The city never sleeps

A few days ago Vaughan posted a wonderful piece about falling in and out of love with the city (and most especially London). Even though I love going out into the country, I'm very much a city boy now. My home town is situated on a sort of border, between the wilds of North Northumberland and the Cheviots to the north, and Newcastle and the grimy towns to the south. Since living in Nottingham city centre, there are a couple of major differences between urban and rural life that have struck me:

In the city you can always hear sirens, wherever you are. Living as I do just off the long road on which the city's A&E hospital is situated, that high-pitched wailing sound comes to seem like a part of the overall urban tapestry, like traffic noise and shouting in the street, hardly noticeable after a while. Blue flashing lights are criss-crossing the city every minute of the day. Their existence and the direction they're travelling doesn't seem to matter - until something happens in front of you.

The other day I saw a lad get hit by a car. A group of concerned passers-by quickly gathered around him, and there was nothing I could have done to help. Walking on home, the sirens seemed to swim into focus in the air, and I found myself re-sensitised to their meaning. You suddenly appreciate that they're not just going round and around endlessly all day long - they're always going somewhere, to someone. You couldn't, I don't think, lose this sense of perspective living in a rural area.

Secondly, only when you stay out in the country do you appreciate that night never really falls in the city. There's always a lurid or a sickly wan light sneaking around and through your curtains. It's as if we're intent on displacing the natural cycle of days and nights, and making "night-time" distinguishable only with respect to the clock. Only in the country is the night genuinely pitch black, so dark that you feel relieved to have walls and windows separating you from it.