London Things That Make Me Happy
1. The 243 bus route, as it gets to Goswell Road, announces the stop in one of the most sensual voices ever to grace the London transport network. It’s almost indecent how excited the automated recording sounds to be pulling up at this venerable, sometime-gateway to the old city. (Footnote: it’s also at the stop where time is frozen at 14.10, according to the clock above Survival International’s office. The world may turn, the sun may set, but within the walls of that charity is a workforce trapped in a space-time bubble where it’s always that depressing moment just after lunch when you haven’t quite got back into the swing of work.)
2. Different underground lines sound different. The Jubilee Line has a slow electric build-up, not particularly high in the auditory frequency range, whereas the Circle and District Lines rattle like any second now they’re going to break apart. The new Metropolitan Line trains whoosh; the Overground whines. It’s just a little thing that makes me happy.
3. There is a man outside Stockwell Underground station, (which carries a memorial to Jean Charles de Menezes, an innocent man shot by police in 2005 during the height of the 7/7 terror in London) who sells the largest, cheapest, forest-like flowers I’ve ever seen. Trying to get a bunch of these onto the underground, my friend had to bend down and turn sideways to try and wiggle them in. Nearby another flower-seller has set up shop outside a church in Kennington, and as well as his stall, maintains a community flower patch rich with bright colours and smells, in the bed of a local tree.
4. Continuing with our South London theme, there is a monument to the fallen soldiers of the Soviet Union outside the Imperial War Museum. Given that relations between the UK and Russia have been and remain turbulent and tense, I think it’s worthwhile keeping and honouring monuments to the people of each other’s nations, even if the politics continue to collide.
5. Regents Canal is home not only to a cormorant (my third favourite bird after herons and flamingos) but also to rapidly-growing baby swans.
6. Now that the days are longer in London, there is stronger sunlight which can reflect from higher angles off things in the city. As an LD, this makes me happy.
7. There is a day – it was a few weeks ago now – when all the ants in London swarm up. The new, fat young queens, with wings on their back, take off looking for nests, and for a few hours the pavements from Acton to Leytonstone are busy with tiny, bustling ants in search of next year’s place to hide.
