Hemingway once called London ‘too noisy and too normal’. He much preferred Paris or Havana, and other exotic places where one could chase women and be chased by bulls. But London to me is just as fascinating as those places: of course, they aren’t the same, but no two places ever are. London has a character of its own; one which you can only make out after you have lived here a while. Part of this character comes from the sheer size of the place: it’s so big that sooner or later you start thinking that London is the world and the world is London. It expands seemingly endlessly in every direction, not just geographically but culturally – there are people here from all over the world. The sheer expanse of this metropolis gives it the feel of a near-infinite labyrinth where there is always more to explore.

Lyn and I went to Bromley today, an area which I’ve only been to once, briefly before. We needed to get there early, so we took a taxi. On the way there, it occurred to me that even if I live here for the rest of my life, I’ll probably never know London in it’s entirety. I didn’t know what to make of that thought: I knew every nook and cranny of the small town I grew up in, but I can never know London that way so I cannot quite feel it is my own. But on the other hand I revel in it’s enormity: it seems endlessly varied, each sub-area having it’s own distinct feel so, as I say, it feels like a world unto itself. Thus, London may indeed be noisy, but it is never normal.