![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
one perfect sunset
Jul. 14th, 2005 02:10 amThis is way overdue, written on the laptop a while ago but not posted due to internet woes. Maybe you're all sick of people banging on about London by now. What the hey. I want to tell you all about my amazing, sudden, colourful journey, but I'm going to talk about this first.
There I was last Thursday in Luxembourg, watching BBC World News into the night, with channel-surfing breaks (naked chicks playing badminton, news channels full of exploded bus shots and the story of the blasts in three different languages, bizarre garden-centre shopping channels. European TV that night was all sex and death and garden gnomes). The next day, reading LJ and laughing at the tea icons. Being amazed at how the plan came together, buses ferrying the injured. Seeing several people independently posting the lyrics to London Pride. Well, I was proud. And on Sunday evening, heading out to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kesstrel’s Drury Lane show (for a whole different kind of pride, the “that’s my friend up there on the stage!” kind) I asked the Underground man at Highgate station if the tube was running and he beamed and said “yes, business as usual”, and I couldn’t help beaming back and saying “Fair play to you,” as if I wasn’t just addressing him but the whole underground system.
And I kept thinking about a gorgeous sunny day last summer when I set out to Brentford to meetlostcarpark at a Robert Rankin convention. It was a few days after the big storms that filled the Thames with sewage, and Brentford smelled a bit like Bangkok, but as the tide rose it got better and we sat and drank cider by the water with the truly ubiquitous mzdt who was doing the sound. I headed back, in a happy bubble of drunk, as the sun was starting to set. I’d just bought Orbital’s Blue Album and by the time my train pulled into Waterloo I was blissed out on music and buzzing with energy as if the cider fizz had migrated into my whole body. I decided to walk from Waterloo to my bus at Tottenham Court Road. The sky was blue-pink-lilac and everything looked larger than life – the South Bank buildings and bridges, the London Eye spinning above me. One Perfect Sunrise was on the discman, Lisa Gerrard singing on the last track of Orbital’s career, and I felt like I was at the centre of everything and wanted the walk to last forever. I found myself actually crying, wiping my eyes with a huge stupid smile, getting very strange looks from passers-by. Most of that summer I felt like living in this city was hammering me down into powder, but right then it was all worth it to be there at that moment. Can you be in love with a city the way you can with a person? Has anyone else felt that way? Some people must have done. The guy who wrote Waterloo Sunset must have done, in the same place at the same hour. Have you?
( This is what I scribbled in my notebook when I finally got on the bus. )
There I was last Thursday in Luxembourg, watching BBC World News into the night, with channel-surfing breaks (naked chicks playing badminton, news channels full of exploded bus shots and the story of the blasts in three different languages, bizarre garden-centre shopping channels. European TV that night was all sex and death and garden gnomes). The next day, reading LJ and laughing at the tea icons. Being amazed at how the plan came together, buses ferrying the injured. Seeing several people independently posting the lyrics to London Pride. Well, I was proud. And on Sunday evening, heading out to
kesstrel’s Drury Lane show (for a whole different kind of pride, the “that’s my friend up there on the stage!” kind) I asked the Underground man at Highgate station if the tube was running and he beamed and said “yes, business as usual”, and I couldn’t help beaming back and saying “Fair play to you,” as if I wasn’t just addressing him but the whole underground system. And I kept thinking about a gorgeous sunny day last summer when I set out to Brentford to meet
lostcarpark at a Robert Rankin convention. It was a few days after the big storms that filled the Thames with sewage, and Brentford smelled a bit like Bangkok, but as the tide rose it got better and we sat and drank cider by the water with the truly ubiquitous mzdt who was doing the sound. I headed back, in a happy bubble of drunk, as the sun was starting to set. I’d just bought Orbital’s Blue Album and by the time my train pulled into Waterloo I was blissed out on music and buzzing with energy as if the cider fizz had migrated into my whole body. I decided to walk from Waterloo to my bus at Tottenham Court Road. The sky was blue-pink-lilac and everything looked larger than life – the South Bank buildings and bridges, the London Eye spinning above me. One Perfect Sunrise was on the discman, Lisa Gerrard singing on the last track of Orbital’s career, and I felt like I was at the centre of everything and wanted the walk to last forever. I found myself actually crying, wiping my eyes with a huge stupid smile, getting very strange looks from passers-by. Most of that summer I felt like living in this city was hammering me down into powder, but right then it was all worth it to be there at that moment. Can you be in love with a city the way you can with a person? Has anyone else felt that way? Some people must have done. The guy who wrote Waterloo Sunset must have done, in the same place at the same hour. Have you? ( This is what I scribbled in my notebook when I finally got on the bus. )
