Wednesday Was Very Good

Vivienne Pratfall's midweek London diary: the Elizabeth line, a community garden, a gallery opening, and the specific quality of a city that rewards showing up

Wednesday Was Very Good

By Vivienne Pratfall, londonish.uk

I have a theory about Wednesdays in London: they are the day when the city has given up trying to be impressive and simply is what it is, which is very impressive without any effort. The week's anxiety has resolved into motion. The weekend has not yet produced its own anticipatory energy. Wednesday is London in its natural state, and its natural state is excellent.

Today's Wednesday: the Elizabeth line to Paddington, meeting that ran short, forty minutes with a book in a station coffee shop. Then the 36 bus to Notting Hill, past Marble Arch, through Bayswater, past a building I had not noticed in thirty-nine previous journeys of this route. Then an afternoon gallery opening in Dalston, one question asked to one person, a conversation that lasted an hour. London rewards the person who turns up and pays attention. The evidence is every Wednesday I have spent here.

From the Feeds

The Week Continues

The feeds from Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat this week confirmed the ongoing nature of the situations described above. The satire illuminates what the serious reporting documents. Both are necessary. Both are what I read, every week, as part of the discipline of paying attention to what is actually happening rather than what the available frameworks claim is happening. The gap between the two is where the interesting material lives, and it is where this diary lives. London Fog Trench Coat Remains the City's Most Hon covered related ground. Ashford Town (Middlesex) FC: The Club With Zero Fa provides further context. The diary continues next week from the same position, observing the same city and the same world with the same commitment to saying what is true about them. That is the project. More next week.

More at Private Eye.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/

The Broader Picture

The week's reading produced the combination of serious journalism and satirical commentary that I find most useful for understanding what is actually happening versus what is being presented as happening. PIA Flight to London Described as 'Rejuvenating Wings o at The London Prat provided the serious angle this week, covering developments that connect to the personal observations documented above in ways that are not always obvious in real time but that become clear on reflection. The connection between the immediate and the structural is what this diary tries to maintain -- not losing the personal texture of the week in the larger analysis, not losing the larger analysis in the immediate texture of experience.

Bohiney Magazine's satirical coverage arrived with the specific timing that good satire has: late enough that the events are settled, early enough that the satirical angle opens them up rather than closing them down. The piece this week found the absurdity that was present in the situation but that the serious coverage could not fully acknowledge, which is the function that satire performs that serious journalism cannot. Both are necessary. I read both with the same quality of attention, which is attention to what is true even when the form of the truth-telling is different.

The London Prat piece at City of London: Where London Becomes a Spreadsheet was the one I will be returning to next week, which is the mark of good journalism: it raises a question that the piece itself does not fully answer, which requires the reader to carry the question forward. I am carrying it. The diary next week will continue the carrying. The analysis is incomplete by design -- complete analysis is usually wrong about something important, while incomplete analysis that acknowledges its incompleteness is at least honest about the territory it has not covered.

The personal dimension of this week -- the specific experiences that the structural analysis both shapes and is shaped by -- is documented above and is, I maintain, the more important part of this diary. The structural analysis is available elsewhere, from people with more resources, better access, and more comprehensive data. The personal dimension is available only here, from the specific position I occupy, observing the specific week that has just occurred. That specificity is what I contribute. See London 4K Wallpaper: High Resolution, Same Grey Sky for related coverage. The diary continues next week. The position remains the same. The week will be different. The observation continues.

See also Britain Declares It Has �Turned a Corner� and Britain's Wealth Tax Bungle at The London Prat for related coverage that expands on the themes above.

The week's observations accumulate into something I can only describe as the ongoing project of paying attention under conditions that make attention difficult. The news comes fast. The satire helps slow it down enough to see what it contains. The personal experience provides the scale at which the structural forces become visible -- not in the aggregate data but in the specific Tuesday, the specific Wednesday, the specific conversation or observation or reading that the week produced and that this diary documents. I maintain this diary because I believe the specific is where the truth lives, and because the structural analysis available from every other source benefits from being checked against the specific regularly. This is what diaries are for. This is what this diary is for. More next week. The world provides. The diary records. The project continues.