Embankment, 17.48

Too late for the Guston, too early for The Social

Leave the Elizabeth Line at Tottenham Court Road, walk the long corridors to the Northern Line, two stops south to Charing Cross, could do it in my sleep, as my grandmother used to say about driving familiar roads. Probably have done it in my sleep, probably inadvisable to drive in your sleep. Granny, riddled with figures of speech; one tube leaves, particles of something so thick hang in the air; a day later it will still be in my nose, will be black when I try to blow it out. Thick air, difficult to see through. Still, I love the tube, would like to write a book about it. All the connecting lines. So above as below. No one would read it. Maybe some tube enthusiasts would. Against all logic it is safe down here. Predictable. Everything running predictably badly. And you can stay underground all day, walk for miles in tunnels, forget the outside world, overground; twilight world, down here, with the pollution and the gaps to mind and the trains pulling in and pulling out and the train pulls in, jump on, crush, that time of day, push through to the back, reach up to the handle, scan the faces going home, going out. Jump off at Charing Cross, down Villiers Street, lit now with Christmas spheres of gold or silver, and busy, everyone crowded, side by side. Had meant to go to the Guston at the Tate but time ran away and out and it took longer to collect the children from school and they wanted snacks and to climb on the fallen tree that is not fallen but instead defying some laws of gravity, growing almost along the ground but also off with fossilising mushrooms at the roots, and the children walk along this wooden beam of sorts and jump from it and test their limits and I tell them to hurry because really I would rather be in a gallery than here but the hurry up hurry up HURRY UP PLEASE did not work and so I am too late for the gallery, closing now at 6 and 20 minutes walk at a brisk pace and my pace will not be brisk in these stupid boots but too early for the book launch 20 minutes north so what to do it so do what I do best which is to walk. Always outwalking myself, in the same way my grandmother was said to have outgrown her strength; a euphemism likely for some other disease of hunger, desire, denial. Walk up embankment, the dome of St Paul’s confusing, appearing as if on the other side of the river thanks to a significant meander and of all the buildings in this too large over lit beautiful city I never expected to love and yet find myself doing, it is my favourite. Something about the smooth stone, how it is both squat yet reaching to heaven, a testament to belief and the need to believe and I walk up one side of the river, cross at Blackfriars, the wide bridge the same one I used to cross in the opposite direction to walk up Fleet Street to the old Express building, shrouded last time I walked past it in scaffolding, and sometimes I’d be allowed inside the newsroom, young enough to be excited, old enough to know the whole world pulsed through here several times a day and it was this I wanted; the sense of life, not the countryside, not the far off stars, not the teasing moon; this, ear to the ground, hungry for this life the city pulses with, on Blackfriars Bridge, everyone is impossibly beautiful in the early evening dark, the first bite of winter in the air, every cyclist smiling, at what, I’m not sure. Down the steps on to the south bank, the right time of year for lights in the trees and all the bridges are lit too and it is quiet in the way I like it best; past the BFI, every Christmas, A Wonderful Life with my eldest daughter but she is gone now, away north to be grown up or as grown up as she’s ever been at college and just five days before I took her for dinner, dropped her off at her new home and it seemed strange to leave her like that when surely she should be getting the train back home with me and tomorrow I will leave this city for a new house, a house she will not live in, and Foyles is harshly lit and I cannot stomach bookshops now, not for the fear they might not have my book or worse, will have the books of writers I cannot being myself to admire and up the steps, over the Hungerford Bridge back to Charing Cross, two stops north, out on Oxford Street side, to disappear into Fitzrovia.