Marius Holtan came unprepared for London’s day of rest.
You Londoners are a mixed-up bunch. Just when I am getting used to the hectic pace of your megacity, you go slow on me – slackening like snails.
Sundays at Spitalfields, for example. People walking senselessly and seemingly without direction – the ambulatory equivalent of doodling.
Pulling at knitted scarves, nibbling Turkish delight and sipping organic coffee (because inorganic coffee would be too industrial for such a self-consciously post-industrial place).
Indeed it’s all so organic I fear that if I stay in one place too long I myself will be absorbed into this slow moving organism.
Meanwhile the market stallholders, veritable tigers on other days of the week, look benignly upon people pawing their wares directly under signs saying ‘do not touch’.
The cafés are full but operating in slow motion. Running, rushing and rationality have been set aside in favour of a hazy, lazy Sunday.
This is the day when you Londoners become tourists in your own town – stopping for as long it takes, instead of seizing the moment.
Come back in the morning and the same streets will amount to a very different kind of place.
Back to bustle, and no time to stop, and I haven’t got time for this……
From Sunday to Monday, what a difference a day makes.