Want to improve your quality of life? Live in a sunny city that allows its residents time to linger
1.
The fading of April and easing into May has seen London basking in temperatures that a Brit associates with full-on summer. By Thursday the weather app confirmed that we had hit 27C – not Dubai perhaps but certainly hotter than much of southern Europe. And with this climatic gearshift the city instantly changed. Even if it was only going to last a few days, people were back in shorts. At Monocle, it’s not the first swallow gliding through the air that heralds the arrival of summer but the appearance of Fernando in his above-the-knee tailored looks and the return from trouser hibernation of the tattooed animals that reside on the calves of my Urbanist colleague, David. And yes, Fernando’s knees and the inked menagerie have both been in evidence this week.
But it’s more than that. As soon as the heat arrives the city exhales, shoulders drop, people spill onto pavements and park picnickers eat their lunches sprawled on carpets of green grass. London – sometimes a place that can seem unbending, slow to let you in – becomes open-armed. It’s like when someone finally smiles and you are reminded of what makes them special.
2.
We have two foxes who live in the ’hood. They regularly nip along the terrace that runs alongside the editorial floor. But this week they also wanted to chill. I’d look up from my desk and there they would be, sometimes watching us but mostly peering down into the park below, wondering when they might have the place back to themselves or whether anyone might be about to leave a Pret a Manger sandwich for them to dine on. One of the foxes has a resplendent coat and the other is a little shabbier but they see past their different fur statuses and seem to enjoy each other’s company. Their passion for high-end leftovers is a little irksome, however: they seem to have no intention of helping to control the neighbourhood’s mouse population. We need their help.
3.
It has been so nice feeling the heat that I have walked everywhere this week. Crisscrossing the city, taking short cuts that I can’t even do on my bicycle. On Wednesday I walked down to Grosvenor Square for a reception at the Italian embassy. At a moment when the allure of soft power seems to have waned in some quarters, it was such a pleasure walking through the front door and into a world of art, good furniture (antique and modern) and well-dressed staff. In truth, too many embassies are a little drab. Budgets to redecorate are scarce and fixtures and fittings sourced from some government depository. But not here. The occasion was a talk by Claudio Marenzi, president of luxury brand Herno. Diplomacy and design uniting to tell a story about the enduring potency of Italy Inc.
4.
Then, on an almost steamy Thursday evening, I slipped through alley, lane and street as I headed to a dinner at the Saatchi Yates gallery, invited by my friend Emily. I spotted the Italian ambassador on a leisurely walk. Passed Stella McCartney as she left her shop and engaged with some fans. The gallery dinner was to mark the opening of an exhibition for American painter Peter Saul, who is now 90 and still turning out works that feel potent. They’re large-scale canvases that mock the art world and pierce the bourgeois façades of the very people who can afford his works (you’ll need a few hundred thousand dollars if you want to red-dot one). There were martinis, cool people, fun speeches and the scent of wealth. A week of slipping between worlds.
I ambled home through London, leaving the calm of St James’s, crossing under the bright lights of Piccadilly Circus, passing the theatres shuttering after their shows. London when it smiles is a special place to be.
