Dawnie – old wild Smoke

I hiked 18km to work this morning, crossing London NW to SE.  Caught dawn on the river.

Been working in Canary Wharf this month, surrounded by the wet stuff and in sight of the docks.  History and wild just under the shiny corporate surface.  It gets me thinking.  I give my days to my office aircon, but for the price of a coffee I could unlock enough hours to follow the water in the old way.

I leave my house in West Hampstead at 04:44, because that’s poetic and also because I promised to be at my desk by 08:15.  It’s 2 days past the full moon and she stays high.  A biting clear night, and I’m easy as I push familiar ground.

At 04:56 I hear the first birdsong, but it’s an insomniac, all out of whack.  The second call comes from a pair of robins at 05:12.  Still dark.

I’m not a nervous city dweller, but in a nod to being a lone female I resist the temptation of a nighttime stroll through the parks.  I waver at pretty Primrose Hill but turn back and skirt the edges – keep common sense.  Foxes playing chase at 05:19.  I pass Regents Park and here I do feel exposed; unheard and unheeded.  Pick up the pace, tuck blonde hair under my collar.  The very first hint of lightening sky on the horizon, 05:30.

With relief I hit the main artery, Euston Road already alive with commuters, and the deserted dark roads of north London are behind me.  I melt into streets that know me, passing my old student halls at 05:45.  Sip scalding jasmine green tea from my Thermos.

05:50 into Soho – far from the first time, but rarely from this end of the night.  Sky showing a first deep blue as I hit Covent Garden, hospitality waking to the day.  Chairs scraping, aprons tying, a waft of something baked.  Then at 06:12 I wind round the back of the Savoy onto the Embankment, and from now I’ll follow the river.

As I find the water, the first pre-dawn rainbow in the East sends me scrambling up a bulwark to snap photos, grinning like a child.  Pause as I figure out how to get back down, fingers numb.

Walk on to Blackfriars, where the river drops away behind roadworks and places not made for people, and here I have to defy Google to stay on the banks and not be sucked up towards the City.  Oh, metaphors.

I’m vindicated by the realisation that the Thames Path is long and true to its companion, and I can walk it almost all the way.

Past all the sights – Tower Bridge, the Tower’s turrets, HMS Belfast – I and a few morning joggers, plus the odd requisite Japanese tourist, even at 7am.

Google and private residence signs try to turn me away at Wapping, but I hop a small fence and am suddenly rewarded with a fireball sunrise.  It catches me unawares, and I laugh out loud with the surprise of it, red over grey green blue at 07:24.

I wore trainers, and I’m limping now from pressure on my achilles.  But I’m only just bang on time, so I push the pace hard to afford myself short photo and thermos breaks.  It’s worth it.  Ducking down algae-grown apartment steps brings me onto stretches of sandy beach, fresh green seaweed around my Nikes, for all the world a seaside morning.

It makes me laugh again, the incongruity – standing in this silent private wilderness, waves lapping, watching the sun rise over my shiny city target.  07:33.  More jasmine tea and I press on fast.  Past docks and cranes, warehouses and shipping containers, where the developments are fewer and old London closer.  The history of river trade and industry still raw and near.

Fresh lemon light spreads through the haze, and suit-trainer combos form their own tide towards the city, matching my stride.  A little less disheveled and windswept, and not  obviously limping.

But my mind is brimming with the full moon, the foxes’ wild dash, fire over water and the clink of metal on the docks, the breeze on the foreshore in a rose tint dawn, sand under my feet.  And when I hit the Wharf, first I hit the actual wharf, and briefly it still feels a maritime creature.  I’m 4 minutes from work when corporate London finally closes around me, and I walk into aircon and stillness and coffee.

And all day I can’t shed the wild I was in out there.

 

When not in Rome

I was led to believe I wouldn’t much like Milan.  Mostly by Italians, I should say – but then, no one else displayed any enthusiasm either.  I was going for a wedding, so my preferences were neither here nor there, and I braced myself for grey urban concrete without the fun NY-LON upsides.

Instead, I get a pretty, low-key cross of other European cities.  A sort of understated blend of soft stone, lush green jungles cascading off balconies, shutters in Provencal pastels, yellow stucco, the odd grey communist block.  I see echos of Paris in the nighttime corner cafes, Barcelona in the sculpted facades, Wroclaw in the tram tracks between concrete apartments, here and there.

