One Sunday in March I sat on a bench in the park near Elephant & Castle, which is my corner of London, and tried to answer a question I’d been carrying around. I had a coffee. What I typed, more or less: I really like the Italian, even French, culture of older gentlemen hanging out on a piazza, having a coffee, reading something, spending time. What’s the equivalent in London?
When I finished typing, I looked up. I was in a park, on a bench, with a coffee, spending time. The answer had been under me the whole time. Heh.
That answered the solitary version of my question. I already know how to sit in a park with coffee. I was thinking about the social version, the older men who know one another and expect to meet there. I haven’t found that yet. It may exist behind a door I don’t recognise. It may be the pub, and perhaps I’ve never learned to use a pub that way. I don’t know.
The closest thing I have is a standing dinner with a good friend, one evening a week, every week, with no occasion required. There is no birthday and nothing to organise. It’s simply on. We see the same face and spend the time on purpose, which would work on a piazza without any adjustment. I have one friend and one evening; the men I was thinking about have a whole square.
Four days before that Sunday, I’d been practising the solitary version. The forecast said Wednesday would reach 17, perhaps 18 degrees, with sun. It would be the warmest day of the year so far, so I took an actual vacation day for the weather. When I first wrote down the plan, I called it “thinking of maybe taking the day off,” although I’d already decided. A day like that is rare in a London March, and I didn’t want to spend it dressed wrong or fed badly. I would walk Regent’s Canal, drink tea outside, have lunch, read, and take in the sun. I chose trousers I could walk in all day and put a Drake’s scarf in my pocket in case I needed it. Lunch came from home: salmon and vegetables from my oven, packed in a Tupperware.
The canal has too much London in it to be pretty the postcard way, which is what I like about it: narrowboats, brick, the domestic backs of buildings, sudden green, cyclists, cafes, water barely moving, and the neighbourhood changing as you walk. I don’t drive, so a day outside has to work by bus or on foot, and the canal does. The walking has been coming back this spring, and I’d like to keep it that way, so I sat down three times or so along the way, just to rest the muscles. Benches matter more to me than they used to. A good one, with some shade and water in view, is worth bending a route around, and with nothing scheduled I could take it slowly, one stretch at a time. The question wasn’t typed yet, but each of those sits was already the picture I’d end up asking about: a man on a bench, spending time. Worth the day off. Easily.
Late May brought a rare heatwave at the end of a week of long workdays, so I used the plan again. I wore linen, bought water along the way, and took the bus instead of the Tube, as I always do on hot days. I went to the Garden Museum in Lambeth for the green and kept every part of the day easy to abort. I was on my own again. So the question remains: where does London keep its version of the old men on the square? If you know, tell me. On the next warm Wednesday, I’ll probably be on the bench near Elephant & Castle with a coffee.