I realised it all too late. I'd spent weeks running through the parks swerving around children and tutting at crowds. I'd tripped over dogs and stumbled down verges to avoid getting too close to anyone. What were they all doing here? It wasn’t usually this busy. Why were they all at Hampstead Heath at 11 o'clock on a Wednesday morning?
They weren’t all in Central London anymore, that’s why.
You can imagine Central London without anyone in it. You can think of Oxford Street, Trafalgar Square, Leicester Square, Covent Garden, The Strand and The Southbank starved of human traffic and noise. This happens regularly; on an early Sunday morning, or those bank holiday weekends when everyone seems to have left for the beach. An occasional bus or taxi rolls past. There are street cleaners and bin men, and individual pedestrians, lost in their own thoughts.
During lockdown though, there was something else going on. The key difference was how it felt. It was without the detritus of yesterday or an hour ago or a minute ago. It was free from bustle and fuss. The air itself was still: it had not been moved by more than a whisper in weeks. There was no longer the background hum, buzz or roar, because nothing and no one was roaring. The buses sailed rather than stormed. They laboured to keep to timetables. People took time to acknowledge each other, if you saw another person at all. They kept their distance.
So I set off through King’s Cross. By the time I was at Bloomsbury, I was warmed up. I saw hoarding and railings going up at the British Museum. An underwhelming site, but a significant one, all things considered. Then I was on Oxford Street. Empty, dark shops. Pedestrians with masks on, holding up their phones to take photos. You could weave out into the road and back again without incident. You could even stand in the road and stare at the “Thankyou NHS” flags hanging down the whole length of the street.
The curve of Regent Street provided a gentle tilt to my stride. I hadn’t realised before how joyfully downhill it is. I wondered if retail staff were coming in to change the window displays, or whether in a few months’ time it would all seem incredibly out of date.
I didn’t even have to wait at the traffic lights at Piccadilly Circus - I just cut straight across and down Regent Street St James's to Pall Mall. It sounds obvious, but it really is quite a long road, and incredibly straight. It’s a runners' and cyclists' dream. I dithered in the road and got in the way of an oncoming bike - of two, of three - but I honestly might as well have run straight down the middle. I thought of Mary Keitany in the London Marathon in 2017, her light, quick feet gliding up the other side of the park, to where I was heading.
At Buckingham Palace, I remembered a friend who came here as a child, and got her head stuck in the railings. I thought of the changing of the guard. Of royal weddings, of the Queen’s birthday. I looked at the building, expecting something to happen. Grey clouds loomed behind it, with a halo of brighter sky in between.
There were more ducks than people in St James’ Park. There was a real feeling that if you were here, it was because you lived nearby, or you had travelled on foot. There was a prestige to it. I envied the cyclists for a moment for the greater distance that two wheels can afford. But to be honest, it hurts my knees. Also, I love the scruffiness of running there. I love the rebellion of moving faster and the lack of sophistication. There is a limit to what I can carry, and therefore on my time: I have to get home (or to a shop) before I dehydrate or get too tired. If I pause to look, it’s because I really want to.
Upon leaving the park, the Houses of Parliament always arrive sooner than I expect. The tower was still clad in black and construction work was continuing. With everything that has been going on in the country and with our government it is a loaded, loaded sight. I felt heavy, suddenly. I got a clear view of it from the other side of Westminster Bridge. Most importantly, I got a clear run. On Strava this segment is called “dodge the tourists”.
(After lockdown, the path has a blue line down the middle, and pedestrians are supposed to stay to the left of it. On one occasion (one of many, I’m sure) there was a man on the bridge playing out of tune bagpipes, and a crowd standing around him. Best laid plans and all that.)
At the London Eye, there was no movement, only an ominous black crow. I heard it before I saw it. I saw a man setting up his ice cream stall. There's a pandemic, yes, but this had finally become the iconic run I had always thought it could be, now that I no longer had to focus on finding the clearest route. I'd always thought it would feel like I was in a film, with a wistful voiceover accompanying my strides, exuding hope and harmony just before everything goes wrong. And you know what, it did feel like that. I could gaze at the Thames, and just make sure I avoided the big plastic ice cream cone.
