on cambridge

this year involves travelling until the last minute, and thus on the last week of the year i found myself up in Cambridge, which is sort of like my "home" within England, as i spent part of my childhood here, and my family has many friends in the area. it is the place i can always come to for a good chat in a nice pub, followed by a wander through the windy streets. Cambridge has improved over the years. when i lived here in the 1980s, there was practically no shopping around, and everything was closed on Sundays and bank holidays. Even when i lived here again in 2005-2006, the shopping was pretty minimal (the Gap and the French connection on the market square were the only places i think i ever bought anything). but that has really changed. there is a massive new shopping centre in the centre of town, with pretty much all the major brands in it(Ted Baker, All Saints, and Apple store, and a huge H&M and Zara across the way). I arrived on a bank holiday and the place was hopping. Two shops, Jack Wills and Hollister, had massive queues just to get inside the place, which truely amazed me, but also reflected very much the youthful/preppy Cambridge style. I marvelled that is was incredible that a town which had virtually no shopping facilities 5 years ago now has overcrowded malls and queues outside shops for crowd control purposes. My godfather, however, was no impressed, claiming it all masked what is still a persistant problem with unemployment. "Dont think everything is great just cause the centre looks sparkily" he grumbled darkly, himself unemployed. a walk through the streets outside the centre still features boarded up shops and many local people not connected with the university are on the dole, often for years at a time. equally revealing, many of the Poles who filled the city in 2005 have now gone home, attracted by increased prospects in their own country, which coincided with the devaluing of the pound and the rising unemployment as a result of the ongoing economic crisis in the UK. I remember in September 2008 going to an international banking conference and hearing the CEO of one of Europes largest investment banks say that this crisis was going to be different. He predicted there would be no real recovery until at least 2013. many people in the room looked at him like he was crazy and my boss at the time burst out laughing and said the predictions were "absurd". In January 2009, as we had our New Year Kick Off Meeting, the same boss announced that is was "clear" the crisis was pretty much over, and in 2009, things would get moving again. But walking around Cambridge this afternoon, i am not sure. Whilst there are signs of affluence, many still seem excluded.