Above the rooftops, above the summer city

Some friends and I were shooting a music video for my mate's band. The location was an abandoned rooftop in the very heart of the city. Feeling the pulse of Sophia, hundreds of years old streets were buzzing with the whispers, songs, conversations, yells, running feet of the people beneath us. Their shoes made click-clacks, yet the only thing we saw from them was the tops of their hats.

Across the street from us, on a terrace, a couple were having romantic dinner. There were candles, a few plates, all else was dimmed and quiet. It wouldn't occur to me to make this up, it would be too corny for my taste, had it not been true. Now... it's a small confirmation that romance doesn't have to be big. In fact, the smaller the gesture, the more genuine it is.
Well, except from the big lights coming from our video production, big speakers booming.I wonder if we embarrassed them, when we looked. Whether we annoyed them, or whether they liked us. The quiet romantic dinner and the loud music video couldn't have been more than 25 meters away yet they seemed worlds apart. To me, though, they went together well.

We had a few beers, we danced for hours, laughed and found common friends with new acquaintances. Really, what happened was, we had a party and someone filmed it, there may even be shots of me in the video, doing cartwheels.
The scent that night was so Sophia. A slight tinge of summer dust, honking cars mixing with song beats. The gold on Alexander Nevski's domes almost reflecting the light from our roof, the city bubbly with summer sounds and smells, yet the approaching fall causing the temeratures to drop, just making us dance harder....

London town

For all the times I've been in London,  it was at 2 am that I saw it be its warmest and kindest.  That particular night, I had been travelling on a bus from Oxford, it was only me and the driver. It felt like it was just me and the driver in the whole of England. The motorway was quiet, long, with the occasional lights flickering with the frequency of a slow heartbeat. Monotony was exciting,  it kept me alert before the lack of sleep and the nurturing rocking of the bus took the best of me.
I woke up and I immediately felt light, curious, tranquil, the street light around me evoking a feeling of magic.  I wondered which city this was, it never occurred to me that it could be London until I recognised some familiar landmarks. It was a sleepy masculine London rather than the annoying fashionable hipster London full of slow crowds of pretentious people. It was calm, its voice-soothing, the timbre- metallic yet warm, its skin made of stone. It was dressed to impress and an attitude to remember: regal, altogether composed, intelligent and...cheeky, somewhat. One you could fall in love with, because it was ultimately honest. Bitch had style.
Vacated by its usual inhabitants, who were resting after a day of shopping, working, rushing, changing tube lines, calling each other to arrange dinner plans, the city behaved like a person. When left alone in its own company,  it was stripped of expectations and conversations. I loved it for that, it was a thousand times more alive to me than during the day. It claimed the respect it felt it deserved, for its history and looks, much like a well-groomed man, respect I gladly showed. Respect I would never have shown during the day, when London usually behaved like a spoiled slutty teenager.

I exited the bus, said goodbye to the driver. It felt special to me that we had shared this bus ride only with each other, in the middle of the night.  Walking towards my train, once again I felt protected by the city which used its tall, dark buildings to snuggle me with their metallic and stone arms. I couldn't sense neither the cold nor the tiredness anymore.