One of the things I miss most during the pandemic is London. About once a month in the old days, I’d go from waking up in Paris to having morning coffee with someone in Soho. Customs were a breeze, you could work on the Eurostar and London was an incomparable one-stop shop for ideas and information. On one of my last trips, I spent the morning at a tech conference at St Pancras, then walked across the Euston Road to attend an academic seminar on rhetoric. The jackets at the second event were more frayed, but the thoughts were just as stimulating. I’d return from the typical 36-hour London visit dizzy from everything I’d heard. But now the city faces a triple whammy of Covid-19, Brexit and the rise of English-language alternatives.
我在疫情期间最想念的事情之一就是伦敦。以前，大约每个月有一天，我会早晨在巴黎醒来，上午晚些时候就在伦敦苏豪区(Soho)与人会面喝咖啡。出入境轻而易举，你可以在欧洲之星(Eurostar)列车上工作，而那时的伦敦是无与伦比的一站式创意和信息源泉。在我的最后几次伦敦之行中，有一次我上午在伦敦圣潘克拉斯(St Pancras)参加一场科技会议，然后穿过尤斯顿路(Euston Road)，去参加一场关于修辞学的学术研讨会。第二场会议的与会者更为不修边幅，但他们的思想同样令人振奋。在结束典型的36小时伦敦之行、重返巴黎时，我听到的大量信息常常让我头晕。但现在，伦敦面临着三重冲击：新型冠状病毒肺炎（COVID-19，即2019冠状病毒病）疫情、英国退欧，以及其他说英语的城市崛起。