London

Oh lord, what shall we say about Lon­don ?  Stay­ing in the heart of Blooms­bury with a view over the private garden behind Bed­ford Place,

and then, rais­ing one’s eyes, the dome over the Brit­ish Museum Read­ing Room and swoop­ing beside it, over and over, the ersatz bird of prey to dis­cour­age the pigeons.  And hard by, the Lon­don Revue of Books book­shop (and cof­fee par­lour), small enough to feel intim­ate, large enough to have a won­der­ful selec­tion — poetry par­tic­u­larly good.  And Lambs Con­duit Street  - two splen­did pubs

The Lamb

and the shop and office of Persephone books with their piles and stacks of dull grey and white cov­ers mingled with the flash of their exuber­ant end-papers, book­marks, post­cards. (Persephone doesn’t believe in fluor­es­cent light — day­light and pools of bril­liance from table and stand­ard lamps — must be won­der­ful, if hard on the eyes, on a winter’s afternoon).

Buses, of course, tak­ing us through the early even­ing rain to south of the river, and back in the dark across the spangled river;  to Clapham through the magic names of Bat­ter­sea and Latchmere; from Rich­mond through the dull sub­urbs of Sheen and Put­ney (though depos­it­ing us in the mul­ti­cul­tural mael­strom of Clapham on a Sat­urday even­ing from which our ini­tial escape bus was pre­ven­ted by a col­li­sion with a sui­cid­ally opened car door — no casu­laties); and lurch­ing through the nar­row streets of the City to Pet­ti­coat Lane.

And some trains — the new sta­tion at Hox­ton first glimpsed with sur­prise from the neat his­toric gar­dens of the Gef­frye Museum; from Hoxton’s plat­forms the high level line on its clas­sic Vic­torian brick arches curving towards the Gher­kin and its attend­ant temples;the sur­prise that the Oyster card would take us to Kew.

Pet­ti­coat Lane like any rub­bish cheap-jack mar­ket any­where in the coun­try but a few hun­dred yards away the eleg­ance and upmar­ket vari­ety of Spit­al­fields Mar­ket — deli­cious food and crafts and hardly a bur­ger or present for Auntie Nell on dis­play, though some qual­ity kitsch.

And the nice women at Oska who provided me with a chair and a free cof­fee while my part­ner tried on clothes.

A hymn to the city.