observations via King’s Cross St. Pancras to Cadogan Hall

A warning: this is not poetry, as much as it is a montage. There is nothing poetic, or rhythmic, intended here—but you may observe that it brings to life the variance and illustration that is pre-existing, contained within the city of London.

It is a thought sequence, created from raw notes I made on a recent journey from King's Cross St. Pancras to Cadogan Hall. I wrote down the mundane, and I wrote down the interesting—projecting you, hopefully, into a pattern of people and events that will likely never be in the same arrangement ever again in our lifetime, or indeed humanity's.

Note that the start of my observations begin on foot, immersed and interacting with the action. See if you can pinpoint the moment that my perspective shifts inside the taxi, when the observations become increasingly distanced, thoughtful, choppy and sporadic. The piece ends with a brief recognition. For a short breath, collating all the observations of the route, the rose-coloured glasses come off, and London's illusive and tempting quality is exposed.

Nevertheless, I then sink into my scheduled business with the city, arriving at Cadogan Hall to experience my partner in concert, and the fleeting philosophies fade away with the music. The notes remained on my phone to create this visual for you, a snapshot of a unique moment in time.

Without further ado, I present to you, the picture.

---

observations via King’s Cross St. Pancras to Cadogan Hall

Remove one Airpod and you can better hear the world. I learnt that from the corporate attire clinging to a man. Come on, I think it’s this way. A woman urges her four-legged companion; and another her husband, who has six contact points to dodder over the flattened isles of gum and pigeon excrement on the pavement. 

Police are patrolling; so casually that it’s unusual—one stationed outside the disabled toilets, two more in cars beneath the clock tower, watching the taxis breathe in and out of the bay. Do they know something we don’t, and will we ever come to know what they know? Will one word ever make sense to all of us in the same context again? COVID was that universal acronym once upon a nightmare; its precautions were still hammered to the station brick. You don’t need to understand English to read a mask. 

It distracts the officers to plug their thumbs into their stab vests in a staple occupational stride. Enough that a sitting commuter, without a spoon, laps up the last bit of his yoghurt, from right the way across the length of his index finger. His business-like expression realises his impropriety and scuttles around the concourse; a trained lawyer knows to look for witnesses to the offence. Laze calls off the search. Before he notices me. 

Crimes happen in neon, anyway—hard to miss. Imprisoned in a slideshow, in the WHSmith display window: chocolate marked down at half the price and a vegan wrap at double the cost. Someone without a face here, but an eye everywhere, is intelligent to the inhumane way of climbing a human system. All custom is attracted either to cheap versus grandeur, or convenience versus exclusivity. Welcome to the capital. Watch everyone, even the wise ones, give in—in leisure’s name. 

Between tobacco shops, like cavernous shipping-containers masquerading in the terraces, a pretty girl willfully disappears in a cloud of smoke. Magic has a breadth of meanings in a city. Coincidentally, at the same time, my taxi—without room to swerve in the viscid traffic—encounters a clawed-out pothole. Damage to both bodies incurs; suspension and salubrity at war with toxic mists from exhaust pipes and pocket-sized vapes. There’s a rumour that something in this city is sustainable, and perhaps it is the dream. 

Green lights tug me on a reluctant leash, past a cafe underneath a Premier Inn where a man sits alone with a laptop. There are too many variables that conflict the suggestion of London being his home. There is too little time to speculate before we crawl away from the frame on the filmstrip where he was the main character, tasting fame for three revolutions of a taxi tyre. A red light ushered interruption on the road ahead. I play dumb as a tourist, drawing all the comfort from my seat; I’m belted backwards-facing by choice. City-reared reversion gives way to an unparalleled, parsimonious immersion. My driver gives way to the double-decker red beast that’s packed in the belly, funny how people’s evenings become freight on four wheels for a few miles. 

Psychology articulates that their brains develop differently. Can you feel the swell in your hippocampus? Is that a weird question, when so far he’s asked me none other than my destination? Navigation is a helpful ability to have archived in a skull, especially when you make careering streets a career, but I contemplate if knowledge leaves room for interest. Does he wonder how their story ends—the passengers discharged from his service? Ten to fifteen a day. Statistics assume that’s around seventy unheard tales a week, all that feature him; though, not one that remembers him by more than a dent in their bank balance. I think I shall talk. 

