Everyone knows London’s loud side. The clattering Tubes, the blaring roads, the teeming streets, the parties, the pubs, the carnivals. But unlike New York, the city that never sleeps, London does have a quiet side — and it never looks so good as when it sleeps.
For my sins, my work means I’m an early riser. Getting up in the winter dark has (very obvious) drawbacks but it does mean you see the city at peace. Relatively speaking, of course. When I cycle across town to the office the streets are empty, save for a few hardy runners and sleepy drivers.
My route goes past the Serpentine and across the water you can see the Houses of Parliament framed against the clear sky. You and no one else. That’s the strange feeling you get whizzing around on a bike at inopportune hours. It feels like the city is yours, just for a moment.
I’ve found that two wheels are the best way to see London at peace. I wasn’t always a goody two-shoes early riser. I was a teenage night owl once. Back then I’d wait till the last possible moment to set out to see friends in the evening — and the last possible moment to leave for home (which I’m sure they always appreciated).
The suburban roads of north-west London were deserted, the streetlights bathed the pavements with a warm yellow glow, and only the occasional flicker of tail lights in the distance told you others were about. It was then I learnt the thrill of ghosting through the capital at rest. And it was that same feeling that London was all yours.
But you don’t even need a bike — or to leave your house. In my twenties I remember even the busiest places had their times of quiet solitude. I lived off Brixton Road for a couple of years, where the roar of traffic didn’t ever quite die and if you ventured down to the Tube, no matter how small the hour, there would be people milling about.
Even so, sat inside, as the clocked turned past midnight you could sense a relaxation in the air, a loosening of the daily grind’s grip. Windows flickered in the flats and houses opposite and voices still carried through the dark, but it was different. The distinct sense that you were the only one awake would descend. Later, when my hours shifted, I learnt that strange peacefulness of the late nights came in the early mornings too.
I’m not saying the city is safe or cosy in those lonely hours — far from it. We all know too well and too bitterly that’s not the case. But your relationship to it changes. It shifts from a brash, blaring thing to a still place, studded with fluorescent lights where trees loom in the dark and most people have gone away.
Probably you’re one of the wise ones who sleeps during those dead hours. But if, one sleepless night, you find yourself at the window, you may be surprised at the London you see through it.
Brooklyn Beckham: The celebrity chef who can’t cook
Poor Brooklyn Beckham. Like many 22-year-old men, he can’t cook. But unlike most 22-year-old men who can’t cook, he has a career as a celebrity chef.
A recent report from the US claimed it took 62 people to help David and Victoria Beckham’s eldest son, pictured, craft an eight-minute episode about making a sandwich. An unkind source told The New York Post: “He is to cooking what [his mother] Posh was to singing.”
Sadly this is not his first risible career move. In 2017, he released a book of excruciatingly bad photography. One shot, of an elephant entirely obscured by shade, was captioned “elephants in Kenya. So hard to photograph but / incredible to see”.
But Beckham is the son of a world-famous and wealthy couple, so why pity him? Because there’s something depressing about a person who sadly doesn’t seem up to much, but keeps being allowed to fail very publicly.
He’s only 22. Where’s the quiet word in the ear telling him that he can be happy without being famous?
