London: Covent Garden

A November morning. Glorious sunshine from a bright blue sky. Cold. I can feel my mood lift as walk from Charing Cross and through the back streets towards Covent Garden. The endless grey clouds of past weeks have laid thickly on me, making me feel irritable and sluggish. Even the other commuters seemed appeased, more polite and understanding than usual. No arguments or tart comments about the lack of space. No delays.

Turning from Beford Street into King Street, I eye up the coffee shops and imagine a warm pastry and a large cup of tea. It's an unusually early start for me and an unusual location - my normal London haunts aren't centre of the city. I enjoy feeling like a tourist, but a tourist with the added advantage of a savvy that comes from living in the city. I can negotiate the short-cuts and the side-streets, I know what to expect and perfect the slightly bored look of a city-dweller. As I turn a corner I see what at first glance appears to be a corpse, but as I swing my gaze back, the feet under the cardboard make sense to me as a homeless person, probably half-dead from the cold.

Covent Garden suddenly appears in front of me, exactly where it is supposed to be. There is a huge Christmas decoration of a reindeer made from spruce, and blue dancing lights (not of a police car, but of fairy lights). It is so early that hardly anyone is around, only stall holders and labourers emptying dustbins. It's an insight into a Covent Garden I don't usually see and one I am rather enamoured with -no tourists, no bustle. I can see the architecture and the cobbled streets. The charming beauty of the place fills me with a contained happiness. I remember as a teenager I used to come here with friends as we thought it was glamorous and exciting, yet as I got older I started to think of Covent Garden as twee and somewhat fake. It doesn't feel like a place that people actually live in. No community and no soul. The part of London that appeals to tourists only. And yet... in this early morning sunshine, the empty streets seem incredibly beautiful.

I walk past a bench seat filled with tired looking young men in high vis jackets, tucking into white bread sandwiches and tea. They seem to radiate a tired yet mildly aggressive energy, something very male and slightly intimidating. One of them seems to stare at me in the way bulls do - low head on a thick neck, not a flicker of a human within. I suddenly feel very aware of my short skirt and loose hair, and the bull-like man gives me a long hard almost leering look, bizarrely free of desire or acknowledgement, but a look filled with something I can't quite put my finger on. It chills me and I stride past quickly, taking the next right and down another side-street to take me to Endell Street. Usually when men leer they call out a raucous comment, or a cheeky greeting. They at least smile or laugh, perhaps to hide the fact that deep down they feel embarrassed. There was such a detachment in this man's expression, maybe pure exhaustion, maybe something else?

A few hours later I linger by Trafalgar Square before heading back to Charing Cross. The whole city has undergone a transformation and people are beetling about everywhere, covering up the city with their rushed activity.