Walking the city at night

Text 1: Three O’Clock in the Morning, by Edwin Marchbank

An original essay written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.

Being afflicted for some months with sleeplessness, I fell into the habit of rising at two or three o’clock and walking the streets until dawn, and I discovered a city I had lived in for thirty years without ever meeting. Oxford Street, which by day is a torrent, lay as empty as a churchyard. My footsteps rang so loud upon the pavement that I found myself treading softly, as one does in a sickroom.

Yet the city was not wholly asleep. I met a policeman trying the doors of shops with his lantern, a baker’s boy with flour upon his eyebrows, and a long procession of market carts coming in from the country, the drivers asleep upon their sacks while the horses found the way alone. We nodded to one another like members of a secret society.

I have since been cured of my complaint, and I sleep like a Christian. But I confess I sometimes miss those walks. There was a peace in them I have never found by daylight, and a sense that I had been allowed, for a few hours, to see the great city with its mask off.

Text 2: Night Walks, by Farah Delacroix

An original contemporary article.

Last winter, when anxiety was keeping me awake, I started going for walks at three in the morning. I live in the centre of a big city, and I thought I knew it well. I did not. The main shopping street, which in the daytime is a solid wall of people, was completely deserted. The traffic lights went on changing for nobody. My trainers squeaked so loudly that I felt like I was creeping through a library.

There were other people, though, if you looked. A street cleaner in a little humming vehicle, a woman restocking a cash machine with a security guard, delivery drivers unloading crates of milk outside the supermarket, a fox trotting down the middle of the road as if it owned the place. We gave each other little nods, like we were all in on something.

I sleep better now, and I have mostly stopped. But I miss those walks more than I expected. They were the calmest hours of my week, and they showed me the city without its make-up on, tired and honest and strangely kind.

Both writers describe walking through a city in the middle of the night.

What are the similarities between the writers’ experiences of their night walks?

Draw on evidence from both texts to support your answer.