Entry #7: Chelsea

September 23, 2019

Chelsea is part of the smallest borough in London, most famous for its extravagant five-day flower show held on the grounds of the Royal Chelsea Hospital. Alongside 157,000 visitors, the annual event is often attended by members of the British Royal Family.

A borough with royal status and a flair for horticulture? Très posh.

Next door in Kensington Gardens lies the royal residence, Kensington Palace. It’s where Queen Victoria was born and Prince Harry and Meghan Markle currently reside. The streets connecting Kensington and Chelsea are teeming with schoolchildren and daycare centers.

There are toddlers in white and blue plaid outfits quietly playing on one field, while older girls in red and brown uniforms learn cricket on another. At the bus stops, teenage boys - most of whom have yet to hit their growth spurt - huddle and shout nonsensically over one another.

The high streets are equally noisy. Though here, chicken shops are swapped for Five Guys and artisan cafes, the corner shops give way to designer stores, and the nail salons are bright and inviting. Sitting outside South Kensington station, I watch as women stroll by - older, long and lean, their grey hair soft and sparse. They’re drenched in perfume, dressed in floral blouses and linen trousers, with just a light touch of accessories: an antique hairpin, emerald earrings, a tiny diamond on their pinkie.

I think about the shirt I recently ruined at work, stained with bleach while cleaning. I tell my friend how annoyed I am and she laughs, “First world problems, go buy a new one.” She’s right, I think, it’s just a plain gray tee, hardly 10 quid from Zara.

But five coffees make up for the purchase of that one shirt, and five of those shirts add up to a month's electricity bill. While one hour of work will pay off for that one shirt, in that hour, I will have used over forty liters of milk to make god knows how many coffees. Not to mention, the shirt purchased will have probably been made under some questionable labor conditions too so it’s quintessentially a system of who gets to screw who over first.

As I continue walking, I notice something all affluent neighborhoods in London seem to share: constant house renovations. Every other house in Kensington, Belgravia, or Chelsea is under construction. If you wander through the smaller lanes - Whitehead’s Grove, St. Loo’s Avenue - you’ll find beautiful mews and iconic Tudor houses. The streets are eerily quiet. The only people around are construction workers, gardeners, and cleaners, all moving discreetly. Not a single bird sings. It’s Edward Scissorhands’ perfect pastel neighborhood.

And I suppose it makes sense. If you can build your dream house, why wouldn’t you? If you can become your dream self, why wouldn’t you? I snap a few shots of these picturesque homes, but I am too caffeinated to be here and my thoughts are racing, scatty at first then all at once, deep-diving into a vortex of self-pity.

I am tired of my hands smelling like bleach after work. I am sick of scrubbing coffee stains from my shoes. I never want to see a mop again.

There are three types of wages in the UK - minimum, living, and the undiscussed. While paychecks are rarely a point of discussion amongst colleagues or friends, there is something to be said about people living in London, who work low paying jobs, and those who hit the five-figure mark and never look back again. The minimum wage for people under the age of 24 is £7.70 per hour, which increases to a whopping £8.21 once you hit your quarter-life crisis. The London Living Wage is £10.55 per hour, but in 2018, findings show that 1 in 5 employees are being paid below living wage. But London has its charms..its cultural scene is magnetic, a siren call that somehow convinces you the hustle might just be worth it.

In the 19th century, Chelsea was a hub for artists, including Oscar Wilde. As author of The Importance of Being Earnest and The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde’s reputation was held in high esteem and his network large. He was at his literary peak when he was charged with gross indecency for his relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas and sent to two years imprisonment. His accomplishments no longer received praise, nor was there any hope for future work to materialize. He died in poverty three years after his release.

Wilde believed in creating art for art’s sake. But by the age of 23, he was in dire debt, and his spending on clothes, music, and china finally led him into bankruptcy at 40. It’s no secret that artists have a reputation for being terrible with money. Except Wilde also understood, as many creatives do, the importance of social currency. He may have died without a penny to his name, but the favors he called on in his final years provided him with lodging, food, and petty cash for booze.

Today, that prevailing assumption continues. Artists presumptuously create art for art's sake, and while it may be a difficult financial strain, if you love your craft enough, you’ll make it. Plus it's a lot more exciting to have the next project lined up, and easier to maintain the illusion of being productive than to do meaningful work and on top of it, actually get paid. Particularly, when social currency remains such a big player in the luck-to-success game.

I think about what this means for my younger sisters, who are ten years behind me. They’re at the age where they’re learning how to deal with money, watching my every move. Both are creative, but when asked about their future careers, they give the “right” answers, not the honest ones. Their questions to me are brutally direct: What do you actually do? Is that a real job? How much do you make? When are you getting married? Will you work when you have kids? How will you do that?

The reality is that the creative sector is a strange, unpredictable beast. It’s a world dominated by freelancers, where unpaid work has become shockingly normal. People in these industries are often labeled as resilient, resourceful, and sometimes, power-hungry, but the truth is, we are stuck repeating entry-level tasks without any guarantee of payment - or progress. At job interviews, you might mention the projects you were part of, maybe flash some names of the people you worked with, but no one asks: did you do it as a favor? How many favors have you been doing this month? And you are left wondering whether this next gig will be a favor too.

But I am less concerned about how I make my means to an end, and more about what I am teaching my sisters. As I take a good look around, I wonder what the perception of money is to the kids at elementary schools in Chelsea. What are they being taught and who is teaching them?

It’s ironic being in a city where you are able to walk up the royal family's home and still fish your pockets for change in order to get to your own home. The strange contrasts of London, the stark inequalities that lie side-by-side, and we all sort of just get by with it.

There's no denying it, no matter where you live, our world is a material one. Money affects our time, energy and relationships. Despite its overwhelming control over our lives, no one likes to talk about it. Why?