What we notice in the city 1 - Polly Mortimer

On a routine journey back from the south Bank one night I found myself comparing myself to Mayhew the great documenter and interviewer of 19 c Londoners. I sat mute, but with my eyes and ears the Friday night became more and more psychedelic. From girls spewing into binliners on the Embankment, I found myself next to a pinktrousered ne’er-do-well trying to interest mild Italian tourists in ‘going to Camden to score some weed’ – he was far from his ‘missus and baby’.

Then when I reunited with my bike I passed some stranger sights too – a man on a quad bike leering at schoolgirls at a busstop, a small woman scuttling into the bushes of  a dark park and finally out of a side turning came a young woman wearing nothing but a hoodie, bra and thong nonchalantly and undistressed crossing the road to her flats.