The sign outside the National Theatre still said, “Welcome”, but with the outdoor seating taped off. I imagined the Understudy bar full of noise and shoulders and wide eyes, everyone and everything on the precipice of something wonderful, laughing and kissing.
The scrolling L.E.D sign at the top of the building said, “See you soon.”
I’ve walked across Waterloo Bridge countless times, but have never dared to run it. People have trains to catch at Waterloo. I've been that person. Don't get in their way or you will end up in the river. But here, the view to the east unfolds with the curve of the river. I ran faster to try to see more quicker.
Head for home, or diversion? I tilted left for Covent Garden. I stopped to look around.
I tiptoed. It still smelt of perfume and food, but the loudest sound was a hum from something that sounded like a generator. I was struck by just how much darker it is without the lights from the shop windows. I held my breath at the empty tables, devoid even of chairs. I jogged to the space where the street performers would be and I thought about how they always had to encourage people to keep moving, so that they didn’t block the passageways.
Covent Garden is where I first fell in love with London. I’m sure it’s where a lot of people first fall in love. When I first moved here, and found the city a lot dirtier and more confusing than I’d expected, it’s where I came to feel at home. Seeing it like this, I wanted to hold it. A shipwreck. An abandoned, devastated city.
Security guards patrolled the tunnels and passageways. They clocked me, but I didn’t yet know whether I was really allowed to be there. I kept wandering, just far enough away from them. There was only me and another man here, after all. But the view up to the station stopped me in my tracks: it’s actually so beautiful, with the cobbled road and the troughs of flowers. A security guard headed towards me, just to my right. I knew what was happening. I knew I’d been there too long. She opened her mouth to speak, then smiled as I put my phone back in my pocket, smiled back, and bounced off across the cobbles.
This wasn’t purely paranoia. When lockdown was at its height, I sat on a bench at the Southbank for a break on a walk, and a police officer told me I would have to keep moving. A man with a skipping rope next to me was allowed to stay. Remember? You could walk, run or cycle. Even skip, even do star jumps. But you couldn’t stand still.
I was at the homestretch, now: Kingsway, Bloomsbury, Kings Cross. It’s straightforward, but I always forget that it’s slightly uphill, so it needs whatever reserves I can rustle up. Everything I enjoyed about the downhill pelt at the beginning comes back to haunt me. No way round it.
Now that I was back in very familiar territory though, it was difficult to piece together everything that I’d just experienced. Such incredibly different parts of the city pulled together in such a short space of time, a near-impossible experience when things were, for want of a better, less over-used word, normal. So much history, so many memories, and so little of any other stimulation. It is pure London, I thought, as if pulled from photos and history books. But it was devoid of culture, retail or entertainment, as we ordinarily understand it. It’s like going to an art gallery when no one else is there.
The most unnerving thing was the billboards advertising musicals, films and holidays, and gifts for Mother’s Day. Because that’s when the world stopped. I wondered about all the posters that had been pulped because the events were no longer happening. That, or there was no one to put them up. Or it just wasn’t a priority anymore.
I think that’s the thing - the priorities changed. Many of us hunkered down and simply looked at each day at a time. But the Thames still flowed, transport still ran, the birds, trees and plants still thrived. The gardens were still tended to and the streets were still cleaned.
I did my final sprint around Camden Square, bought a bottle of water, and headed towards the park to stretch and calm down.
I sat in a butterfly pose and wiped the drying sweat from my forehead. It was like I’d fast-forwarded through an abstract film. Everything had been absorbed and elongated and shrunk into memory, then compounded into tired legs and sips of water.
My eyes had seen so much, but now there was just stillness. For me, but not for the world: I heard men laughing loudly in their van and groups of teenagers gossiping. Children in the park screamed past my ears.
I was back home, sure. Back in my local neighbourhood. I’d returned to the city as we know it. But it was good to go and have a break from it for a while. After all, that’s why we go to the parks, isn’t it.
