If London were a fruit
If London were a fruit, it’d be an orange. Hard to peel but explosively juicy once you've dug in. It’s a puzzling Murakami metaphor and a freshly rewired plug. Satisfying things in life, it seems, lie just beneath the surface.
London is a bright, clear tube map representing winding old-sheep-track streets. It’s a weather agnostic appetite for mischief and feeling fiercely proud of your neighbourhood’s esoteric shops. It’s repetitive, sterile tube announcements interrupted by a train driver’s joke. Brutal concrete for miles then green spaces that stretch even further.
On the surface, London can feel individualistic, all ‘doing’ and important places and closed off faces. But it also offers up a flip side: perspective. Amidst everything going on, you can’t help but feel humbled by your own worries. The sense of activity stretches far into the past, with every corner hiding a documented history of its own (and if you forget to appreciate that, try living in Australia for a while then come back to me).
This city is substance and feeling. A heady energy, a low hum, a sweeping, undefined momentum. London whisks you along in an unassuming way. The fact you’re in a capital city isn’t shoved in your face so much as presented with a shrug. Returning after three years, I often have a sense that I’m about to bump into someone I know. Of course, I don’t, but such is the conviviality amidst all the chaos.
Just like a choppy, steel-grey ocean, when the sun peeps out, London transforms. Suddenly it’s all switching your lunch from al desko to al fresco and flirty bare limbs that've just caught the sun. But the rarity of these days keeps London feeling somehow a little less obvious, a little more enchanting.
In a final feat of misdirection, amidst all the five star eateries I have a different favourite culinary star. The supermarket meal deal. Egalitarian, ubiquitous and comfortingly predictable, they’re as deliciously underrated as London is understated. That is to say, a lot.
Contribution by copywriter, Anna Foster. Click through to her website to read more of her work.