24hrs in London in Bullet Points
More chaotic than it needed to be, really.
Saturday
Train to London. Early-ish. Not really. Like, 10?
Snag a seat next to Colleen, Lizzy & Greg. We are strangers.
It’s Colleen’s 50th bday bash.
They warn me that the conversation might get cheeky, so headphones are ideal.
That’s fine, Greg, I wasn’t going to join in anyway. Youse enjoy yourselves.
With every stop, the train gets more and more packed until the air becomes so close it’s practically non-existent.
“Bit clausty”, says Greg. He’s not wrong!
Lizzy does her makeup, then takes selfies.
She complains that there are people in the background.
My podcast won’t load.
A man standing further along the train faints, and a tidal wave of people edge their way down the aisles until we’re all packed in like a tin of sardines.
I write a gratitude list in my notes app.
1. A seat on the train.
Around me, the drinking has already begun:
A group of men are glugging green bottles of beer like it’s a race;
A trio of women wearing blush pink make their way through a plastic bag of M&S cocktails-in-a-can;
Lizzy pulls out a bottle of Prosecco she found in her Mum’s garage. It’s acid yellow.
Text Mum: get me off this train omg
Reply from Mum: a screenshot from Facebook about spending time with your daughter.
Text Mum: is that sarcastic?
Reply from Mum: No!!
Colleen gets emotional about Lizzy and Greg coming to her bday bash and puts her sunglasses on.
Lizzy asks why David hasn’t texted her back.
“You don’t know what’s going on in his life,” says Colleen.
“No, that’s not what Eckhart Tolle would say. You need to focus on yourself.” Says Greg.
“I was thinking about going to Mallorca for 4 days to push myself out of my comfort zone.” Says Lizzy.
“I think you should, before we go to India,” says Greg.
“I can’t wait for India,” says Colleen.
Lizzy pulls out a copy of The Power of Now.
Text Mum: what time do we get in?
Reply from Mum: about 20 mins xx
“I am properly clausty now,” says Lizzy.
Me too.
Twenty insufferable minutes pass.
“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Greg says to me as the train pulls in, “we’ve only traumatised you a little bit!”
We get off the train.
We breathe cold air.
We get on the tube along with what feels like the rest of the city.
We get off at Old Street. So does everyone else.
We have never been more appreciative of the fresh air before.
Mum and I look at each other as if to say, this is why we don’t live in the city.
Drop bags off at hotel.
Go to Spitalfields.
Lovely.
First shop we go in is The Mercantile (nb:
you would love this).We collect things as we muddle around: socks, floaty tops, Mary-Janes.
We ooh and ahh at pretty things and say “this would look nice on you!”
We make purchases.
Then we go into Øst and my spirits are lifted even higher by the colours.
Cornflower blues, rosewood pinks, sunshine yellows and grassy greens.
I try on glasses in Cubitts that make me feel like a chic intellectual.
We drink something fruity and cold in Costa and a student asks us questions about our supermarket habits for his project.
We buy honey cakes in Gail’s.
We go back to the hotel at 3.
We eat the honey cakes.
We lie down.
We get ready and go again.
Dinner.
The restaurant is busy.
The food is nice.
We look around and see if anyone else looks like they could be going to the same place as us afterwards. Not as easy to decipher as it was when we went to Taylor Swift.
We order dessert, which I say is risky given how busy it is but Mum reckons we’ve got plenty of time.
Dessert takes its time, and I get anxious in the way that I do when I feel like I should be somewhere else by now.
Our nice waiter brings dessert and tells us it will be free because of the wait. That’s so nice, we say. We didn’t even ask.
We make it to the Barbican in time.
We find our seats.
We watch How to Fail Live with special guest Alex Hassell, who was incredibly open, charming and said very lovely things about his wife Emma.
We marvel at how spectacular Elizabeth Day is at her job. She’s so articulate, I didn’t hear her say ‘um’ once. Thoughtful, considered, and absurdly elegant.
We go back to the hotel when it’s finished.
The room is hot, and we can’t turn off the radiator.
This is the hottest radiator I have ever come across in my entire life.
The radiator starts beeping.
I get annoyed at the heating and the beeping.
Sunday
At midnight I manage to crack the window open.
This makes the radiator beep louder because it can detect the window being open.
Grr, I go.
I feel like throwing my toys out the pram, but I am nearly twenty-five so that would be wrong, and I am too tired to do that anyway.
Eventually, maybe at about 4am, I fall asleep.
Mum wakes up at 5am.
We both try and go back to sleep, but wake up at 8am.
“Good enough”, we say.
I get up, and see the plug for the radiator. We could have just unplugged it.
Grr, I go again, and give the plug a dirty look.
We go to Gail’s for breakfast because I used to love their babka and we don’t have one near us.
I drink a cup of tea that I really need.
Mum has a yoghurt pot for health, and a brioche bun for joy.
We look in shop windows and every so often widen our eyes at prices.
We sigh a little, then decide we ought to go and catch our train.
“Won’t be as busy as yesterday”, we say.
Feeling luxurious, I get a hot chocolate at Pret.
The thing about London Euston is they like to play games with you. The game is that they make you very stressed by not telling you which platform your train is departing from until thirty seconds before your train is due to leave, and then they laugh at you while you all scurry in a panic to catch it before it goes.
We stand and wait for our platform, maybe for fifteen minutes.
Our platform comes on screen.
EVERYONE in the vicinity starts to run.
I think there’s been a calamity.
No.
Everyone is on our train.
Oh dear.
We shuffle to the train, trying not to stumble from the shoves from other people trying to get to the same place.
Somehow we manage to get seats again. That will be the gratitude list.
The train fills to the brim.
Staff on the platform start shouting telling people not to get on the train because it’s too full.
uh oh.
With every stop, more people try and get on the train.
This train is different to the one yesterday because on this one, the people seem to have formed an alliance.
People always get on better when they find something they all dislike. Common ground.
The woman next to me, who I discover to be Denise from accidentally looking over her shoulder at her work emails, grows increasingly anxious about missing her next train.
“It’ll be tight,” we all say.
I don’t know if Denise caught her train in time.
Dad is waiting in the car at the station. I spill hot chocolate all over his seats and apologise profusely.
The train parts definitely gave me second hand anxiety 😅 but the Saturday night with your Mum sounded so lovely!
I laughed out loud when you said, "the woman next to me who I learned was called Denise from looking at her emails" haha. I will join the club with you and confess that I do that too... 😂
In Paris actually, I was on the metro, so of course, you're all squashed in the train, and I was peering at some guy's book he was reading on his phone and testing whether I still kept my French 'skills' from Secondary lol.
I've checked out that shop and you are so right! I see they sell leopard print clothes, super colourful stuff, and le bonne shop socks (obsessed with those!) Must remember to visit next time I'm in London!