Light in London
For K. & M. and C. & R. — thank you for showing me a different side of London and for all the conversations, now and for years.
This started out as a kind of travel essay, but morphed at some point into a faux-diary entry. I can’t keep up with my experiences in my head any more, memory often being a fickle thing, and I’d like to look back some time at this weekend with my friends and know exactly where we were, who we were. But if you enjoy strangers’ diary entries with a lot of repetitive talk of the gorgeousness of the English landscape, do read on.
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Jane Austen’s characters take many walks: they make appointments to take walks with one another and decide on the length of the walks. And why not, when they live in England, especially if spring is transitioning into summer and the flowers are putting on a show. There are bluebells and daisies in the woods, and birdsong everywhere. Wisteria trails on brick walls and buttercups erupt on the meadows. When I was in London on the weekend, I realise that I may have never seen the city this bright. I had the most wonderful companions in my friends, who generously walked me through some of South London’s most beautiful parks, giving me new memories of time together, over a decade after we fumbled our way through university. How wonderful it was to meet after years, changed by love and loss, marriage and/or parenthood, temples flecked with grey, but knowing that some things remain the same.
We meandered through time and space, taking in walled gardens and ponds with swans and cygnets, wondering at the flight of ducks, debating how spring onions grew, and discussing the colour of hydrangeas in K. & M.’s backyard garden, home to 26 kinds of plants (and counting). As people moving into middle age are wont to do, we had hours of conversations on gardening, real estate, and having or not having children. We talked so much about houses and stairs and spare rooms that I started seeing advertisements for London real estate on my Duolingo app.
Talking of spare rooms, I had a beautiful room with a view at K. & M.’s, and lying in my bed, I enjoyed watching the moon climb into the still light sky as the hours lengthened. It is surreal to see so much natural light at midnight, when all is dark and neon by 7 pm where I live. All was quiet, I heard my thoughts as I hadn’t for a long while, then slept in the silver light.
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Well acquainted with my romanticising of English villages, C. had proposed an outing at Dulwich Village on Saturday afternoon. I could absolutely see why when we wandered into Dulwich Park after a lovely, lazy lunch, taking the scenic route to admire the houses. The park was a treat; we drifted down the paths, talking of houses, neighbours, sailing, and other grown-up things. We tried to find out who the omnipresent (on buildings) Edward Alleyn was, and dug into the origins of the name of Dulwich (from ‘Dilwihs’, or the meadow where the dill grew).
With C. & R. having to leave soon after to get some shopping done, K. and I stayed on to soak in more of Dulwich, which truly has my heart now. We sneaked into a little orchard, where the trees seemed to have been planted recently and looked rather as if they would not like to be disturbed. Further down, we came across a few cricket grounds; there were “no trespassing” signs on the fence, but what is the point of a cricket match that you can’t watch? We made our way by the boundary, but were surprised to find just a lone bench that was occupied by somebody from one of the teams, doing paperwork or keeping the score. The scoreboard bore half-erased numbers from an earlier match. At one point we stopped to chat about the players (some portly) who were taking things rather slowly, when we realised the match had come to a standstill. A few glances were directed at us but no one said anything. Basic spectator knowledge kicked in: we were standing near the sight-screen. Unwelcome visitors that we were, we took ourselves out gracefully for a few hours of indoor art and culture.
At Dulwich Picture Gallery, we examined paintings closely without a guide, because it is entertaining to make assumptions and look them up later. Somewhat ignominiously, we moved away when the guide brought their group along, but we needed the freedom to admire the scenes (and for me to wonder why so much of it was just grim). Several paintings had religious themes, but there were also storms at sea, street scenes, and a roomful of portraits. How do portrait artists paint: do they paint people as they see them, or as people like to be seen?
We followed this up with a visit to the Horniman Museum, a beautiful, spacious, free gallery, which, like the British Museum, has a collection of items that may or may not have the right to exist there. Several parts of the world are represented here, inviting the imagination to comfortably wander away from the here and now. While the collection of exhibits was impressive, the research wasn’t: surely they could find out more about the “small grotesque head” and the “large grotesque head”? Interestingly, the museum has negotiated the return of some items to Nigeria, and there are gaps now where the objects have been taken off display. May there be more of such understanding.
Sunday saw us back as a group, with M. joining the party for a really sunny afternoon at Brockwell Park. We found ourselves in a walled garden straight out of The Secret Garden, where honeybees communed with flowers of every possible hue among box-shaped hedges. I realised how much I’ve missed flowers while wandering through all of these different gardens. Bunches of jasmine and marigold are one thing, but well-kept gardens and wildflowers in meadows evoke such a sense of joy, I can see why English writers wrote the way they did. The gentle slopes of the park unravelled stunning expanses of green, and it felt like most of the neighbourhood had turned out to enjoy the sun — but not for one moment destroying the calm.
England being the land of gingerbeer and rose lemonade, K. & M. took me to a pub in the evening, where we enjoyed the delightful weather on benches in the open, watching people go by, discussing PhDs. I had subjected the name of the pub to a bit of malapropism earlier: it was called The Crooked Well, which I misremembered as The Tilted Bucket. (I looked up the latter, since a pub can be called just about anything in England; turns out there is no pub by this name, but there is a Tilted Bucket Florist in North Carolina.)
We had planned to go to a pub quiz for old times’ sake, but since our party was considerably small, we finished with dinner at a splendid Persian restaurant. We sat in the window, aglow in the decorative lights, rather startling motorists who stopped at the signal, as K. pointed out. We walked home as night (or a shade of it) fell, and by the time we went to bed, had done over 30 kilometers on foot over the weekend.
So this weekend was the end of my short trip to England, and a deep feeling of contentment is what I’ve come away with. I wanted more of London and England when I left in 2012 after my year at university, though my romanticism was slightly, worryingly shaken a few years later; I can safely say that it has returned in a more mature manner, and I’ve found my old self that was enamoured of England of the glorious countryside all over again. I know how to keep select memories alive, and how to have England continue to bewitch me. That said, while I can’t wait to go back, I’m also happy to be home. There were experiences that put things into perspective and conversations that had me examine my priorities and reality. I may not know yet how to get where I want to be yet, but I know that light and golden-green is how I want my life to be. (Bonus tip: you don’t have to travel to India to find yourself; England could also work.)
