The year has passed; the year has begun. Long live the year!
I try not to succumb to the New Year’s Resolution, that bullying, anxiety-inducing waste of time, energy and emotion. Do I want to bathe in rampant self-loathing come its inevitable demise a few minutes/hours/days/weeks/months (delete as appropriate) into the year? I do not.
And yet.
The natural hiatus in normal activity induced by Christmas and the ensuing ‘Merryneum’ (© Margaret Cabourn-Smith, to whom many thanks) does at least present an opportunity to take stock, to look at things in general and ask oneself important questions about life, or, if you prefer, Life.
But rather than saying ‘I will stop doing this thing that is both bad for me and a reflection of my innate awfulness and weakness of will’, or ‘I will start doing this other thing because I think it will in some way reflect well on my strength of character, even though I intrinsically hate it and have avoided it for years ’, I opt for something less negative, something gentler, something that doesn’t feel like an obligation.
We live in London. Nice place, on the whole. No, more than that – it’s bloody amazing. Never mind that every time we visit anywhere countrified we come back asking ourselves why we live in London – that’s a whole different can of dolphin-friendly tuna. We live in London – have done for years, are likely to do so for several more.
But do we use it? Do we make the most of its myriad delights? Do we take advantage of the many entertainments and attractions on offer, to offset the misery of the dirt, the noise, the smell, the litter, the pollution, the cancelled trains, the endless endless people who barge into you and don’t say sorry and never – never – say so much as hello or good morning or Happy New Year, and when you do that they look at you as if you’ve just spat in their overpriced skinny latte (rhetorical)?
There’s so much to enjoy in London. Concerts, museums, theatres, galleries; walking along the river or through a park, or just wandering the streets looking at architecture and statues and postboxes and trees and people’s front gardens; boat trips; standing on the platform at Sloane Square tube station and knowing you’re standing underneath a river; the bomb damage on the walls of the V&A; the V&A; knowing that Hamleys and Harrods are there – because they’re part of some nebulous idea you’ve had since childhood of what makes London great – but never having to go inside; people of a thousand ethnicities – restaurants of a thousand cuisines; Cecil Court; never knowing which way to go from Seven Dials; exploring the dark hinterland to the east of the West End; Kew Gardens; standing on any of the bridges (but especially London Bridge) and allowing your breath to be taken away by the sheer beauty of it all, well, of most of it, because there are some recent excrescences it’s shard to ignore; the Thames Path; Tates Britain and Modern; driving round Hyde Park Corner and remembering the first time I did it, with my eyes basically closed and trying to get round as quickly as possible so there was less time for me to have an accident; the Wallace Collection; taking a detour to walk past a house you know has a blue plaque for someone you admire, and imagining them in that house; the view from Salters Hill just down the road from here; the peculiar disdain of the modern urban fox for Londoners; the statue of Bartok outside South Kensington tube; Sir John Soane’s Museum; the Capital Ring; knowing that wherever you are you’re no more than five yards from a branch of Pret a Manger, or is that rats, I can never remember.
And that’s just the stuff I can think of right now. If only we were to expend a little more effort, just think of the things we’d discover.
So we decide.
We will use London. We will exploit it. We will find time to do the things that we think other people do – those enlightened, groovy, finger-on-the-pulse people who know the newest bars and the best restaurants and that little Portuguese cafe, the one where they do the best pasteis de nata. They wear their hipness lightly, these people, but still they see the new productions of everything and know where you can find good jazz at eleven on a Sunday night – honestly where do they find the time and the energy it’s all so bloody exhausting (rhetorical)?
We will sign up to mailing lists and look through catalogues and listings and we will set aside time to go and see this exhibition or that movie. Or perhaps we’ll just go for a walk in a different park and take advantage of the fact that London has more green space than any city of comparable size in the world, and spend that time just being with the trees and the grass and the plants and the birds and yes even the squirrels, and we’ll say hello to them in a Fotherington-Thomas kind of way. Anything, just as long as we’re using London, because otherwise, honestly, what’s the point of submitting yourself to the misery of the dirt, the noise, the smell, the (see above).
We have six of these green spaces within striking distance of our home in south London. I make for the nearest, keen to blow off the excess-induced cobwebs, and living in terror of the disapproval of my Fitbit. As I walk, I listen to an In Our Time podcast on the subject of Thebes. As always, it’s fascinating; as always, I forget everything that is said within a minute of hearing it.
The quality of the walk is enhanced by the bracing heartiness of the weather, the taunting calls of four ring-necked parakeets from a tree above, and the complete absence of humans. Winter trees, their bleak and complex geometry endlessly fascinating, reach for the sky. Above the rooftops, a carrion crow battles the wind, its progress slow and unsteady, each wingbeat hard won in the teeth of a growing gale. For a second, temporarily overwhelmed by a strong gust, it flies backwards.
In its lee, another crow.
No. Not a crow. The shape is subtly different, bulkier in front, wings more rounded, narrower and longer tail.
Sparrowhawk.
It carves a different path in the air, tracking the black shadow ahead of it unhurriedly, as if accompanying it to city limits.
The crow swings up and round, turns defence into attack, the speed and agility surprising the bird of prey. And then they’re off, chasing each other low across the sky, dipping in and out of my view until, with a sudden tumbling and plunging, they disappear below the horizon, the outcome of their skirmish unknowable.
A good bird sighting always puts a spring in my step – a bird fracas doubly so – and I squelch up the hill with renewed purpose.
And then I glimpse her. She’s sitting quietly on a bench to one side of the path, wrapped up warm, Michelin-man style. She has the air of someone to whom being outdoors in the cold is familiar territory. She smiles and nods towards me, at nothing in particular.
I’ve lived in London too long. Instinct kicks in. Eyes down, quicken the step. But she draws me in nonetheless, catches my eye.
‘HAPPY NEW YEAR!’
And there’s my resolution, right there. Be kind.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘And to you.’
She says it again, quieter, to herself. ‘Happy New Year.’ And again.
I move on, turning up the collar of my coat against a sudden gust. A song thrush stands on the sodden grass ahead of me, head cocked, listening through the wind for the creep of the lowly worm.
‘Happy New Year. Happy New Year.’
Like this? Want more? Subscribe to my newsletter.