“Any serious flaneur walks by night as much as by day; for by day it’s too easy to be drawn into a complacent acceptance of normalcy. This much we plainly know: the panel truck disgorging toilet paper; the smoking secretary with laddered tights; the dosser senatorial, sporting a sleeping bag for a toga. But by night these are shape-shifters, capable of defeating our expectations.”
The quote comes from Will Self and an Independent column from six years ago on the pleasures of night walking. He is a fan of the nocturnal ramble and describes one such walk from a restaurant to his hotel through the dark streets of Glasgow. I can see him as I read, imagination stimulated by the words on a page, but despite his enthusiasm for walking under the glow of streetlights there remains a sense of foreboding or threat, and I am relieved for him when the automatic doors swish open and he steps inside at the end of his walk. This almost definitely says more about me than it does about him, and my own mild fears of being out – whether in the city or beyond – after dark.
Under a Grey Sky 