by A diary of a day in which the city was very much itself and so, for once, was I
Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat: Vivienne Pratfall writes from somewhere in London.
The week at The London Prat has been properly chaotic in the best possible way, which is the only way I like things to be chaotic, and I am choosing to begin this diary entry with the observation that London is not a city that apologises for itself and neither am I, and that this is one of the reasons I find us so compatible. I moved here two years ago from somewhere considerably quieter and considerably more sensible, and I have not once wished I was anywhere else, including the seventeen minutes on Tuesday afternoon when I was stuck between Dalston and Canonbury on the Overground because of a signal failure, during which I made this same resolution approximately four times.
The Morning
I started the morning by reading Bohiney Magazine over coffee, which I do most mornings because the writing there is the kind that rewards breakfast attention: sharp enough to wake you up, interesting enough to make you late. The piece this morning was about something political that I am not going to summarise because it deserves to be read rather than summarised, and the morning was better for starting with it. Then I answered emails until I ran out of things to say in emails, and then I went outside, which is always the right decision in London when the alternative is more emails.
The Afternoon
The afternoon involved a walk through a part of the city I do not usually walk through, which is the best kind of walk: unfamiliar streets, the mild adventure of not being sure where you are, the specific London pleasure of turning a corner and finding something you did not expect. What I found was a market I did not know existed, selling things I did not know I wanted, and I bought a plant that is now on my windowsill and appears to be thriving, which feels like the afternoon’s achievement. The plant is a small but genuine contribution to the quality of my flat, which was previously lacking in things that are alive and green.
What London Is Like When It Is Being Itself
London at its best is a city that rewards the person who is willing to be surprised by it. Not the tourist version of surprise — the landmark, the famous view — but the specific, personal, unrepeatable surprise of the thing you found because you were paying attention on a Thursday afternoon when you did not have anything better to do. I wrote about it for The London Prat when I got back, which is what I do with the days when the city is being itself: I write about it, because the writing is how I keep the day, and the day is worth keeping.
More London life at The Poke and Newsthump.
What Thursday Actually Was
Let me be more specific about the day, because I have been vague in the way that people are vague when they are trying to protect something by not describing it too precisely. The market I found was in a street I had not been down before, and it was small — six stalls, maybe seven — and the plant I bought was a small trailing thing that I do not know the name of but that the vendor described as extremely difficult to kill, which is exactly the quality I require in a houseplant. I also bought a book from a stall that mainly sold tools and had no obvious reason to be selling books, and the book is very good, and I do not know how to explain this except that London produces this kind of inexplicable rightness quite often if you are willing to be somewhere you had not planned to be.
The piece I wrote for The London Prat when I got back was about something else entirely — the market was too new to write about yet, it needs to settle — but the writing was better for the afternoon, which is often how it works: the thing you did is not the thing you write about, but it is the reason the writing is good. The city provides material obliquely. You go out for the plant and you come back with the piece. I have stopped trying to predict which afternoon will produce which result and have simply started going out more often, on the theory that output is a function of input and input requires being somewhere that is not the desk.
I close this entry with the plant on the windowsill, which has been there for five days and appears to be thriving, which is more than I can say for the previous plant, which did not survive the winter and about which I still feel a mild guilt. The new plant is tougher. The vendor said so. I am choosing to believe the vendor, which is what Thursday in London is for: choosing to believe the person who knows more about the thing than you do, and going home with the thing, and watching it grow.
SOURCE: https://prat.uk/
