London in the Summer

Photo credit @Erin Deborah Waks

By Erin Deborah Waks

London in the Summer is like nothing else. It has not the beaches of holidays imagined far away, nor the dry hotness of Paris or New York. Londoners wear not the elaborate sundresses decorating Spanish beaches, nor the straw baskets swinging across France, nor the island attire donned in Caribbean holidays further afield. The city does not grind to a halt because of temperatures far exceeding British sensibilities, but nor does it maintain the grey rain for which it is known.

It is summer in its own London way – that is, delicate, subtle, quiet and unspoken.

To be in London in the summer is to lie, sunglasses on, face upwards, in Hyde Park. It is to sweat as you climb Primrose Hill, watching the whole city around you. It is woven into the fabric of a Zadie Smith novel read in a Notting Hill coffee shop, or a walk through the hoards of tourists in Camden just to get to the canals, Kentish Town, Chalk Farm, Battersea, the London that Londoners know.

It is present in civil servants leaving their Westminster office to kick off their loafers and remove their blazers in St James’ Park. It is in Chelsea and Richmond mums pushing strollers, celebrating it being time for them to hold an iced latte in hand. It bleeds out in the city boys leaving the banks and spilling out of every pub in Cannon Street. It shows in young couples, wearing European linen but with British tailoring, kissing on Clapham Common.

We forget how delightful London is in the summer. I say delightful purposely; there is an almost childlike delight in the way the sun falls in a city not known for its sun, in the way a people known for their coldness become, almost overnight, warm. As if the rays we soak up seep out in our lives. Things get better, people get happier. Life gets sunnier.

Our capital sings not of escape, nor rest, but of life, of class, of style.