.

 Last Monday, two trains coupled together, twelve carriages and still full: into town, in the middle of the day, from North Kent. Many were young, late teens, early twenties. A party of six had brought gin, fruit juice, cava. Their conversations: you could tell they had grown up together.

 

Marked over the last few days, but it's been like this for a while now. At weekends, they're pouring out of Liverpool Street, Fenchurch Street, not down the tube but directly into the surrounding streets. Some dressed for the evening, at noon.

 

There were crowds in Shoreditch and crowds in the Borough but in summer it was like two floods joined and Broadgate and Gracechurch Street now alive, with young people.

 

 

I've had this thing for eighteen years now. When I look back to 2003, I was always out and walking, and I'm walking still. When I remember it as a category of activity, I think first of walking west. I've moved east since then, so there's further to go until I get to the parts of town I associate with dusk: Barons Court and Holland Park, Hammersmith and Shepherd's Bush. The glow at the ends of the streets, the plane silhouettes descending into the distance.