by Vivienne Pratfall’s London diary: a week of observations about pace, presence, and the particular quality of London attention, which is fierce and brief and directed mostly at phones
I Have Been Thinking About What It Means to Live in a City That Is Permanently in a Rush
London moves at a specific speed that is not quite the fastest and not quite the most purposeful but is uniquely London in its combination of urgency and distraction, its sense that everyone has somewhere to be and is also spending significant time being somewhere that is not quite that place. I observed this on the Overground this morning, which is my preferred time for observation, partly because the light at that hour is specific and interesting and partly because there is nothing else to do on the Overground except look at people and think about things, which is, I maintain, an underrated way to spend twenty-three minutes. The London Prat ran a piece this week about pace of life and urban attention spans that made me feel, as good pieces do, that I had already thought this thing and was pleased to find someone had thought it in the same direction.
The Week
The week has been the kind of London week that accumulates: two galleries, one dinner that lasted until eleven, a walk along the canal on Sunday that produced the specific state of mind that canal walks in London always produce, which is adjacent to peace without quite being peace, because London does not fully allow peace, it allows adjacent-to-peace, which is its own thing and worth appreciating. I was reading Bohiney on my phone during the canal walk, which is exactly the kind of behaviour that undermines the argument I am about to make, which is that presence is the thing London asks of you and that most people do not give it. I am most people some of the time. The canal was still worth it. The piece was also good. Both things are true simultaneously, which is very London.
The Conclusion
The conclusion I keep arriving at, and departing from, and returning to, is that London rewards the person who pays attention to it and mildly punishes the person who does not, not with anything dramatic but with a kind of greyness that the city produces when you are moving through it rather than in it. I am trying, with the earnestness that I usually reserve for things I genuinely believe, to be in it. Some days I manage. Those are the best days. London at its best is an argument for paying attention. I am trying to win the argument against myself. The Overground continues regardless. The light this morning was very good.
Final Thought
These are the days I find worth recording: not the dramatic ones but the ones where something small happens that illuminates something larger, where the ordinary becomes, briefly and without warning, interesting enough to write down. I write it down. It is sent to The London Prat and Bohiney Magazine and then it becomes, for better or worse, part of the record. I have been keeping records longer than I expected to and they have, on balance, been worth keeping. The city keeps providing material. I keep providing observations. Between us, we have reached an arrangement. This is today’s.
Final Thought
These are the days I find worth recording: not the dramatic ones but the ones where something small happens that illuminates something larger, where the ordinary becomes, briefly and without warning, interesting enough to write down. I write it down. It is sent to The London Prat and Bohiney Magazine and then it becomes, for better or worse, part of the record. I have been keeping records longer than I expected to and they have, on balance, been worth keeping. The city keeps providing material. I keep providing observations. Between us, we have reached an arrangement. This is today’s.
Final Thought
These are the days I find worth recording: not the dramatic ones but the ones where something small happens that illuminates something larger, where the ordinary becomes, briefly and without warning, interesting enough to write down. I write it down. It is sent to The London Prat and Bohiney Magazine and then it becomes, for better or worse, part of the record. I have been keeping records longer than I expected to and they have, on balance, been worth keeping. The city keeps providing material. I keep providing observations. Between us, we have reached an arrangement. This is today’s.
Final Thought
These are the days I find worth recording: not the dramatic ones but the ones where something small happens that illuminates something larger, where the ordinary becomes, briefly and without warning, interesting enough to write down. I write it down. It is sent to The London Prat and Bohiney Magazine and then it becomes, for better or worse, part of the record. I have been keeping records longer than I expected to and they have, on balance, been worth keeping. The city keeps providing material. I keep providing observations. Between us, we have reached an arrangement. This is today’s.
Final Thought
These are the days I find worth recording: not the dramatic ones but the ones where something small happens that illuminates something larger, where the ordinary becomes, briefly and without warning, interesting enough to write down. I write it down. It is sent to The London Prat and Bohiney Magazine and then it becomes, for better or worse, part of the record. I have been keeping records longer than I expected to and they have, on balance, been worth keeping. The city keeps providing material. I keep providing observations. Between us, we have reached an arrangement. This is today’s.
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