Just for a day, a few hours even, a visit to the capital today in soaring October sunshine brought back years’ worth of memories of living and working in the city, many moons ago. Not all of them good, much as I love it, with all the white painted architecture and culture on offer…Lunch in Covent Garden with a great friend (from pre-London days even) was a real treat and walking it off through Piccadilly and Leicester Square was crowded but helped along with an ice cream…
But it was Aaaahhhh when we hit the parks, Regent’s Park and St James’s, in the late afternoon sunshine, that my nervous system finally hit wind down. Especially walking past the friendly (hungry) geese and heron and pelicans??? What were they doing there?? And same goes of course for the green parakeets my dear friend hadn’t heard of or seen before! All surprising, wonderful, curious and lively creatures, cheering everyone sat gazing at them.
What was it I picked up on a bluesky post – “Animals [and therein counted birds] teach us what it is to be human”. How true!!! Touching our humanity in what it means to be not a superior being but a fellow creature, with the same needs, and emotions…
It was wonderful to be amongst and under the trees too – The London Planes – with their graceful sheltering arks of branches and dappled leaves of green and yellow. Hopefully dropping calming phytoncides, too – astonishingly good and relaxing chemicals that trees can rain down. ( Not sure if that’s just a Spring thing! But certainly validates Japanese tree-bathing).
Inevitably conversation turned to how warm it actually is, with many people in T-shirts, in October. I remember quoting that stat from the telly (#GardenersWorld ?) about how by 2050 London will be as hot as Barcelona is now. It’s not that long really…
A fellow passenger travelling home said of his visit to Regent’s Park today “This kind of feels like it’s real summer – it’s not right!”
(I had a picture to post (that I can’t remember how to load) but I’m sure you can imagine, the low sunshine through the shimmering leaves, fountains in the lakes splashing helpfully in the background and the squeak of geese and ducks….”)
“”
