As I struggle through the gates onto Platform 14 at London Liverpool Street, burdened with luggage and the now essential cup of Coffee that has wormed its way into my regular routine over the years, I take a look at the train waiting in front of me. Its face and sides generously adorned with spray-paint iconography. Illegible to the peaceful people I wish to call my own; to me it is clear as newsprint. The garish and violent conjurations bedecked before me are a message, in what I now realise is my native tongue: “Welcome to Essex. Here there be monsters.”
Though graffiti may have spread worldwide and is found commonly in most every city in the world, it is never as broadly open and confrontational as it is to the lands east of the M25. In the Fenlands I now call home, you may find tagging on park benches or etched into windows; a small symbol of youthful rebellion in an otherwise fairly, ‘old-English’ neck of the woods. Where the letter-boxes stand like proud Oaks despite the ever growing chainsaws of UPS. But in Essex, the graffiti serves as war-paint. Just like their geographical Iceni ancestors, the graffiti is an outward show of presence. It is everywhere, on every flat service. Trains run like literal telegraph lines carrying messages from Shoeburyness to Stratford.* Though it is reported that the average Briton is caught on camera at least 70 times in one day, the average Essexite is probably in view of that many items of graffiti at any moment.
I have been in the city of gleaming spires for too long now... wait, that’s Oxford isn’t it? Um. Hang on...
I have been in the quasi-city of clear disjointedness for too long now and am unable to properly acclimatise myself to lands that were once always around me. Though it is dark outside the train I know what is out there: fields, factories and failed tourism spots. But for someone who now lives in a fairly well maintained and vibrant student city, the realisation of the trouble out of the window now is hard to fathom. Drawing nearer to the coast brings a freshness of sea air heavily dulled with the twinge of decay from once vibrant but now vagrant businesses that have never kept up with the change in mentality after the decline of the Victorian era. What remains now are disused buildings; pale and wan. The idea of bright colour still clings to the weakened walls but it is lost like the custom it once saw. Everything is now geared towards London. Essex today is simply the residential extension of The City, with the only modern buildings being Supermarkets and shopping centres like Lakeside. The joys that once were and the joys that could be are overlooked in favour of the Commute. And thus the graffiti grows.
The people here are tough. The train contains a pretty extensive cross-section of the county’s inhabitants. Either short-haired and in suits, staring at laptops or brooding and shell-suited, hiding their eyes with shadowy peaks. Quiet and sullen, keeping themselves to themselves as they come to the end of another day. Eccentricities are rare here. Tweed stops at Audley End and only starts again once you hit Canterbury. And whilst there is certainly a creative streak, it highlights the harshness of reality, the tribulations of life. This is where the Emos and the Grime-Hop artists ferment their grief-stricken renditions. Essexites are strugglers, but perseverers. They battle on; ironic, gallows-humour to break up the daily grind any way they can. These are scholars of a different sort; alumni of Hard Knocks. And they come out the better for it. Certainly better than I have with my Anglia Ruskin degree.
Home again, then. To the place that time seems to have forgot; the land underneath the apparent “reality” of the TV series. Half happy for the familiarity and half despairing at it’s sad decline. We file off the train with nary a word spoken and head towards our respective rides. Stepping into the waiting car, I let out a mild sigh, knowing that, in truth, it’s good to be back.
*Although not on the same line or rail company. You would need to get off at West Ham and get the Jubilee line to Stratford from there.
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