An urban experiment

Isolation, that's one thing. Well, it's quite a big thing in a huge, anonymous city like London. So here, let's say, we have isolation: an enormous grey blob. A gloopy, depressed bag of gone-off tears. And on the other side, we have human connections: fizzing balls of electricity, sparking dangerously, like the circuits on a faulty switchboard.

Now for the experiment: let's put these two mutually antipathetic substances together. Watch out, you might need protective glasses for this bit. We find that, when placed side by side, the connections emit bright electric pulses, making the thick skin of the blob jiggle on one side, like a fat lady's thighs on a trampoline.

That's what happens each time two strangers on London streets (or in the tube or on buses) meet each others' eyes, share a grimace, a joke or even a few passing words. The bags of gelatinous goo quiver and ripple, feeling the vibrations of the spark for quite a few steps, or stops. Then slowly, the electric shock subsides and they return to sliding down the road, impassive molluscs once more.

Today I had a connection like that. Sitting on the top deck of the bus, in front of the steps, I was thinking of nothing much, or a lot of nothing. Whatever it was, I had retreated into my shell, antlers barely protruding. A man started walking down the steps in front of me. I registered his face and thought I recognised it. By the time I realised who he was, I wasn't looking at him anymore (he'd gone downstairs), I was staring at the face of the girl behind him. Of course! He was a daytime TV 'celebrity'. She saw the recognition dawn and smiled. We sparked, and then came the jelly-shaking reaction: we both nearly burst out laughing, and carried on our separate ways smiling - just a little - to ourselves. Not such a dangerous experiment after all then.

The broken umbrella

It looked alright when you strapped up the spokes with Sellotape on the kitchen table. The wet glass and sodden garden warning you that you wouldn’t get away with wrapping your scarf over your head that day. A gratifying sense of prescient efficiency constructed above your head as you stepped out: an organised person today. Like that smart lady with the briefcase across the road.

Your self-satisfaction began to sag with the dark material five minutes later. The once taut circle collapsed into an angry, jagged exclamation bubble: “AARRGH”.

Never mind, just turn it – like so – and no one would notice. Half-way across the bridge, the wind picked up and turned the lop-sided frame inside out. Gazes of envy from those unprotected heads turned to surprise and then pity.

Holding it tight with your hand, water dripping down your coat sleeve, the velcroed strap conducting a wet stream directly on to your new bag (a seemingly malicious act of vandalism), you and your protector were no longer friends. People with whole, unblemished umbrellas striding towards you and past. Making their point. No communion either with the other scuttling figures, whose contraptions were also deformed. Just simple misery.

The chemist, proudly displaying its sweet-wrappered waterproof wares, appeared like a mirage through the silver rods pounding the pavement. A few moments later, you re-emerged onto the street, proud owner of a new umbrella, galvanised, reinforced and guaranteed. The old one stubbed out, abandoned in a rubbish bin.

Euphoria

What is it that first alerts you to the change?

Is it the new soundscape, as you lie in bed, eyes still closed? Car tyres going mmrrrrmmmrrrr instead of shhhshhhshhh on the road outside. Feet going pit-pat instead of slip-slap past the window. No longer a constant glop, glop, glop, glop, on the windowsill, no brittle noise like sand being thrown on the glass. Instead, the sound of birdsong. The optimistic peep-a-reep of the bluetit, the anarchic robin.

Or is it the light, oblique and pale still but cautiously optimistic, that penetrates newly through the blinds?

You can’t quite believe it, as you rub your eyes and search around for your slippers. The week-long, heads-down, eye-stinging, bone-chilling, foot-soaking rain has ended. The skies have ripped open the dirty grey sheet that covered them, and so doing made the world below anew.

A glorious, forgetful, golden brightness drenches you on stepping out, chiding your doubt.

Brief Encounter (Valentines day post)

She is waiting at the bus stop in the dark. There isn't much space on the pavement, and her bus isn't coming any time soon. To avoid looking jostled and uncomfortable, she gets out a packet of cigarettes, lights one, brings her arm down by her side and looks up and around, in a broad motion, as she exhales.

He is walking down the street, not bad looking. She is used to catching fleeting glances and then pretending she hasn't felt a spark of attraction. He notices her - she's sure of it, and moves the trajectory of his walk almost imperceptibly closer.

Here he is, just two steps away, she doesn't move or look at him directly, but her cigarette holding hand flexes. His feet stop, a foot away from hers. Now he's talking:

"Do you have a light?"
"Oh yeah, of course. Hold on."

She fumbles with the lighter, the wind seems to have picked up and she can't make it strike. He bends his head inwards and down, until it's nearly touching her own. She can smell his leather jacket and something else, a musky cinnamon. The flame lights, briefly. It's long enough for the papery end of his cigarette to flare and glow.

He murmurs his thanks and moves away. Walking down the road he hunches his shoulders and picks up speed as he smokes.

She takes a drag of her own - half finished and tainted with cold, it's no longer satisfying. She looks to see if her bus is coming and then, drawn to the distanced figure, turns her head briefly the other way. Once, then twice, she looks. He does not turn back.

Oystercard

"Who are you?"
Who am I?
"Are you allowed to be here?"
Am I allowed to be here?

One of the biggest tests of sanity and strength of character in London is the lack of recognition on anyone's face, even in places you go to every day. The whole system is set up so you have to constantly remember who you are and why you are there - because no one else is going to help you.

On arriving at the train station the Oystercard reader doesn't recognise you, even though you pass through at least twice a day. Each day it interrogates you.

