A London Night

I’m sitting outside on my patio, as I laughingly yet lovingly refer to the eight squares of concrete by the French windows of my zone 2 flat. My ‘garden’ is the communal patch of grass with a few of my plants in pots. Yet it is my space, and as night falls, I feel peace and contentment. Even as the unceasing London traffic zips past on the other side of the hedge.

Beside me, between the lavender plant and the wall, a striped legged spider has weaved a marvellous elaborate web. I long for a dewy morning so I can photograph it properly but in this strange late August heatwave, playing with Londoners’ senses and their sense of dress, a dewy morning is hard to find.

I go inside for another glass of wine and discover another, much bigger, spider on the kitchen wall. All legs and intent, seemingly planning on moving in behind my noticeboard. I leave him or her to it and return to my outside space.

It’s dark. The sky a deep deep blue, lit by the occasional plane making a final descent. Yet the street lights are too bright for me to discern a single star. I miss the stars, living in London. I grew up in the countryside, with hills and trees and nights flecked with starlight. The brightness and the pace of the city thrills me, but sometimes I have a deep hiraeth for home.

Yet it isn’t home as it is now. It is the home of an imagined place. A home of black countryside nights, walks lit by torches or these days more likely the bluey light of a mobile phone screen. The oppressive silence of a lack of traffic and the astonishment that comes with just how loud and early birdsong can be.

And I sip my wine and I look and I listen. I feel all these things seep into me, settle me, calm my thoughts, still my emotions.

London exercises a hold on my heart that I don’t fully understand. But I long ago learnt I do not need to fully understand where something has come from in order to accept it.

Soon I will leave these patio squares, draw the curtains, extinguish the lights, and escape to the place where dreams are made. But while there are no other demands my time, let me enjoy the warmth of this London night draped around my limbs, the dichotomy of loud traffic yet leafy greenness, and spiders gently spinning about their business.