London loves

I've been thinking about that there London this week. Five years since I've lived there, and maybe it feels a little less like my home than it used to, but not that much.

Here's a photo I took of the Shard rising up behind The Tower of London - I'm crap at photos, but you get the point ...

I quickly wrote the following about London this week ... sometimes it doesn't feel like it, but London gives back what you put into it.

*

When London loves back,

The glow of centuries’ labour

Sparks ten million hearts

On a summer evening.

London, from on high, is all

Parks, hospitals, football grounds, churches,

Dotted with oddities

Of architects ancient & modern,

Ringing with ghostly choirs of

Filth & fury.

No city's so unplanned

And fantastical, purer

Than symmetry, with so many

Centres and shelters from the storm.

London, on a good day, is

Six hundred square miles

Of festival, is

Six hundred square miles

Of everything in the whole world.

London lies dormant,

Then bubbles with hopes,

Simmers with ridiculous clashes

Of untameable tribes,

Of sacred and profane,

Lost in lucre, envy and both.

Even tube trains come alive sometimes,

Embarrassed to look up

Then wild-eyed and glorious

Like a karaoke booth,

Sometimes.

When London loves back,

A hipster’s allowed to be

just another lost boy

Who’ll wait his turn

For a fair price,

Raise his lips to the sky

On a riverside path

And breathe his own air

For a second,

And it’s cool.

London, fresh with Fuller’s,

Feels safer than any statistic

Or any sadistic prick

Can ever tell you otherwise,

Feels like every freedman’s fiefdom.

No other city contains so many towns,
defending their own honour,

nor hides so many battles raging

A few layers beneath,

No city so Irish or Polish

Or Ghanaian or French

Or whatever you are, whatever you want to be,

No city so godless

Or ecumenical.

No other city feigns indifference

Quite so democratically

But loves you back sometimes,

And lights up your heart.

No exile from London

Doesn’t, once in a while,

Wake awash with the sounds and the smells

Of the permanent city

And smile a prodigal smile.

I can tell, when I hurry back,

Assume my London glare, my London shuffle,

My home’s not

Forgotten me and my

Vain attempts to measure it,

I can tell it knows it owns me

And I owe it still, and always.

*

And here's a playlist about London, but the joy of London ...

Upfield – Billy Bragg

London – Benjamin Clementine

Waterloo Sunset – The Kinks

Galang - MIA
London Pride - Noel Coward

Up the Junction – Squeeze

In the City – The Jam

Itchycoo Park – The Small Faces
The Sights and Sounds of London Town - Richard Thompson

For Tomorrow – Blur

Electric Avenue – Eddy Grant

Rudie Can’t Fail – The Clash
Trams of Old London - Robyn Hitchcock 

A Rainy Night in Soho – The Pogues

Brompton Oratory – Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

22 Grand Job – The Rakes
Blue Piccadilly - The Feeling

Dreamy Days – Roots Manuva

At the Chime of a City Clock – Nick Drake

Time for Heroes – The Libertines