22-10-2018

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	Cruising home from North London on my bicycle, skirting the 
	edges of the city centre but not sticking wholly to the 
	so-called 'green' routes either. In Aldwych, one of the most 
	terrifying stretches of road in zone one, if you ask me, five 
	(or is it six?) lanes curve round a perfect, wide-angled 
	semi-circle towards the East edge of the Strand, that 
	off-shoot of old Fleet Street. You line up your bike in the 
	middle of coaches and black cabs that try to cruise round the 
	curve, but get all caught-up in their own confusion when 
	they're in the wrong (unmarked) lane, and attempt a 
	last-minute alteration in their trajectory to line up 
	elsewhere. From above, I imagine, the whole thing must look 
	like some strange accumulation of cellular organisms, or like 
	fraying protein chains straying from each other before 
	blending together by the traffic lights at the far end of the 
	road. On a bike you need to be super-alert here, aim for what 
	you think is a lane, and cruise by all the motors to get ahead 
	of the lights at the intersection with the next road, then 
	fight the buses pulling in and out of the Strand on the way 
	down to Waterloo Bridge, before some burst of freedom as the 
	road opens up.

	The light over the river this time of year is delicate. The 
	low-hanging sun sends shadows stretching across all the 
	stone-work of old imperial London, and the amber-orange cold 
	light falls upon the water more gently than in the Summer 
	months. And here, on the other side of the light, the shallow 
	waves reflect nothing.

	I get up to speed on Waterloo Bridge, after the stop-and-start 
	game of Central, but make sure to glide for a while and catch 
	the skyline on either side: electric red lights against the 
	fading Autumn skyline, and crisp sky-blue in the glass 
	windowpanes of all the centre-piece architecture.

	At the South end of Waterloo Bridge a bike lane opens up round 
	the IMAX roundabout, and you get to cruise ahead of all the 
	motor-vehicles. If you get lucky, if they've left enough room 
	on the road when they came to halt all up in traffic on the 
	road by the station, sometimes you can cruise on easily by 
	down to old London Road, starting the escape from city-centre 
	and into the cosy, familiar homelands of South London.

	Light falls and the red and amber back-lights of the vehicles 
	lined up ahead become more prominent, swaying like obedient 
	fireflies that move some, then wait, then move some more, as I 
	circle round their outer edges. The lights dilute and stretch 
	out in rainwater on the surface of my eye. Tarmac fades and 
	toughens into split gravel in the residential neighborhoods.