Its a foreign country, innit bruv

Yesterday I travelled up to London to attend the pre-assessment clinic at the hospital where I'm to have my surgery. This was quite interesting. The first thing that struck me was that all the people awaiting surgery and who were there for the clinic were about twenty years older than me.

So the first thing was a talk from one of the cardiac nurses about the anatomy and physiology of the heart, followed by what actually happens from admission to discharge. Now because of my job, these two elements were 'grandmother, suck eggs' time.

The last element was a talk by a chap who had the surgery four years ago. This was interesting and there were some useful tips. In fact he is the dad of one of the people who laughed at me in the CCU when I told them that I needed an ECG when I had my original MI.

After the various talks, there were the tests. Chest x-ray, blood tests, ECG (again!) and then a one to one with a cardiac specialist nurse and the pharmacist. So now that all that's completed, it’s just a case of going in for the surgery, which the mutterings yesterday were that it will be in four to six weeks. After a relatively painless five hours, it was time to head home.

I'd travelled up by train as I thought it would be easier than morning rush hour in a car and trying to find somewhere to park. This gave me the opportunity to 'people watch' and I became aware of just how different London has become compared to the 'Wilds of Kent'.

I lived on the outskirts of London for years , until 18 years ago, but just cannot believe how London and Londoners have changed. Firstly, there's the people. I had to travel into London Bridge and then back out again through Peckham and was able to observe the people in the streets. They all seem to be evolving into the same person. They all look alike and they all dress alike. There seems to be no difference between age, creed or colour. The only slight difference is where gender is concerned, and even then all the women/girls seemed to be wearing cycling short type things that came to their knees and skirts that didn't, giving the impression that they were wearing both trousers and skirts.

Maybe it was the time that I spent at Down House, but I also thought that even the people themselves are evolving, to the extent that before long there will be no distinct ethnic groups. There will be no Black, Caucasian, Asian or Hispanic, all will be replaced with Caublasianic.

Even language. I watch some of the American shows where they subtitle people because without the subtitles, the dialect that they are speaking would be unintelligible to most English speakers. And on the train yesterday there was a group of schoolboys having a conversation. They were of mixed ethnicity, black and white, and I was sat and trying to work out what language it was that they were speaking when I realised that it was English (of a sort) but was so interspersed with 'Ya get me's and 'innit's that it resembled a little known Eastern European language.

I also looked around the areas that we were passing through. The hospital is not exactly in the nicest of areas. In fact, most hospitals seem to have been founded in the poorest areas and getting to the one where I needed to go meant passing through some really depressed areas.

A lot of London was destroyed when the city was bombed during the war, and it seems that the post-war architects felt that the best way to replace the old 'slum tenements' was with shiny new tower blocks. However, what seems to have happened is that these tower blocks have simply turned into high rise 'slum tenements', with there being a greater population in the same area because of the high-rise factor, and the situation is similar to that which can be found in historical records of the differences between the various socio-economical groups in the 19th Century, complete with no-go areas. The only differences are that the lowest socio-economic group is, in most cases, more educated and financially more secure than their historical counterparts.

It is also possible to see how the city has expanded since that time, just by travelling on a train. The hospital where I am having to go was opened in 1840 in an old workhouse and a railway station was opened very close to it in 1865. It is a typical boxy, below street level, urban railway station, like most railway stations that were opened at that time.

I travelled back on what, according to Wikipedia, was originally the London, Chatham & Dover Railway, but is now just another line from London to Kent, but not the 'Mainline'. The architectural style of the stations gives a very obvious clue as to how London has expanded in the 150 years or so that the railway has been around. The majority of the stations in 'old' London are the 'below street level boxy' ones, but as you travel further out, the architectural style changes to a more 'countrified' style. It seems odd to look out of the window at a country station, which, when the train sets off, reveals that it’s in the middle of an urban sprawl.

When the 'country' does come, it’s not, as you would expect, a gradual process. There is urban sprawl, there is a clump of line side trees, there are fields. It is here that the country stations look more at home. One station, I forget which, when we stopped at it looked like something straight out of a Sherlock Holmes novel. In fact, the only thing missing was a Hansom parked in the forecourt.

Perhaps that distinct cut-off between city and country is the reason that there seems to be the two types of people that inhabit this part of the world, Londoners and everyone else, but how long before we, just 30 miles away from London, are swallowed up and become just another suburb.

L8rs. Ya get me ma bruvvas and sistas, innit.