The City

As the coach pulls into the station I get out, the cold damp September day sets the tone, slate grey and sombre. From my contemplative thoughts of rest - questions without answer, of things done, and things to be done, and then suddenly thrust, dumped into the maelstrom, hundreds of people crowding in the streets. Sirens scream and wail as an urgent riposte to the people who summoned them.

Traffic crawls and people wait, lights change red to green, green to red. The traffic stops and people start to move, each one on their own journey, their destination known only to them, no-one looks at each other. No communication apart to berate or belittle. Thousands of strangers all alone together. On toward the tube passed the newspaper sellers grumpily thrusting their free rags into people's hand and complaining when it's not taken, an impossibility to escape their clutches.

Now down below through the warren and on to the chthonic train, pushing to get in, so crammed that its impossible to move but no one looks at anyone; personal solitude twisted and warped by the masses.

Off the train again and at the bottom of a staircase a tourist recently arrived, jetlagged, struggling with luggage is ignored, never realising that they'd have this problem before leaving home. I pick up the spare bag before it's stolen or declared a ' suspect package' and for panic to ensure. At the top of the stairs I'm thanked and I rush on through more tunnels and on to another platform, less full this time, the train soon arrives pushing ahead a gale, sweeping rubbish and discarded newspapers aside - stampeding into the station. And I get on, as the train pulls out of the station a couple who look down on their luck but high on something else argue, the woman finally gets up and walks toward the door between the carriages, opens it, steps through into the next carriage, all the while the train rattles over the rough and dilapidated tracks. No one else seems bothered and don't even look up, let alone to pass comment. As she passes between carriages I worry that she might slip and fall, but to my surprise and horror my first thought is not that she'll be injured or killed but we'd be stuck down the tunnel for hours... This place is getting to me.

Eastward we travel, along the green, the purple, and the red. Then out to the twisting side streets where buildings gently fade. Crumbling brickwork, peeling paint, and with weeds growing in the gutters nature makes a valiant but futile effort to retake control. The vanguard is led by the precocious buddleia attempting to spread its fragrance over the decaying landscape but is soon vanquished by the pollution.

It starts to rain but it fails to dampen my spirits, the city has done that already.

The world now seems to consist of a universe no further than the next building and the sky seems so far away as to be infinite. I continue walking and come to an area of renewal, old buildings waiting to be pulled apart, diggers and cranes bite into them, and soon all that is left are piles of pallid rubble and twisted metal jeering at the pride with which they were built.

To rest a while, I find a generic café and sitting drinking my generic coffee I start to think where I was a few days earlier, standing on top of a hill overlooking a wooded valley with no one else in sight the wind in my face bringing the scent of heather, cloud shadows raced over the treetops turning them dappled green, here the sky almost seemed close enough to touch and the joy of nature abounded; alone but not lonely.

Another wailing siren brings me back from my reverie, I finish my coffee and head out into the grey streets toward the goal of this urban misadventure.

Into the concert hall, teak beauty abounds and the outside world forgotten, thousands patiently wait from the front row to the highest gallery for their muse, soon she appears, and artist and audience seem awestruck as one to be meeting each other, her songs wind their way though the hall and round the pillars and we newly appreciate the bear and the chim-choo-ree and rise in awe of the sawdust and diamonds. All too soon its over.

After the concert and a poor nights sleep in an anonymous hotel it's back on the coach. The wild-eyed coach driver tries to rat-run a 60 seat coach along suburban sidestreets, passed the rows of dull red grey suburbia and then on to a bridge where a sudden swath of green hits the eye, a park full of trees with a stream running through immediately lifts my spirits and I know I've left the cold impersonal city behind.