En route we wandered passed King's Cross and down the street where, between 1903-10, Lenin and his wife lived. We learnt from our guide book that the Lenins loved London's fish and chips and we passed the site of the shop from which they bought them.
This rather mundane fact about his eating habits has somewhat changed my perception of this influential Russian who changed the course of 20th century history. It's rather like knowing that Churchill adored the weekly delivery to Chartwell of his favourite fruit cake from Fortnum and Masons.
I was once gardening in the front of a former manse when a church member drove up, lowered his car window and called out with some mirth, 'Oh, you can mow the grass then?'. It was obviously a revelation to him that the person he usually saw in the pulpit could actually do something as 'ordinary' as push a lawn mower!
All of us are far more than our public face. Whether we are 'up front' or 'behind the scenes' people we all, inevitably, have an image we perfect and project. This isn't always helpful because we can misunderstand and misjudge each other too harshly when we fail to appreciate with compassion each other's humanity. Even our icons enjoy fish and chips, relish fruit cake and, yes, ministers sometimes even cut the grass!
One of the most poignant speeches in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice is Shylock pleading for a more empathetic understanding of himself and his race: He says:
If you prick us do we not bleed?
If you tickle us do we not laugh?
If you poison us do we not die?
That's an understanding based on the mutual vulnerability common to all humanity.
In such a light it somehow makes it worth knowing that Lenin loved his King's Cross chippy!
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