Laura Craik on the joys of outdoor London

Plus, why your current mood is all a planet’s fault and our eternal frock envy
Open-air season: Jaime Winstone and Cara Delevingne
Laura Craik25 July 2019

Say what you like about council budget cuts, but at least they’ve helped the trees flourish.

Where once the tree outside my house used to be brutally pruned, it’s now the size of Camden, its wispy leaves absorbing the borough’s noxious pollutants with aplomb. I love a good tree. At the Open Air Theatre in Regent’s Park last night, I kept looking up at them, my mind wandering from the play. As the sun set over Hyde Park a few days earlier, even the velvety tones of Florence Welch singing ‘Patricia’ weren’t enough to keep me from gazing up at the trees.

After months of inertia on the sofa, quietly debating whether to turn on the central heating, it feels good to be immersed in nature. Provided you bring a cardigan. July is the month that London lops off its collective roof and does everything al fresco. Let loose from the shackles of our ceilings, we find ourselves convivially free to blossom and grow. True, some of the ‘blossoming’ involves ill-advised amounts of rosé, but so what? It was a long, hard winter and a disappointing spring.

Sometimes, the answer really is at the bottom of a wine glass. In a city of 8.788 million people, it’s a relief to be outdoors. Someone with finer maths abilities than me can calculate the extra square footage afforded by us being able to utilise London’s many green spaces, but in the mass exodus to the city’s parks, no one is happier than the gardenless Londoner.

Walking through Primrose Hill at 11pm last week, it was cheering to see so many people still lolling on picnic blankets in the dark, hip-hop blasting from tinny speakers and laughter all around. This week London hosts its first National Park City Festival, a free celebration of the outdoors in recognition of the city’s new status as the world’s first National Park City.

Whether you’re at an open-air cinema, a rooftop bar, an al fresco theatre or a music festival, a special sort of madness happens when you lift the roof off. Like pulling a cork out of a bottle, everyone is fizzier, chattier and more open to mad-assed suggestions. Get out there before October comes.

Mercury's rising... and falling

Alexander Andrews / Unsplash

Every charger in the house is either lost or broken, and every human in the house is broken, too. All we do is snap at each other, complain at each others’ social plans and disagree about whose turn it is to walk the dog. So how’s Mercury retrograde going for you?

The planet that rules all types of communication — listening, talking, learning, writing and negotiating, not to mention all forms of contract, code and travel — is in retrograde until the end of the month, so if you find yourself saying things you didn’t mean, meaning things you didn’t say and just generally malfunctioning, that’s why. Hang in there. Try not to talk too much. This too shall pass.

Nominate your dress...

The Zara polka dot dress

Twelve weeks after I wrote about that Zara black-and-white polka dot dress and the bloody thing is still going strong, with sightings more frequent than ever.

Maybe this is why everyone’s walking around asking everyone else where they got their dress from. I’m not especially stylish, but every time I step out of the house in a dress, however heinous, someone accosts me, then looks crestfallen when I say it’s three years old. I, meanwhile, ask someone where they got their dress every time I go out.

Basically, we’re all wandering around in dresses we don’t really like, wishing we had that woman over there’s. As for the ultimate dress of summer 2019… I’m going to nominate Reformation’s Lacey. Feel free to disagree — and check out ES’s pick of summer dresses on page 21 for inspiration

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in