A love letter to London
Lots of new things: snow on the ground, Twickenham and the trickiness of making new friends.
Lots of new things: snow on the ground, Twickenham and the trickiness of making new friends.
You know what a really great dating app would do? It would scan your Google search history for all your weird musings and secret questions then match you with someone who’s been equally curious about the same things. Or, if not possible, at least match you with someone who is at essentially the same level of weirdness as you.
“Am I dying?”
“No, it’s just London.”
Somewhere between Aussies in uniform, sweaty boys in Bintang beer singlets, plentiful cheap beers, we had stepped through a black hole to an Australia that never quite existed. It was 4pm. We could stay here all night.
There was only one little problem with this genius plan.
I heard the most wonderful story this week. Full credit goes to to its author, Simon Rich, who tells it far better than I’m about to.
‘Oh my god!’ I say, ever so wittily.
‘Oh my god,’ she returns, also demonstrating an enviable mastery of the English language.
You knew the restaurant was going to be trendy because it was under a sex shop. I’d arrived first and was snuggled into the basement sex-den-come-Mexican-bodega with a tempranillo and the deliberately cryptic menu.
It was this little realisation, made at freezing cold Paddington station as Sunday’s sun gave up on its feeble attempt to warm the day, that threatened to evoke my first panic attack. And it’s the equally little things that are helping to settle my jiggling ‘what have I done’ anxiety.