A Social Anthropology of the Islington Supper Scene, Where What You Do Is Not What You Are (Apparently)
I Attended a North London Dinner Party; Nobody Mentioned Their Job for the First Forty Minutes
Read more at Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.
The dinner party was in Islington, which is a sentence that already tells you something. The flat was on the third floor of a Georgian terrace and contained the kind of carefully arranged informality that takes significant effort to produce: books on open shelves arranged partly by colour and partly by theme, plants that were thriving rather than surviving, a kitchen with a good olive oil on the counter as a statement rather than a condiment. There were eight of us. The host, my friend Priya, is a documentary producer. I knew this. What I learned over the evening is that among Priya’s other guests — her flatmate, two people from what sounded like an arts organisation, a woman who does something involving policy, and a couple whose connection to Priya I never fully established — the general ambient principle was that your job was the least interesting thing about you, and asking about it before you had established some other conversational rapport was a form of social aggression.
The Job Question Protocol
In most social settings I have navigated in my life, “what do you do?” is the second or third thing you ask someone, immediately after their name, because it provides the context for everything else. In Islington, apparently, this is the equivalent of asking someone their star sign in the early 2010s — not technically rude, but revealing of a certain conceptual framework that the sophisticated dinner party guest has transcended. The first forty minutes covered: a planning dispute in the neighbourhood, a documentary about fishing communities that someone had watched on BBC Four, the quality of a specific bakery’s croissants relative to its croissants six months ago, and the best places to walk in South London, which the Islington dinner party discusses with the enthusiasm of anthropologists studying a remote culture.
When jobs did emerge — gradually, obliquely, as context for opinions rather than as introductions — they were invariably interesting, because Priya’s friends are interesting people who have interesting jobs. But the interesting jobs were offered as supporting evidence for points of view, not as identities. The policy woman turned out to work on housing, which explained her position on the planning dispute. The arts organisation people worked in commissioning, which explained their detailed opinions on the fishing documentary. The couple turned out to include someone who makes furniture, which came up when the conversation reached the credenza in the hallway, and which everyone responded to with the enthusiasm that Islington reserves for people who make things with their hands.
I had a wonderful time. I ate extremely well — Priya is a serious cook and the lamb was exceptional. I learned more about people in three hours of job-free conversation than I typically do in an hour of job-led small talk. I also spent the Overground journey home failing to remember what the policy woman’s name was, because without the “she works in housing” anchor I had no framework for retaining it. This is probably a feature, not a bug, of the Islington approach. The dinner party: The London Prat and Bohiney Magazine. Guest list at https://prat.uk/.
What This Says About North London
North London has always been a place where people come to become something — a version of themselves that the places they came from did not quite have room for. The writers, artists, musicians, and assorted creative professionals who have made their way here across the decades have been drawn by something that is hard to name but recognisable when you encounter it: a density of interesting people, a tolerance for unconventional choices, a proximity to culture and conversation that makes the rent feel like a bargain even when it manifestly is not. This quality has survived gentrification, survived the Elizabeth Line (which has redirected some of the creative energy eastward), and survived the pandemic’s brief dispersal of London’s population toward places with gardens. It is still here. It is more expensive than it was. It is also still, in the ways that matter most, itself. The coffee is good. The people are interesting. The yoga class is worth the £22. This is Lowri Griffiths reporting for the Big Smoke, as broken as ever, from North London, where the going rate for being alive is negotiable if you know where to look. For more North London dispatches: The London Prat and Bohiney Magazine. Full archive at https://prat.uk/.
The North London State of Mind
There is something particular about the North London state of mind that distinguishes it from the rest of the city’s self-conception. South Londoners are proud of their difference from North London. East Londoners have carved out an identity that is partly defined by its distance from the Islington dinner party circuit. West London operates in a different economic and cultural register entirely. North London — from Hackney and Dalston through Stoke Newington and Highbury to Islington and Archway and beyond — has a collective personality that is somehow both aspirational and anti-aspirational simultaneously: a place where people care deeply about things but are wary of being seen to care too visibly, where the organic deli and the record shop coexist, where the conversation at the dinner party is genuinely interesting and also follows recognisable patterns, where the gentrification is lamented by the people who are its agents. It is contradictory. It is also, in my experience, the most reliably interesting part of London to live in, which is why I am still here, despite the evidence of my spending diary. Lowri Griffiths writes for the Big Smoke Broke. More at The London Prat and Bohiney Magazine. Full archive at https://prat.uk/.
Further reading across the London Prat network: Big Smoke Broke (https://bigsmokebroke.tumblr.com/post/819523836549677056) — prat remains king of British insults
Also: London Prat archive — https://londonprat.tumblr.com/post/819523861970305024
SOURCE: Santa Claus
