Urban Idyll

          I had put my smartphone down, absent-mindedly, then wandered off without it. Had this happened at home, I need not have taken an anxious turn when I realised it was no longer in my pocket. But I had left it on top of a bike-store outside a railway station and that is reason to be concerned. Not that the device is a top-of-the-range model that would cost a fortune to replace. The cause of my dismay was more to do with the unwanted inconvenience and potential disruption to the rest of the day. So, having dashed back more in hope than expectation, I was relieved to find it undisturbed – thanks, I am sure, to the lack of footfall due to the current situation. Thus, I experienced a strangely oblique benefit of lockdown, though there are others, less odd.

          City-centre living has long been my ideal: the buzz of humanity and the availability of everything within walking distance – including public transport for when you need to travel afar – are the essential ingredients for townies like me who seek a life sans ennui. Now, although everything is closed except for essential shops and services, many delights remain, free and out in the open. And now is the time – aided by the fair spring weather – to seek them out in the backstreets and awkward corners of the urban landscape.

          Five years ago, or thereabouts, they lifted the flagstones at the front of the municipal art gallery to plant ornamental trees, shrubs, flowers and herbs for the café. With the gates being locked these past two months, things are getting a little unkempt. I can’t quite reach through the railings to get at the herbs, but the honeysuckle is spilling over onto the pavement and its sweet scent gets blown up and down the street, filling the air more fragrantly than the usual fumes from cars or even the kitchens of adjacent Chinatown. Now that these plants are flourishing, it’s hard to remember what the forecourt used to look like – severe and formal, I suppose, as architect Charles Barry intended way back in 1823. But the garden does not spoil his vision of triumphant, classical pillars and porticoes. Rather, it enhances it, in a romantic way – as does the wild vegetation found around isolated ruins of the real Greek temples on which it is modelled. When the garden was first planted, they installed hidden speakers that played birdsong (during opening hours) and, now that the garden is mature, it supports a population of actual birds that sing regardless of human time.

          We can’t get into the gallery’s garden, but we have found other places to sit and read, or to picnic, alone or with distanced pals. There are the abandoned terraces of bars and smart restaurants, where the furniture has been left out, either obligingly or negligently in their haste to lock up and leave. Simply choose one that has an urban vista or, if you prefer, a sunny aspect and bring your own bottle. The proprietors would be furious if they knew. Then there is the University campus, a treasure trove of well-tended hidden lawns, gardens and picnic tables that nestle in between glamorous buildings, all of which are currently unused yet immaculately maintained thanks to the coffers (now rapidly depleting) of University plc. And let’s not forget the canal and riverside spots that have emerged since the clearing of the residual industrial warehouses. The new age of urban planning enlightenment has obliged even the most rapacious developers to reserve and refurbish patches of land for the use of humans and wildlife.

          But I am aware that this urban idyll will not last. The question is not when it will end, but how? Covid-19 will not be the last virus and, already, there is talk of fundamental change to our lifestyles: moving out of cities; shunning public transport; reforming our economies to more sustainable models et cetera. We city dwellers could end up living in abandoned, dysfunctional, redundant centres, with only the resurgent wildlife to keep us entertained.