Marylebone Morning
I rally against London a lot of the time. I say I prefer the countryside, I say the city is too busy, too impersonal. When it rains and people are unsmiling, it drains my energy, it is tiring to walk about in. I tend to avoid Oxford Street, even on sunny days it is so hectic, such crazy wealth and so detached, so foreign in the movement of the people from the rest of the UK - one brainwashed, consuming, uncaring mass. I like to think I am immune from London’s charms.
And yet there are moments when it consumes me, when I feel so grateful to be there and walking through Its beauty, along the charm of its red-bricked streets. Such was the feeling this morning. I awoke to a misty Walthamstow, the sun obscured by mist as I stood on the steps of the doorway, the threshold barred by a full-length iron gate. I planned to head to Paddington straight away and sit and relax until the train prices dropped by ten pounds - after 9:30 am. On the Bakerloo line, I had a change of heart. The night before I had eaten at a pub in Marylebone and now as I neared it again on the tube I thought I might as well use the free time I had to take a walk through it and get some more marvellous morning light.
I recently watched the film Oppenheimer and there was a lovely line where the protagonist, speaking to a senior scientist, is asked about his passion “Can you hear THE MUSIC Robert?”. I loved it because it suggests that inspiration and creativity are intangible, that it is like a music one can hear, but not something one can read or understand clearly - exactly how Rabbi Jonathan Sacks described the nature of the divine to Richard Dawkins, who replied “Yes Jonathan I am tone death, but there is no music.”
Such music did I hear tinkle as I stepped out past the ornate glass and wooden roof that shelters the taxi rank of Marylebone Station. I crossed the busy A501 and into the quiet borough, shaded by trees with the sun rising over the morning mist which lay nestled in the rooftops, desperately clinging on to the chimneys.
I pass beside St Mary’s Church which rings for 8 o’clock, grand with its singular belltower and its pillared circular courtyard. The sun strikes the warm, sandstone brick and it shines like Queen’s College. I round the corner and stop for a coffee in a shaded courtyard, tables being laid outside, and the roar of cars and people absent. I love the peace here, the sheltered street.
