liminal london

repost from the archives

I’ve been wandering around unfamiliar bits of London lately. Not sure why, no that’s not true. It’s just that there are long periods when it feels as if I barely leave my house, let alone Kensal Rise — it’s all school-run-shed-house, school-run-shed-house, school-run-shed-house-yoga, school-run-shed-house-Georgie’s, school-run-shed-house, school-run-shed-house-pub — then suddenly, like an arial shot in a movie, the camera pulls out and I’ll find myself everywhere all at once. I am sucked down into the little coloured tube tunnels and pop up like a gopher in unfamiliar locales, blinking and bewildered, like, Huh? Oh right, I’m in Crystal Palace or World’s End. I’m in Brick Lane, Hearne Hill, Forest Green, Fitzrovia or Neasden — all in a space of a few minutes, though that can’t possibly be true.

One of the things I love about London is how perennially shit it is here — the way the city embraces it’s own bleakness and gloom, dawning its foulness like a moth-eaten cloak and swishing it round, just for kicks. If you believe the tabloids this town has never had a cold dark season that was not the Winter of Our Discontent. I find it a comfort to know I am living in a place where, at any given moment of the day or night, terrible and wonderful things are happening to everyone all over the place and there is absolutely nothing I can do about it. A cyclist’s just been catastrophically gored by a bus, the third quadruplet is safely delivered, an actuary is turning the corner of his street to discover his wife on tiptoes in her dressing gown passionately kissing a lover, a toddler’s face is tipped up in stunned silence watching her balloon disappear.

I like the fact that, at any time, I could emigrate to another part of London if I wanted to and start my life over in, say, Dulwich — a place where I know no one and no one knows me. I like that for the most part no one cares or pretends to care about the extent of other people’s problems because they probably can’t help. I like the way strangers faces burst into a bloom if you simply say “good morning” when side-stepping them in the street. I love that I will never really know this city, because there is not enough time in one lifetime to get to know it, and I love that because of that I will always feel a bit blurry in places and lost.

I don’t mind feeling a little bit lost these days.

When you live somewhere long enough you start to notice not just the turn of the seasons but the in-between times, the liminal states. And walking around London lately, I’ve noticed everywhere signs of the city getting dressed, fixing herself up for the party. In a week or so, the town will be twinkly for Christmas, but right now she is parsing her closet, trying on one spangly dress after another, pairing them with earrings and shoes then deciding, God no, that’s all wrong. Yesterday alone I noticed four different cranes putting up towering fake trees in public squares. There were workmen hosing down skating rinks and unlit stars being draped across intersections, waiting for someone to flip the big switch. Walking to the tube in Soho last night after dinner I could feel the city’s shivering half-nakedness, as she waited for the last baubles and tinsel to be hung. Soon the London will be OUT out, but for now she’s uncertain — half-dressed, primping, side-eyeing the mirror. Shifting from one bare foot to the other.