It is hot and languid, businesslike but unrushed.  Men in pristine suits stroll out on their lunchbreaks from the office, seemingly unfazed by the sun.  Elderly couples walk together in creams and white linens, semi formal on a weekday afternoon.  There are some Japanese tour groups, a few Americans, but no tourist frenzy – few souvenir shops, no gimmicks.  And perhaps this makes Milan the calm, livable city I find it, made primarily for the Milanesi.

We stay in an Airbnb apartment between Porta Venezia and Citta Studi, to be near the church.  Spacious, elegant and quirky, a mix of traditional walnut and artistic colour riot.

We’ll draw a veil over the logistics of acquiring transport tickets, which largely involve traipsing several blocks in 32*C in search of open tabacchi that haven’t yet run out.  When you chance upon such holy grail, get the bigiornaliero 2 day pass and save yourself the trouble for 48 hours.

The obligatory visit to the Duomo and the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II is worthwhile, but deliberately brief.  Just the usual to see here, folks.

Later that afternoon, the wedding is a formal church service, programmes doubling as fans in the stifling heat.  The couple seated facing the Priest, unable to see their audience, no mics.  The traditional view that a marriage is a matter between them and God.

The reception is at Villa Antona Traversi, a 40 min drive north of the city.  Villas, with their ancient triple height doors, sprawling gardens and stone fortress walls, are what the Italians do well.  Along with wine and paesan cuisine, both abundantly consumed within said villa walls.

The Italian pre-wedding aperitivo is a full meal’s worth of delicate buffets, a trap for the unwary.  A cheese table, a seafood table, the fritti, the meats.. all before you go up for dinner.  And when we go up for dinner, it’s into the most glorious stone hall, frescoed and crumbling, unsurpassed.

The wedding is as weddings are, fun and bouncing, and a late night.  But the next day is bright and hot, and we do our duty by Milan, going off in search of its hipster side.  We find it in the lovely Brera – organic whitewashed lunch spots, high end artisanal homeware, design shops, and – the hipster cherry on top – a coffee shop with its own tailor working in the window.  In Milan, this is my spiritual home.

I duck into the Pinacoteca.  My duty to culture does not quite extend to the gallery itself and the Cenacolo, but I admire the architecture and its shady stillness.

That evening is by the Navigli – Milan’s canals, lined with bars and restaurants.  Only here does the relaxed spacious vibe give way, and a bit of tourist press show itself, including – somewhat improbably – in the odd German hen night.  Apparently much cleaned up in the last few years, this is now where the crowds are, drinking by the water til the early hours.

On our day of rest, we make it a proper holiday by going to Como.  We drive around the lake to Bellagio, where we lunch and meander, staring out at startlingly pretty views. The Italian approach to a lakeside is conducted at a safe remove, in white trousers, with no suggestion that actual swimming might be on the cards.  None of that messy back-to-nature business, like sitting on the grass or getting wet, which you sense they consider overexposure to the outdoors.  It’s all civilised Caprese and wine in the shade, overlooking the water in Armani shades.  I manage an illicit paddle up to my knees, which somewhat sates the craving to just dive in alongside the designer speedboats.

So in all, a surprising success, Milan.  Fuss-free and pleasant, within an hour of beach, lake and mountain.  It has no exciting focal point to give it the draw of other main cities – and, really, therein its charm.

Take the hour

I often ask people I don’t know well to tell me their Plan B.  There’s never been anyone who didn’t know what I meant, and I think the answer speaks volumes about a person – even the idle musings of an urbanite that would never in reality become a cold dawn on a farm field, knee-deep in mud.

I notched up 10 years in my career this month, without paying it much mind.  Like flexing your muscles after training all year, or picking out a familiar tune, I’m grateful to be at relative ease with my practice and know my way around what I do.  And to still be developing (not always painlessly) – there’s always someone who’s been doing it 10 years longer.

But, frankly, I’m mildly surprised that my City job has managed to occupy me for this long, given the number of days I’ve stared longingly out the window.

What keeps most of us on our tracks is some combination of 1) liking what we do well enough 2) life path risk aversion 3) need for stability or financial security and 4) lack of a viable Plan B.

The first three you must balance for yourself.  They are personal sacrifice points that determine the amount of motivation you have, how happy staying or going would make you, the impact on your lifestyle and loved ones.  Soul-search, soldier.

