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Symphony in the City
Finding harmony in the chaos of London, memory, Tchaikovsky and Somali coffee
It always starts with a regular day. Maybe I’m on the bus, half-asleep, forehead against the glass. Maybe I’m just walking — dodging prams and pigeons, waiting for the wind to shift. But somewhere between stops or steps, I find myself reaching for Tchaikovsky. I don’t even realise I’ve done it — he just starts playing, like a memory surfacing without permission.
And somehow, his music makes sense of London.
When I first arrived, I was overwhelmed by the architecture. St. Paul’s Cathedral towering with impossible stillness, and then — just a few streets down — centuries-old staircases dropping straight into the Thames. That contrast: the sacred and the soaked. Everything felt too much, a beautiful mess. I remember how the buildings seemed to argue with each other — Victorian terraces whispering beside glass towers, kebab shops tucked into Georgian facades. Communities were everywhere, stitched together with the sounds of different languages, all alive in the chaos. And people loved it. The mess, the rush, the unkept parks with kids chasing foxes through the tall grass.
But then you’d turn a corner and walk into Regent’s Park — everything pristine, trimmed, geese silently pacing with clipped feathers so they can’t leave. It felt like walking into a…
