking her as she slept soundly, stroking her soft little head. Sitting was out of the question, so I stood at one of those bars, trying to summon up the courage to write something, anything at all. I’d always wanted to write, but I didn’t manage it that day; it was just past the limit of my courage to attempt it at that time. I sat ten metres away from that bar last Summer with a book editor, after I’d been approached out of the blue by two different publishing houses. I was deciding which one I’d like to work with, which felt extraordinary, but not out of place. If you stay quiet and listen here in this lobby, you’ll hear people making all kinds of plans and schemes; personal leaps for attention or creativity, attempts to make a difference. 

This hotel lobby is a dream place, a place of big ideas, familiar but potent, and it allows people to see things differently and wish for more. It’s a rebel corner. 

I wasn’t meant to be in this hotel lobby today; I had been due to speak on a panel at the Harrogate Literature Festival, in a different kind of rebel corner altogether. A room where people come together with their thoughts and unapologetically speak about the things in their heads - about politics and people and care and anger. I’d been looking forward to this and wondering how the event would unfold when I arrived at King’s Cross station yesterday afternoon.

It was immediately clear that chaos was unfolding; the sort where you can perceive the stress even as you’re 100 metres away through the jostling and impatience. It transpired that the trains were cancelled because of poor weather, and as people started queuing for answers at the ticket office with the palpable sense of things becoming heightened. I looked up and saw this extraordinary structure, beautiful arches high above our heads. I thought about the ambition and the hope with which this station had been built; all this effort connecting us all. Then I looked around and saw the growing crowd of angry people, the scores of overflowing concessions selling overpriced food, the “family waiting room” which was too small and already too full, and the ticket office where staff were calmly and painstakingly trying to impart information and keep everyone calm. 

I went online to see what was happening; first to the train websites and then to Twitter and found some people legitimately lamenting the stress of their days - they had specific difficulties or were travelling with children, or sick relatives in tow. Tensions are running extremely high right now. Peppered among these complaints were other messages; unpleasant ones directed at the railway staff, and also some that took this as an opportunity to push hard right-wing political rhetoric about immigration (saying things like “if woke people think immigration will be fine, they should come to Kings Cross”). Our national infrastructure is a mess, politics is a mess, and people are angry, embittered, alone and afraid. The tension in King’s Cross station wasn’t simply about the weather; all the other frustrations are now seeping in and permeate into our everyday life. When the ticketing staff suggested we leave the station for the time being, I was only too happy to walk out. 

So I didn’t make it to Harrogate, I made it back to that hotel lobby to sit and think and write.