I rose at half past five on Tuesday, not by choice but by the insistence of a delivery wagon whose driver saw fit to announce his arrival on Copperton Lane with a vigor that suggested he was heralding the second coming rather than depositing crates of turnips.

And so, denied my final hour of sleep, I did what any reasonable person would do: I made a pot of tea, sat in my chair by the window, and watched the city wake up.

It is a remarkable thing, watching Bobington in the early morning. The lamplighters are just finishing their rounds, extinguishing the gas lamps on Ashbury Lane with their long brass poles. A few determined souls are already walking toward the tramway stop, collars turned up against the chill. The baker on the corner — Helmsford’s, which has occupied that spot since my grandfather’s time — has already filled the street with the warm, yeasty perfume that I maintain is the single best argument against ever leaving this neighborhood.

For perhaps forty-five minutes, the city belonged to no one in particular. It was simply itself — stone and glass and chimney smoke, unhurried and undemanding.

The Tyranny of Efficiency

I raise this small, unremarkable scene because I fear it is becoming rare. Bobington is a city in a tremendous hurry. We are building tramways and approving budgets and debating the future with an energy that is, in many ways, admirable. Progress is not the enemy.

But efficiency, left unchecked, has a way of consuming the margins — and it is in the margins that a city does its best thinking. The slow morning, the aimless walk, the conversation that wanders without agenda — these are not inefficiencies to be optimized away. They are the substrate of civic life.

I have noticed, with some alarm, that several of Bobington’s older coffee houses have begun posting signs advertising “express service” and “quick counters.” I have no quarrel with speed when speed is warranted. But a coffee house that values speed has misunderstood its own purpose. One does not go to Rensler’s on Threadneedle Street to acquire caffeine with maximum efficiency. One goes to sit, to read the morning paper, to overhear an argument about cricket that one has no intention of joining but thoroughly enjoys.

A Modest Proposal

I am not suggesting that Bobington grind to a halt. I am suggesting, modestly, that we resist the creeping notion that every moment must be productive, every journey optimized, every morning conquered before it has properly begun.

The city has always been at its best when it leaves room for the unplanned. Some of our finest institutions — the Bramblegate Market, the Public Reading Rooms, the tradition of the Sunday riverside walk — emerged not from committee planning but from the accumulated habits of people who had time to spare and the good sense to spend it well.

Let us, by all means, build our tramways and debate our budgets. But let us also defend, with whatever stubbornness we can muster, the slow morning and the wandering thought and the second cup of tea.

The turnip wagon will come regardless.