Traveller

The glamorous answer is not always the right one for you.  We don’t all want to throw in our paperwork and live in a gypsy caravan (although at least one of you just sat bolt upright and mused about a horse named Belle).  But if 1-3 stack up in favour of horizons new, it’s galling to be hampered only by 4.  Like packing a suitcase and sitting on your sofa because you don’t know where to fly.

Reality is complicated.  Most of us already chose a life path based on some complex Venn diagram and, for whatever reason, it didn’t involve a lifetime as an aquarium keeper or cheesemaker.  So it’s all very well everyone insisting you must Follow Your Dream, if you do not actually.. have one.*

 * That doesn’t involve lottery winnings.

I had a lovely dinner with close friends last night, and – as I find increasingly happens at this stage in our lives – we got to chatting about the Other Thing.  I was struck by their abundance of ideas – almost a paralysis of choice, one step away from tangibly getting stuck in.  And there was I, knowing broadly what draws me, but not what to do with it.  A sea of support and encouragement between us, a coalescing cloud of ideas and thoughts, and an inexplicable lack of making it real.

I know someone who gets up at 6am to work on Plan B before going to his complex job every day, putting in Friday nights, Sunday mornings, months on end.   He’s lucky enough to know what he wants to create, and he’s focused – even though he’d probably rather be surfing or drinking or sleeping.

We start to invest that time only after we’ve found our idea and made a choice.  We talk of and about and around our inclinations, and there we get stuck, not knowing how to take the first step.    But the choosing is no different – you may have to put in the hours.

So my friends and I accepted a challenge.  The smallest start – an hour, today, uninterrupted, to focus entirely on Plan B.

If you’re stuck on 4 and you don’t have your idea crystal clear – or you haven’t put it into gear – I’m willing to venture that you haven’t done it.  Maybe, like me, you’ve made lists here and there, mind-mapping ideas, browsing things online for 20 minutes.  And there you stopped, as soon as you ran out of surface thoughts.

You have not done 6 ack emmas or Sunday mornings with pen and paper in hand, phone out of reach, delving deeper.  Waiting for your thoughts to tick over and clarify.  Then coming back for another hour the next day to explore the insides of your own head and heart a bit further.  To follow the threads, even down a few dead ends.  How much time, by comparison, on Facebook?

What’s an hour?  Your life.  Take the hour.

Winter sun

London Weather (practically a living entity unto itself) is too much of a cliché for any self-respecting blog post to give it much space.

So – it hasn’t been good, the London Weather.  But it hasn’t been dramatic either, and a bit of drizzle rarely kills. Still, it doesn’t kick your spirit into get-up-and-go, nor make you feel your life brimming over with possibility.

And when London Winter delivers an actual Sunny Day, you take it and you run with it, you hear me?  Now, fast, hurry.  While it’s shining, go make your January hay – it’s likely to cloud over by 4pm.

I have a routine, at any hint of a sunny afternoon, through Regents Park.  Tracing my steps year after year along much the same paths, watching the seasons turn, slowly and undramatically.

I start near Baker Street, by the lake, watching the herons sunbathing with their wings spread in summer, hitting the tourists up for food in winter. One bright soul was using chopsticks to steer clear of their snapping beaks. The black swans glaring a warning lest you stray too close, uninterested in what you have to offer.  Further down the path, an old lady enjoying the company of chubby squirrels, so tame in Regents that they’ll scramble onto your knees to grab a snack.

Up the inner circle, through the wrought golden gates, to the island rock garden.  This time of year the birds aren’t nesting, so you can cross the Monet bridge and walk around the island’s hidden little paths.  In picnic weather you trade off lilac and wisteria for nesting restrictions.

Over walkways flanked by seedheads and tall grasses, glowing in the light, their beauty not just seasonal but shifting in seconds as the rays dull with cloud.  Making a victory of having caught the scene at all, this hour, this day.

To the rose garden flanked with sunny benches – no blooms now but lots of thorns and promise – and onwards out to the sports fields, the formal plantings and the far exit, scattered with ordinary daffs like it’s trying to be woodland.

Feeling I’ve traversed the varied terrain of a traveller in my brisk wintry hour.  All in a central London city park.

Air cold in lungs, duck calls ringing in ears, last of the sun gleaming off the fountains. Cleansed.