Crossing the city in one day
The plan was simple: start at the northern edge of the city at first light and walk until I reached the southern edge, keeping as straight a line as the streets allowed.
Thirty-four kilometres later I had passed through an industrial estate, two parks, a market setting up, a market packing down, a cemetery larger than some villages and a street where every house had the same blue door.
Cities reveal their seams when you cross them slowly. You can feel the point where one era of building stops and another begins, usually at a railway line or an old river that now runs underground.
I took the train home. It covered the whole distance in nineteen minutes, which felt like an insult and a relief at the same time.