You have to be totally sure of yourself as you slap the card on the reader - I am me, I am going about my daily business, I am a fully paid up member of the oyster card fraternity and I am allowed to be here.

As you frantically scramble in your bag or pocket for the Oystercard, you can't for a moment lose your sense of purpose or direction. The people behind you would tut and shuffle you out of the way, and you'd be left, no longer the person you thought you were, along with all the other directionless wanderers who you step over or around in the queue for the barriers each day.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if, just once, there would be no need for the sweaty doubt - did I leave my Oystercard at home, on the train, in my other jacket pocket? If, just once, the barriers would sense your arrival, recognise you and open up before you, to welcome you in, or out? A modern day parting of the waves.

City cats

A black cat stalks its prey. Glossy fur pressed against rough brick walls, it watches as the pigeon pecks the road. Tinkling along on tippie toes, it spies me and dares me to tell the secret. Seconds later, a frantic flap of feathers and the hunter is foiled again. I look away innocently, not wanting a fight.

Walking down another road in a different part of town, I think I see the black tom again out of the corner of my eye. A dark shadow lurking behind a salt chest. On closer inspection, it is just a murky pool of stagnant water. Is this paranoia? My heart certainly skipped a beat.

Further on, an urban feline of a different kind: a Smart car purrs, resplendent in a leopard skin pelt.

The river this evening

The river this evening was an inky, iridescent blue on one side, an oil slick on the other.

The blue caught the last long note of the fading light, glowing with beauty. Like rumpled silk spread out on the dressmaker's table, ready to make a fantastical ballgown dotted with stars like rhinestones. The water seemed to swish and sway, aware of its decorative covering, in love with its own reflection.

The black glowered, thick and potent it lapped the bounding walls. 'Enjoy your beauty while it lasts. All good things come to an end.' It seemed to say.

Walking companions

Every Saturday two old men walk down the road outside my house, hand in hand. One has a wooden stick and the other has a captains hat. They sway from side to side, as they edge their way cautiously down the road. When others pass them on the pavement they cling to each other more closely and their eyes flicker up from the ground nervously. I often see them, making their painstaking pilgrimage to the park at the same time every week.

Another pair a few days earlier, walking towards Chelsea as I'm going the other way. They both wear smart long overcoats with velvet collars. Cashmere scarves crossed on their chests underneath, a small lip of colour just showing against their necks. Each has their right arm crooked at the elbow. In their right hands a cigarette, glowing tip facing down towards the pavement. Matching each other step for confident step, their hair smartly combed. They look almost identical, even though one is a generation older than the other. You sense they see the world the same way.

The smell of their cigarette smoke lingers on the air as they pass by.

Short back and sides

"Just a trim" I said. The hairdresser looked at me sceptically and raised his brow.
"How long since you got it cut?" Cringe.
"Four months, five at the most."
"I think we need to take a bit more off. Trust me. You'll look great."
I watched the curls fall to the floor, like superfluous commas edited.

Later, walking to work down a wide boulevard in South Kensington, I caught a glimmer of Spring to come. The rain had set off the scent of trimmed lavender hedges and the warming air wafted it across my path. Musing on the seasonal awakening of nature in the city, I was caught unawares by the whining roar of a chain saw, a creak and crash of branches.

The London Plane trees lined the road, their feathery twigs like dark capillary veins against the grey Winter sky. Trunks standing ancient against the white stucco buildings, like medieval candlesticks with layers and layers of dripping wax. The quirky pom-pom seeds had endeared them to me as I idly stared out during long hours of dull meetings.

A man was up there, a demented rodeo rider astride one of the furthest branches, waving a chainsaw with one arm. Half of the tree was shorn of its frizzy locks and the rest of the branches were crashing down, twigs and sawdust lining the pavement at the base of the trunk. I touched my own hair self-consciously as I passed.

On the way home, one side of the boulevard still gloried in last season's growth, while the other, framed against the purpling sky, presented waxy candlesticks topped with chicken bones, knobbly at the ends. The pruned trees looked dazed and vulnerable, coming to terms with their new silhouettes.

Passing over, passing through

There's something magical about living near the river in London. The air is cool and fresh, there's a sense of space that you don't find anywhere else, and in the middle, a great body of slow moving, impassive, grey water. Always there but always different. Even so, I don't think you really experience the river unless you're forced to travel across it. Standing in between, watching the water pass underneath, rocked in the cradle of the bridge, you start to really understand what Apollinaire was going on about.

Or maybe it's only if you're on my bridge. That really is the cat's pyjamas. Everyone in London adopts a bridge. Some like the brutalist simplicity of Waterloo Bridge, others prefer the restrained decor of the Chelsea Bridge, only the Americans really go for Tower Bridge in a big way. And mine is the Albert Bridge. It's an unashamed, disneyfied wedding cake of a bridge. A fairground gondola unfurled. A gossamer spun, radioactive spider's web of a bridge.

The best moment of my day, in the short light of Winter, is seeing my bridge, all dressed up with nowhere to go, waiting for me at the end of the road. Welcoming me back over the swelling division between home and the land of strangers.

On a calm night the lights are mirrored perfectly on the flat pan of water below. When the river is choppy, they bobble and tremble as if they were about to dissolve in tears. When the mist rises, they form a ghostly halo above the treacherous deep.

This evening the striated clouds beribboned an oyster-pink sky and landing planes winked their lights as I crossed. For as long as I was passing over, I was neither here nor there. Borne high above the world on a braceleted arm. Free as the water passing through.

(Thanks to Colin Gregory Palmer for the picture)