To be a veteran Londoner is to be reflexively befuddled by Canary Wharf; a surveilled, corporate theme park that transforms, at the weekend, into a culturally barren ghost town of shuttered Prets, bored families looking at massive fountains, and bodycam-wearing security guards.
Or, at least, that’s how the script is supposed to go. On a recent, blazingly sunny Sunday evening, no one in this Lego metropolis seemed to have got the memo that they were meant to be either off in glitzier postcodes or tucked away in their enormous high-rise apartments. Crowds streamed from the Tube and out into fragrant gardens; electric boats of day drinkers scudded across Wood Wharf’s mirrored waters; and the place felt, with its multicultural, boba-slurping hordes and light bouncing off futurist surfaces, like a prosperous sci-fi utopia magicked out of thin air.
