I went to the National Theatre to see London Tide, which was very good. My friends and I all groaned when it started with singing - three hours of a musical? We hadn't prepared for that. But, actually, the singing added to the mood rather than being annoying and the production was excellent.
It was an adaptation of Charles Dickens' Our Mutual Friend, which I have never read. In the play, London and the Thames especially are almost a character rather than a place.. or, place is as significant as character. The Heath is similarly important in Thomas Hardy's The Return of the Native.
I had parked in Ealing and took the tube to Embankment, so I walked over the bridge to get to the theatre. On the way back, I met a homeless man called Tricks. He was smiling and delightful and he told us the story of his life - there was nothing to smile about... thrown out by his mother when he was ten; his wife and daughter killed by a drunk driver; a suicide attempt; a mental institution; a prison; the street. He says that he smiles because he is alive and he wants to make others smile and realise that they are alive.
Dickens could have written him.
Look at that. An ordinary night in the city and it is remarkable. The lights. The colours. The people. All the stories weaving in and out of each other. And amidst all this, pigeons, foxes, peregrine falcons. Rats and cats and crows. Once, in the Thames, a pilot whale.
I like what Tricks said about why he smiles.