Teletubbies in the Quiet Zone

I spent most of Friday attempting to manage some pretty debilitating anxiety. I worked all morning, with the plan that I would go for a walk in the afternoon but when the time came I just wasn’t in that space. If the weather had been cooler I would have taken myself off for a stomp and walked off whatever was ailing me, but it was so very hot and even just walking over to check the post was an effort. The day before I had been in the right frame of mind to slow myself down to a pace that could cope with the melting heat and embrace it, but as the sweat dripped down my neck I knew that if I pushed myself I would just end up feeling worse, so I gave in and stayed in.

Sometimes moods can be alleviated. Sometimes you can push through stuff. Sometimes you can distract yourself and sometimes you just have to accept that for whatever reason this is a mood you’re going to have to sit with for a while until it’s done whatever it needs to do. When those moments are upon me, I have learnt that fighting the feelings are the surest way to disaster of one kind or another. If I’m fighting someone else there’s always a fifty fifty chance I’m going to win. Fighting myself is a hiding to nothing.

I read for a bit. I worked for a bit. I cleaned the bathroom. I napped for a bit and I sat and stared at the wall for a bit. Whenever whatever I was doing stopped working, I did something else.

Eventually Jason appeared from where he had been holed up in the corner of our bedroom that is his office. He said: ‘I’m in a foul mood. Let’s have a wander and get some dinner and see if that helps any.’ He always has good plans. The temperature had dropped quite a bit by this time and a breeze had sprung up, which meant that everything was already a thousand times more tolerable.

We jumped on the DLR and went over to Royal Victoria Dock where I had been the day before. I’d noticed a Thai restaurant on my travels and we love Thai food, so we went there. It was right by the floating bar, where people were still drinking and other, more adventurous people were still water skiing. The children who had thronged the paddling pool were long gone, so it was much quieter.

We ate delicious food and by the time we had full bellies and had grumped about our respective days we were both feeling much better, so we decided to hop on the cable car and go across to the O2. It was still light and there were no queues so it was the perfect time for it. I’d been on it before with the kids but Jason hadn’t.

He loved it. I did not.

I didn’t develop a fear of heights until I was in my mid twenties. I discovered my newly minted fear at the top of the Stratosphere in Las Vegas when I waltzed calmly out of the lifts and then proceeded to sweat myself into jelly and clutch the sides of the walls thinking I might have to be stretchered out. It was a bad and entirely unexpected do. Since then I have rarely had reason to do anything that involves me being high in the air so I tend to downplay how awful it is or even forget. I do vividly remember enduring an excruciating trip on the London Eye with the children and a gondola full of strangers in which Oscar lost his iPod shuffle and demanded to go back round and I nearly burst into tears at the stress of it all.

I don’t remember the first time on the cable car being terrible, but this time was not my favourite or my best. Luckily it is a very short and fairly speedy journey, most of which I spent with my eyes closed, clutching the banquette with sweaty fingers and being grateful we weren’t sharing the pod with a load of tourists. Jason however, absolutely loved it, so if you come and visit and want a guide, he can do that bit with you.

The O2 is a funny place. It’s a weird oasis that has sprung up round the ill fated millennium dome, which thankfully now has a new lease of life. Every time I see it I still think of Dom Joly shouting: ‘HALLO! I’M ON MY MOBILE! I’M IN THE QUIET ZONE!’ which makes me smile. All around the venue are bars and restaurants, a designer shopping village and an extremely fancy university which I had never heard of until I looked it up for this post. Ravensbourne University is, it claims, a creative university with strong links to industry. It’s the most stylish university building I’ve ever seen. We both agreed that if we had turned up at this uni straight from our respective and very boring home towns we would have felt like Dorothy when she wakes up in Oz.

Stepping out from the cable car exit, you’re in a different London altogether. Sharp blocks of flats with more art from The Line peppered liberally around their base. Playgrounds that look like art. Art that looks like playgrounds. The tessellations of the Ravensbourne University buildings catch the evening sun as it descends, fractalling up and out into the dark. At the end of pathways you catch glimpses of the mushroom of the O2 with people clambering up on top of it in a line, like hikers to the moon.

To the front, amidst the container buildings are the mad architectural happenings of the Design District. There’s a food hall shaped like tethered clouds. I almost expected a Teletubby to be serving burritos it was so surreal. The place was buzzing when we were there because there was free jazz on offer. We stopped to listen and decided that we still hate jazz, so we moved on. Curving under a rainbow, star arch made by bonkers jewellers Tatty Devine were buildings with punched in windows and amazing rooflines, squares with intricately patterned floors where local skaters were arcing through, filming each other’s moves and colour everywhere you looked. It felt like we had accidentally moved to Scandinavia.

There’s so much to see, it’s easy to forget it’s actually packed into a relatively small area. When you decide to leave, all you have to do is walk across to the bus station and real life comes knocking, grey and noisy, same as it ever was. It was nice to dream for a while though.