On the plane, reading news headlines before landing, the jetlag was mixed with déjà vu. Just after I’d passed through Dubai, Israel had launched a firestorm at Iran. The world was teetering; the world seethed with insanity and conflict. First Ukraine, then Gaza and now this. Meanwhile in Washington, the Trump administration had held a military parade in which soldiers and corporate sponsors paid bizarre homage to the commander-in-chief.
A day later in London I encountered something deeply sane: Islington’s low-traffic neighbourhoods. In the middle of the vast city, street after street is blocked off and pedestrianised. The effect is luxurious, beautiful, tranquil. It’s such a change from the London I used to curse as I wrestled my children through it, the dirty old town, sullied and ruined by traffic. Before the congestion charge, walking was hellish.
I started to dislike cars only when I lived in deafening, smog-blackened WC1. Now, around Islington, whole neighbourhoods are transformed.
People resisted but few would want to go back. I wish this reform could happen in my suburb back home, where last year a runaway truck destroyed the front of my house. I can imagine how much local opposition there’d be. Some refuseniks, it seems, say no to every good idea on principle.
I’m not a refusenik. I make rational, sane decisions. I was thinking this later as I strolled high-mindedly past St Paul’s and through the City.
Ahead of me I saw a policeman ushering people away from a corner. Another was corralling pedestrians on the opposite side. And now I was looking at a policeman wearing military-style black kit and carrying a hefty semi-automatic weapon. A black balaclava covered his face.
More heavily armed men in black balaclavas were fanning out along the road, and I realised that I was suddenly, weirdly alone. On a stretch of pavement there was only me and the squad, who were not only masked and carrying weapons, but seemed to have been selected for their enormous size.
I slowed, eyeing them peripherally. It wasn’t, I thought, the sort of moment where I needed to panic or run. They weren’t behaving as if there were an armed assailant or a bomb nearby. They were taking positions, spreading out, arranging the street and themselves.
I became aware that they were shouting at me, “Madam!” And it occurred to me that since I was wearing AirPods, I could plausibly pretend not to hear. So, with a sense of dreamy, jetlagged amusement, I indulged the refusenik who had unexpectedly risen up in me. I wanted to know what they were doing; it seemed unlikely they would shoot me, I was too tired to hurry, and so I simply ignored them as they bellowed and roared, “Madam!”
Was I actually winding them up? They were so menacingly paramilitary, so heavily macho. It’s funny what jetlag and the liberated sense of being alone in a foreign city will do. I assumed they probably wouldn’t take me into custody. I was “Madam”; I was possibly oblivious; I was annoying and obtuse and getting in the road as they brandished and bristled and tried to get on with their counter-terrorism operation.
Finally, a masked gunman stepped right into my line of sight (Madam!) and escorted me to the distant cordon. I expressed absent-minded surprise (whoops, sorry) and stood to watch as the sirens screamed and an armoured convoy emerged, a parade of full-metal hardware sweeping out into the streets.
As suddenly as they’d arrived, the men in balaclavas melted away, the street was calm and Madam strolled on, jetlagged, amused, not sensible, a refusenik after all, drifting irresponsibly through the city.
