Sometimes, standing in central London, I simply stop and breathe. Around me, taxis edge through the traffic and tourists find their way between the shops and office blocks. I feel the weight of the place, and beneath all that movement there’s a long, humming undercurrent that says: we have been here for a very long time.
The Romans laid stone here, and Saxon hands worked the land in the centuries that followed. By the time the Normans raised their towers, London already had a long past. The Great Fire raged through its streets, and centuries later the Blitz thundered over its rooftops. The scars of those years are part of the city I’m standing in now.
I often feel that history most strongly in small, unspectacular moments. While I’m waiting for a bus by an old churchyard, the city’s different ages seem to sit close together. The traffic moves beside a place set aside for the dead, and a side street still holds the shape of a medieval lane. The old city lives on through these changing forms, its earlier streets still guiding our feet.
London has lived through plagues and sieges, with kings and parliaments leaving their marks on its long history. Prosperity and ruin have both changed its streets, and the place carries the stories of all that has happened here. There is laughter in that history as well as grief. I find a strange comfort in that endurance, and somehow it helps me stand a little steadier in my own small troubles.
If London can carry its centuries, perhaps I can carry my own seasons.
