Today, the sun was low at two. The air was crisp and blustery on my walk, leaves blowing over the sidewalks, my hair whipping into my face. Late afternoon has always been my favorite time of day, and the midafternoon hovers heavy in the sky all day here. This is what North begins to feel like.
God, this city is so beautiful. Because it doesn’t try to be. Its beauty is an accident—Goswell Road was never meant to inspire. But it is small things: the perfect simplicity of a street sign on the side of a building, a lamp post, a gargoyle on a roof, a cherub on a fence post, the crest of the City of London above a doorway. It is the pretentious next to the unassuming, the dirty gutters and magnificent rooflines, the pubs and the newsagents. It is gritty, apple cores mixed with graffiti. But then round a corner looms a monument in a square, or the dome of St. Paul’s, or a still-flowering tree in late November.
:-)
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