My inner flaneur is excited, jazzed: it’s early morning in the city. The morning mist is burning off and the hot sun rising over manicured Marylebone. The haute bourgeois are resplendent in their Sunday rituals: expensive coffee, French pasties, a buffed well-being. A woman applying her makeup in the sparkle of a window. A three-year-old boy in glasses and shorts by the name of Bonsy is called after by his parents.
Certain things have stayed the same: the low red brick buildings, the high street, the news and crescent circles and private gardens. A low hymn is issuing from a church. The organ, mournful and meditative, is a vestige of a tradition.
The inhabitants have changed. Every second conversation sweeping me along is in French. Every third Spanish. The capital of Europe is London. Right now, the global village is having brunch.
Excellent post! Shiny details ( great pic, absorbing you-are-there-ness), swelling to lovely ironic close after judicious observations of bits of the past. Oh the distance travelled from the personal excitement of the first sentences to the polyvocal ironies of the close! ( love the inner form!)