This one’s bananas.
No, really.
This one is bananas.
Let’s go back.
Stop here.
Look.
There, in that shop window.
No, not the usual.
Not the onions.
Not the cabbages.
Not the brace of rabbits looking as if they’ve had a very bad morning.
Something else.
Something… improbable.
Long.
Yellow.
Slightly curved.
As if it’s smiling at you.
Or possibly at itself.
London.
April 10th, 1633.
And what you’re looking at is,
as far as anyone can tell,
the first banana ever seen in London.
On Snow Hill, no less.
Snow Hill.
A name that promises blizzards and delivers… bananas.
There’s a joke in there somewhere, but London’s still working it out.
Now just pause that moment.
Because this is not just a fruit.
This is a visitor.
A traveller.
A bit of the tropics that has somehow found its way into a chilly,
muddy,
slightly whiffy London street.
And Londoners,
who have seen quite a lot in their time,
are stopped in their tracks.
Because in 1633,
London is not a banana sort of place.
It is a place of:
mud
horse dung
smoke
fish
ale
arguments
and the occasional execution for light entertainment.
But bananas?
No.
Bananas are… suspicious.
Exotic.
Possibly foreign in a way that requires looking at sideways.
And let’s be clear about
the world this banana has arrived in.
This is the London of Charles I.
A king who does not do easygoing.
A king who is,
even now,
laying the groundwork for a truly spectacular national row.
Civil war is not yet on the menu.
But the table is being set.
Napkins folded.
Cutlery aligned.
Tempers gently simmering.
And elsewhere in the world?
Things are no less lively.
In this very year,
Galileo Galilei is being hauled up before the Inquisition.
Told, in no uncertain terms,
that the Earth does not go round the Sun.
Thank you very much.
Sit down.
Be quiet.
Stop having ideas.
Which is rather marvellous.
Because while Galileo is being told the universe doesn’t move…
a banana has just travelled halfway round the world to get to Snow Hill.
You couldn’t make it up.
Now imagine the scene.
A small crowd.
Hats.
Beards.
A woman with a basket.
A man who smells faintly of eels.
And in the window…
the thing.
“Wot’s that then?”
“Some kind o’ foreign cucumber?”
“Looks like it’s bent.”
“Everything foreign is bent.”
“D’you eat it or does it eat you?”
Entirely reasonable questions.
Because nobody knows what to do with it.
Do you cook it?
Do you peel it?
Do you call a priest?
And then someone,
perhaps the shopkeeper,
supplies the name.
“Banana.”
Banana mate.
Are you kidding me?
It really does sound foreign.
And that’s not an illusion, it’s baked into the word’s history.
“Banana” arrives in English as an import,
already fully formed,
already carrying the sound and rhythm of elsewhere.
It doesn’t grow out of Anglo-Saxon roots the way “apple” or “bread” does.
It lands.
Via Portuguese or Spanish,
and before that from West Africa, it comes into English as part of the great tide of exploration and trade.
And crucially,
English doesn’t change it much.
We don’t sand it down.
We keep those open vowels:
ba–na–na
Three beats.
Almost musical.
Almost comic.
It doesn’t sound like it belongs to the damp, consonant-heavy world of early modern London.
It sounds warm.
Loose.
Sunlit.
So the strangeness isn’t just what they’re seeing.
It’s what they’re hearing.
You can imagine the Londoner trying it out under his breath.
“Banana…”
Turning it over.
Testing it.
And this is the point.
This banana is not just a fruit.
It’s a question mark.
A small,
yellow,
slightly smug question mark.
Because London,
in 1633,
is just beginning to plug itself into the wider world.
Ships are going further.
Trade routes are stretching.
Strange things are arriving.
Coffee will come.
Tea will come.
Chocolate will come.
And each one,
at first,
will be eyed with suspicion.
Followed,
inevitably,
by enthusiasm.
Followed,
inevitably,
by addiction.
But here,
on April 10th, 1633,
it begins quietly.
One shop.
One display.
One banana.
And a city going,
“Hang on…”
Now widen the lens just a touch.
Because this is also a year of other firsts, other beginnings.
Later in 1633,
a baby is born:
James II of England.
Future king.
Future exile.
Future contributor to yet more national drama.
So while London is puzzling over how to approach a banana…
history is quietly lining up its next act.
Old world.
Meet new world.
And let’s not forget the season.
April.
Spring.
The city shaking off the worst of the winter.
Streets beginning to dry.
River traffic picking up.
Markets stirring.
Things arriving.
Freshness in the air.
And into that moment…
this.
A fruit that looks like nothing London has ever seen before.
There’s something almost beautifully ridiculous about it.
Because bananas,
today, are everywhere.
You can buy them on any street corner.
They are, frankly,
showing off.
But on that April day in 1633?
They’re a novelty.
A whisper.
A rumour made flesh.
A thing you might go home and tell your neighbour about.
“You’ll never guess what I saw.”
And your neighbour says,
“Was it a hanging?”
And you say, “No.”
And that,
in 17th-century London,
is saying something.
Now here’s the thing to tuck in your pocket.
That banana is part of a much bigger story.
The story of London becoming London.
A city that doesn’t just sit there.
A city that gathers.
Absorbs.
Welcomes.
Questions.
Laughs.
Adopts.
Until the strange becomes familiar.
Until the exotic becomes everyday.
Until the banana becomes… lunch.
And all of it starting,
or at least peeping over the windowsill,
on Snow Hill.
On this day, April 10th, 1633.
A small moment.
A slightly comic moment.
A Monty Python sketch waiting to happen.
But also a hinge.
A turning point.
Because once you’ve seen a banana…
you’re never quite the same again.
And four hundred years on?
We’ve got the hang of them.
More or less.
Though there was that moment when a future Prime Minister, reporting from Brussels
for The Daily Telegraph,
warned that Europe was getting dangerously interested in the curvature of bananas.
Boris Johnson,
no less.
Which suggests that,
deep down, Snow Hill in 1633 isn’t entirely behind us.
And tomorrow?
We peel back the next little window.
April 11th.
No banana this time.
No bright yellow visitor from the tropics.
Something quieter.
Much quieter.
A Londoner.
A doctor.
A man who notices something… small.
So small most people would miss it.
Sort of like this podcast, come to think of it.
Anyway, yes, a Londoner notices something small.
So small most people would miss it.
A tremor.
A hesitation.
A flicker in the body.
And he looks at it.
Really looks at it.
And in doing so…
changes the way the world understands it.
James Parkinson.
You don’t just look at London.
You see it.
And it goes deeper than that,
in the words of the great artist
John Constable,
we don’t truly see
until we understand.
There, I hope that’s piqued your curiosity.
Anyway, that bit of seeing –
that bit of understanding –
that’s tomorrow.
And for a final thought,
before we go.
I find myself still thinking about this podcast.
What it’s setting out to do.
What it’s about.
Where it’s coming from.
And it’s occurred to me…
it’s really an anthology.
An anthology of the unexpected.
The suggestive.
From time to time…
the moving.
Little London windows.
Little London reveals.
Things you didn’t know you were going to find.
Something,
in its own small way, unique.
Sui generis.
You’re not going to get this anywhere else.
And on that I hope arresting note, here endeth your daily London fix.
Compliments of London Calling.
London Walks at your service.
This is London.
Story time.
History time.
Streets ahead.
See ya tomorrow.