I have never spent Christmas in London before. I was expecting it to be emptier.
It was mostly cars, as families nipped off on Christmas morning to form illicit festive bubbles. It was also bikes, which may be a side effect of walking alongside a superhighway into town, or may be because hire bikes are everywhere these days, or may be because people are tired of being cooped up inside and fancied some exercise while the turkey was cooking. It wasn't particularly people on foot, at least not early on - I passed barely a dozen pedestrians before reaching the edge of the City.
But it was still pretty empty.
This is Ludgate Hill, about as empty as it ever gets. I guess relatives heading to Peckham or Pinner don't normally drive this way. But what you can't see here is the check-in tent on the steps of St Paul's, the shivering stewards, the table for the hand sanitiser and the lone worshipper wielding a printed-out ticket. I'm not sure if they were slightly too late for Morning Prayer or much too early for Sung Eucharist. I may not have got to experience a normal family gathering this year, but there was something uncommonly special about hearing the bells of St Paul's on Christmas morning.
And emptiness is something we've got used to.
This is Leadenhall Market, the City of London's prettiest shopping arcade. Yesterday it was totally and utterly empty - the lights blazing and the tree glittering just for me. I might have been impressed but I'd actually walked through the arcade last weekend and it was equally deserted then. Admittedly Sunday mornings are usually quiet in the City, plus Leadenhall Market is packed with pubs and non-essential shops so they're all shut, and anyway most potential purchasers of specialist cheesemongery have been working from home for months. My Christmas stroll through central London mainly reminded me of lockdown in the spring, back when everyone was taking all this seriously.
So emptiness is no longer special.
Time was when you could wander into the centre of London on December 25th, take some photos of empty streets and wow the world. These days if you turn up at Trafalgar Square on Christmas morning it's surprisingly hard to get a photo that resembles the set of 28 Days Later. I was confronted by a pair of cyclists in red cloaks, another pair with reindeer ears and a further cluster in fluorescent hi-vis, not to mention a professional photographer with a big lens. Meanwhile behind St Martin's a group of Samaritans with a trolley and a Waitrose bag arrived to offer hot food to the grateful homeless.
I very much hope my Christmas Day hike to the West End was a one-off, but if it is I do at least now know what I'm missing.
