Love of the Day: Looking Up

'Lift up your eyes upon

The day breaking for you.'

Maya Angelou

London may not be full of the natural, untamed beauty that raises you out of yourself, lifts up your heart and refreshes you, that settles over you like a soft green veil - but it is full of man-made beauty along with the urban grit.  So much graceful architecture and history, creativity and interesting design around, it’s impossible not to marvel at it. And, every now and again, look up past it. 

Wherever you are in the world, whatever is going on in your life, you can always look up. The wide, wild sky is always there, with its changing colours and clouds. Its population of birds wheeling and living their fierce, free lives, independent of you or your human concerns. The tiny, high-up aeroplanes with their trails, escaping to somewhere far away and unknown.   It’s something I find oddly pleasing to remember. That there's one thing that you can do anywhere, as long as you are out of doors, to get a bit of different perspective on things.

You can look up in the countryside of course, but it’s particularly good if you’re ensconced in a city, with all its busy-ness and built-up streets - it can be so easy to get caught up with all the stuff going on at ground level. With a million signs, window displays, interesting places and people, traffic, adverts and lights everywhere, there’s a whole lot of distraction always there to suck you in.  (That’s not even counting the ever-present internal monologue that can take over from reality at any time, making the actuality of your environment all but invisible). 

Apart from the sky though, I love looking up at the funny little things to be found stuck on the tops of buildings. Weathervanes and decorations, domes and spires and little turrets. Interesting pieces of art or graffitti, tiles, signs and window-boxes. Sometimes there are whole gardens up there, or roof-top bars strung with fairy lights that you would never normally notice.  Sometimes there are people who have climbed out of a random window, just hanging out on a ledge above everyone's heads.  And there's also something to be said for just the loveliness of the outlines of buildings and trees against the sky. If I'm feeling particularly vague and floaty, I like just noticing the shapes that they make and pretending that I'll try and draw them one day (I never do).

Occasionally in the morning I get lucky and nab myself a seat at the front of the top deck on the bus (to any readers of the last post - my commute has now changed!) and then I get to have the unadulterated pleasure of being swung through the streets, with my music in my ears and all the good stuff spooling out before me, just looking up.

Bug of the Day: Commuting Into Central London During Rush Hour

Photo by DAVID ILIFF. License: CC-BY-SA 3.0

I've recently started working in Central London, which means I have no choice but to travel in to the depths of Dante's Inferno during rush hour. Uurrrrrgggggggh. I kind of knew doing this was gonna be a bit hectic and tiring, but HOLY CRAP, I have never experienced anything like it. An hour and a quarter of unadulterated misery, twice a day, day in and day out.  How do people - so very, very many people, in fact - do this??!

I now start my mornings with an invigorating sprint to the local train station, ram myself into a train packed to the rafters with puffy-faced office workers  (there's no hope of a seat. Ever. Not even if you get up at 6am), and proceed to take part in a game of uncomfortable Commuter Twister: balanced on one leg, an arm behind my back hanging onto the nearest pole, face squashed against someone's pinstriped arm, I sway along with the sleepy crowd down the tracks to Waterloo.  Spat out into a maelstrom of humanity, faces looming into mine, people striding in every conceivable permutation of a direction, clashing, tutting and huffing, tripping over each others heels, clipping sides with newspapers, umbrellas, bags, ducking, dodging, sidestepping... I arrive at work every day reeling, exhausted and with the knowledge that the same in reverse awaits me at the end of the day sitting on my shoulders, like a wretched crow.

The first day that I did this I arrived home with actual bruises from the journey, having been trodden on by a crocodile of French teenagers near Covent Garden and then smacked into by a woman running headlong for her connection at Waterloo (lady, you cannot run at Waterloo at 6pm, you are literally just beating people up with your front).

In short, Central London at rush hour makes me feel like a sheep - one of a million poor, stupid creatures being herded along, up stairs and through stiles, bumping into each other, clashing hooves and climbing over each other's backs - an angry, angry, trampled sheep.  BAAAAAAAA!!!!

Bug of the Day, oh yes indeedy.  Bug of the Day every single blimmin' weekday stretching into eternity, UGH. Good job I like my new work, that's all I can say!