On this particular August morning at 7am the heat was mercifully less oppressive than it has been in recent days, the sky was hazy – although that wouldn’t last – and the fitful breeze almost qualified as cooling. London’s climate continues to be classified as temperate and oceanic, the weather of a verdant island. Yet the city has been warned that it could run out of water within 25 years.
Such knowledge spoils the nice idea that your familiar sauntered outing for coffee and a croissant, undertaken, as this morning, in a short-sleeved shirt and shorts, is rather like the sort you make when on a summer holiday somewhere Mediterranean. The idle reverie is interrupted by thought experiments about impending doom and flashbacks to The Day The Earth Caught Fire.
That was all inside the first minute of the excursion, during which a cyclist emerged from a sub-divided house at the end of the street. His slamming of the door behind him intruded on a relative quiet that dissipated with each step closer to the motorised traffic on the main road. There are fewer vehicles in the summer, what with some Londoners going away. It still roars and rumbles, though, with buses and heavy vans – the city of work, already loudly awake.
It seems important to pay more heed to things mostly taken for granted. The next piece of pavement contains cracks and undulations, seemingly caused by tree roots that are, judging by the positions of the trees, likely to date from the creation of the pavement itself. London needs more trees. Planting them might help prevent the water running out.
Behind the iron railings, rubbish has been dumped in the children’s playground and the ducks are communing on the island in the pond. The island houses a fountain, a joy when it is working, but it had not yet been switched on for the day. Across the water from the ducks, at the pond’s edge, pigeons puttered about on an asphalt surface augmented with guano of their own making. In contrast to trees, we have sufficient pigeons – one for every three Londoners. They love us for our high-rise hiding places and dropped chips.
Up ahead, the shop’s boss, in a straw hat, was busy tidying around the entrance. He’d only just opened for business, but already the bread had been delivered and the pastries had been baked. The other morning, he had been up at four to purchase fruit and veg from New Spitalfields. The cappuccino was in preparation almost before I’d got through the door. The welcoming accents were, as usual, from Turkey and Georgia. On other days, at other times, they are from India, somewhere in Africa, and maybe Spain.
Once back home, I discovered that while I was out I had been bitten on an ankle. London’s insect population has been declining. The bite. I’m glad to say, was a blessing in disguise.
Follow John Vane on X/Twitter. Buy his London novel Frightgeist here or here. John Vane is the pen name of On London founder, publisher and editor Dave Hill.