London

Wrapped in furs and leather, I slip into the London fog, as sleek as the raindrop on a black taxi window. I have lived each day of this week twice, it seems. Perhaps the City stuffs its days with marvellous toys, with some hours as terrible as liquorice and others as lovely as baubles.

The days here are rich with things. Things as wonderful as a child pressing its nose to a Harrod’s window, dreaming of the bear who wears a little hat, and who sits politely on a canister of biscuits.

Time wafts along, like the swirl of milk in a cup of afternoon tea. Minutes just seem to happen, stumbling into each other with bashful apologies. The brits seem both daft and cheeky, in a way that reassures one that the culture of Dandyism is well alive, as observed in the swish of men’s tailcoats and the dimple in ladies’ pursed smiles.

There is an elegance in the trench-coat, the gloved finger that swiftly waves away any nonsense that may bumble upon their path. As they rush into the crowd, brows furrowed and head bowed into a cashmere scarf, the person of London has a flair for the roasted chestnut, the warm smile that breaks free of the smog. For the grim sneer and the chipper small talk all meet in the pinkie that extends from a teacup.

And London in the rain,

how immensely captivating.

It is the warm hearth in a red bricked house that makes the rain so dramatic. Dark and beautiful, no city wears its rain as wonderfully as London. The characteristic gloom of a sullen, rainy day is tastefully decorated with the flash of a red bus, a white mansion in Chelsea, a phone booth matted with punk stickers.

The elements of the City bemuse one another, with all the irony and wit of a West End play. There, somewhere between the peanut gallery and the velvet-seat boxes, Britan’s peculiar humor comes alive, and is understood by all those across the nation as a social lubricant as necessary as the Weather. For derision, banter, and the British scoff are all necessary elements facilitating some degree of cohesion among the classes. Similarly to how the color royal purple dons the shops as though it were the trim on a mink coat, even as it boasts the sale on a packet of crisps for 75p.

Wet leaves fall on the bench I am sitting on. They hold a sadness only described in Dickens’ novels, something pathetic and charming. Now, I realize the day is lost upon me, slinking away into the fog. Some gothic tower looms between two clouds, still and proud as an Empire. I think that time in this city is some effervescent, distant thing.

Big Ben chimes for Tea.

With haste, the Nation carries on.