But, the movies caution that there’s a slim chance that he could be a killer, so I don’t offer my voice for his agile hippocampus to map. Side by side, two brown telephone boxes rust in abandonment. Strangers neglect the postcard-front pillars in varying paces. I see one has been noticed, by at least one passing shadow, who adorned one cubicle with graffiti and fled. I swear that when I came to London as a child, they were red. 

A cyclist overtakes my window, pedalling in an overcoat with surplus length that obstructs her legs from executing appropriate movements: an example of the human will and its incredibility. Two advantages—a suitable journey and core temperature—have her defying two improbabilities, in the realm of balance and physics. January’s laborious attitude affects most. With the exception of the woman coming from the gym in shorts. From? Observed only because her revitalised relief is a force field against the freeze.

A sign with priority printed on the reverse, evacuates a bus lane, joined in effort only by a cult of stranded traffic cones. As the cab accelerates, I examine the emptiness. Whose priority? It must be the responsibility of someone to attend to the damaged roads around this monopoly. Repair is an unrealised reality. As much as the frequency of argument, come to think of it. Petitioning, appealing, entreating to her senses, a woman appears to implore thin air with spread, suspended hands. I’m surprised at how much more affectionate my interpretation becomes when I clock her earphones: as soon as someone is in our heads, they’re there with us, their interaction real to us.  

I draw lines under my notes sometimes. Dashed lines, to be specific. A  thread of symbols that compartmentalise my written ingredients, ready to configure them in some later penned recipe—and truly, nothing compares to the flesh of raw literature. However, I could be persuaded that many things resemble the flaws of creation. Before there was a dashed line under this piece, for example, there was a dashed line of lit rectangles forever upwards to the black sky. Everything mirrors inspiration, even buildings consumed by the darkness, with only their illuminations to spare. 

Light is a theme here; a relative of city life. Moreso, the contrast of brightness and its brother: nothing. I pass a packed-out restaurant, bursting with orange, and sociable flavour, and beside it, a shuttered-up shell of a shop to let. I suppose nobody informed the previous occupants that they left their television screen behind the glass with the electricity happily crackling on. Selling vitamins to benefit one’s energy, such an ironically antithetical precedent to the one set by the establishment’s vacant aesthetic.

Pollution gives an odd accent to the cosiness of a corner, with a bar tucked away. It’s nominated The Stag’s Head by its creaking pub sign. Suddenly, I could be anywhere in the country. After that block, I’m swamped by the guarding watch of slender townhouses, touching shoulders; sardines in a curved stretch of road. They all have balustrade balconies for eyebrows, so slim that they’re more for ornament than use, and that simply, I’m in London again. 

Production culture merges with design. What can the city boast—in people and in history? Every alternate dwelling in this area has a blue plaque. I spot an author…a cartoonist…a composer as they flash by. A philosopher. Celebrated. Yet, we all think. We can’t all be famous. We all think we can’t all be famous. 

It’s easy to believe nothing ever closes in London. Locked outlets remain luminous, as though someone’s at home in corporate settlement. A collection of odder remarks ensue: annotations of my journey as it continues past an anatomical rocking horse in a retail window. I become stationary beside the creature. The taxi’s engine still gurgles, but at a lesser volume than the amplified violin that has begun to play with no clear source. It is a sequence of sudden curiosities that ends with a glimpse of a barren tree, colonised on only one branch by a bunch of plastic berries the size of mangoes. They are beige and out of place—a marketing tactic? A publicity endeavour? The success of which reflects in my transfixion and mention. Another of those useless balconies brings back normality, this time with vines and twigs taking over, so dejected in a populous place.

I slow as the driver searches—the location pin bobbing on his dashboard. A newsagent, the inscription on the board above the door reading Mace, is adjacent to us. To the right of the shop name, is its slogan: makes it easy. I can’t help but consider if serendipity is at play here; a message to the young, slatternly girl adopting huge steps, clutching everything she owns under her arms like a mother chicken. I watch her take temporary residence in an alcove between an Aston Martin showroom and another, similar property branded a car hotel. When there isn’t enough accommodation for the people, available space is given to the machines. When will the disparity be enough to warrant action?

My vehicle stops, this time for good. Signalling my release. By the waiting handle, is the taxi number that has sat quietly beside me as I have travelled: 60066. The devil’s trap, separated by two oblivious open eyes, craving city dreams. Abstraction—a symptom of accomplished music—follows.

© Mollie Mardel

---

If you felt any sort of way about this piece, please leave some feedback for me, either by way of a comment or by getting in contact with me! I always love to hear your thoughts.