There’s nothing that makes you feel insignificant like sitting in the middle of a crowd and being less interesting than the pigeons.
If you sit in Trafalgar Square for an hour or two you’ll see the whole world go by. Morris dancers and Elvis impersonators eye each other curiously, whilst two loud tour guides describe exactly the same thing in languages that are similar enough to confuse the unfamiliar but not so similar they could do away with one guide. Nelson watches it all still, as he has for centuries, and the feet pounding the pavements really do so with the same intentions as all the feet since the Romans made Londinium their British capital. Whether their bags are from Hamleys or Harrods, their sandwich from Subway or a streetfood van, it’s the same story.
In the middle of all that, at the furthest point on the timeline for now, you really are a spec. One person in one moment in one tiny but significant part of the capital. How could you possibly hope to make a difference to all of that? Nothing you can do will change the city, or make you seem at all important to anyone else in the amorphous cloud. The pavements have been worn by so many feet, you can only follow along in one of the thousands, millions of paths. You’re not going to damage London, no matter how hard you try.
So you can pick any path you like, and no one will care or even notice. Go up that way, behind the bus, and keep going some more, and you could be in the Ritz taking tea or cocktails. If you forgot to bring your fascinator and closed toed shoes, you could cross the street and head into Soho, where the most amazing little pastry shop stands with its door open and the tables, a mimic of the home of pastry, provide the perfect seat for your own private tea party. If you don’t fancy that there’s the national gallery, or for cheaper art just look up. There’s a dignitary on every corner, some of the finest statuary Britain has produced, and the architecture is the best of every age. Maybe you want to stroll in the park or along the river, or find an obscure museum that will teach you everything about something you never knew existed.
London isn’t expecting you home before dawn. London won’t be home herself before dawn. A famous London band once sang that “sleep is for fools who never see the sun rise”, and as they were famous for the most rock and roll parties of all time they would know. They’d know, after all. The Who used to trash their instruments in pubs all across the city.
I can’t have a favourite thing about London. Even my top ten overflows, with sarcastic messages on the Tube, street food where I least expected it, everything about Camden, the urban foxes you see if you stay up late enough, and a dozen other things. When I sit in Trafalgar Square, knowing my parents don’t expect me home for days, that my shoes are good enough to walk for miles and I can get into my accommodation whenever I like, London is sanctuary. I could be anyone. No one knows me, no one will remember me, and I can’t leave my mark to prove I was there. I’m unaccountable.
So of course I eat too much ice cream, get lost, lust over shoes I can’t carry home, and spend too much time staring at the Tube map trying to pick a destination. Freedom, like London, is what you make of it.
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