spring in the city

inspired (once again) by one of my all-time favourite writers

Here in London, spring is in full swing. The evenings are getting lighter, iced coffees are firmly back on the menu and daffodil-yellow has become an unmistakable hue in the city. After a few too many weeks of what felt like endless rain, Londoners are letting out a collective sigh of relief as we realise: we made it.

For those of you who are newer here (hello!), I share regular seasonal dispatches from London in the form of Annie Ernaux-inspired vignettes. I’ve written more on the inspiration for this project in the first post in this series, linked below if you weren’t reading the newsletter back in September.

I hope you enjoy this new batch of seasonal vignettes, typed into my phone as the cold, dark days of winter began to lift...

Emily x

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I am walking through Clissold Park on a Sunday in February. It’s not a bright day but it’s not raining, which is more than can be said for most days in the last month or two. Everyone is visibly grateful for the reprieve. It feels like half the people I see are carrying bunches of flowers.

A pass a woman of around my age. She’s wearing head-to-toe black and overear headphones, through which she’s speaking with somebody on the phone. ‘Yeah,’ she says in a slightly Northern accent, ‘you have to do those ab crunches even when you’re 95.’

***

I’m sitting opposite four women with suitcases on a southbound Bakerloo train. I’d put them in their mid-to-late thirties. One of the group is speaking, and the others are hanging onto her every word. She’s wearing a pale yellow jumper and leopard print Adidas trainers, and sipping from a Pret coffee. She tells the others about a woman they all seem to know whose husband left her unexpectedly.

‘If she had an ounce of self awareness she would’ve seen it coming,’ the woman says, ‘but she doesn’t, so she didn’t. Now she won’t let me talk to her about anyone who is engaged or married, she won’t hear it.’

‘God,’ one of her friends says, ‘what a miserable life. Nobody will want to be friends with her.’

‘Well, exactly,’ the woman in yellow says. ‘And she’s in therapy, but I think the therapist is reinforcing it, telling her she should take time for herself.’ She smirks.

The train pulls into Charing Cross, and the woman in yellow stands. ‘Is this us?’ another friend asks, and she nods. She’s already half way to the platform. Her friends scramble to get their bags. They get off just in time.

***

I leave a coffee shop in De Beauvoir in early March to head to a therapy appointment. It’s a cold, cloudy day. Two guys are talking outside a residential building, it seems like they’ve bumped into each other. ‘Yeah, they’re asking me to cough up four point two,’ one of them says. His friend’s laughing, and he joins in. ‘Who do they think man is, Drake? I ain’t Drake, man.’

***

On the 206 bus towards Kensal Rise, there is standing room only when my girlfriend and I get on. I stand behind a man in his late forties who is tapping on his phone. I glance down at his screen and see a page of search engine results. His search reads: meaning of teeth falling out in your dreams.

***

A lesbian couple are walking arm in arm past the Co-op near Manor House station. They are carrying their purchases in their hands, each of them holding more than is comfortable. ‘I just feel like,’ the slightly shorter one says in a North American accent, ‘an artsy film is supposed to be, like -’

They walk on before I can hear how it’s supposed to be.

***

On a Victoria Line train, I spot a couple that would be perfect for the people reading in public piece I just wrote. She’s dressed casually in black jeans, black Chelsea boots and a teddy coat, and she’s studiously ignoring her boyfriend to read the last fifty or so pages of Wolf Hall. He’s trying to get her attention, annoying her on purpose: bobbing his head to his music then taking out his phone out to take a selfie of them both. She obliges, pulls a cute face, then she’s back to Hilary Mantel.

***

I am walking towards London Bridge station at 4.30pm on a Tuesday. It’s busy, the start-early-finish-early crowd rushing for their trains. I walk past a woman wearing a high blonde ponytail and a blazer. She’s on the phone, and I only catch a snippet of the conversation she’s having. ‘Yeah,’ she says, ‘I cried at my desk, earlier.’

***

On a sunny Sunday morning in mid-March, I walk to Ealing Broadway to take the Elizabeth Line to east London, where I am meeting my sister and her boyfriend. I sit beside a man who is cradling a two pint bottle of milk in the crook of his elbow. We wait a few minutes for the train to depart. When it does, he unscrews the cap and takes a long swig.

***

A family get on my tube westbound from Oxford Circus. They’re dressed nicely, like they’ve been out for dinner, or maybe to a show. There’s a girl in a beautiful light trench, knee-high boots over her sheer tights. She pulls out one pink slipper from her bag, then another. Her dad is beside me, sitting across from her.

‘Have you brought your slippers?’

‘Yeah, these are killing me,’ she says, motioning at her boots. He takes out his phone to photograph her as she puts them on, shaking his head. ‘Should’ve brought my pyjamas,’ he says, laughing.

***

Leaving the overground station at Highbury and Islington in early March, a guy in his mid-thirties is also exiting the station. He’s wearing a blue baseball cap, talking on the phone. ‘Right,’ he says to the person on the other end of the line, ‘I’m gonna get on a Lime bike and go to this Zoom hypnobirthing class.’

If you want to read more posts like this one, you can find my previous dispatches from the city here: summer in the city, autumn in the city, christmas in the city, winter in the city. Of course, there’s nothing like reading a bit of Ernaux herself, so I wholeheartedly recommend both of the titles that inspired this series: Exteriors and Look at the Lights, My Love. If you pick one or both up, I would love to know how you find them!

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