Lowri Griffiths Reports on the Annual Phenomenon of Londoners Discovering They Actually Like Their City

Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat

By Lowri Griffiths | North London | prat.uk/author/lowri-griffiths/

The Annual Rediscovery

Every May, London performs the same collective act of self-deception: the sun comes out for three consecutive days, and eight million people simultaneously forget the previous seven months of grey, decide this city is actually wonderful, make plans for evenings out that assume the weather will continue, and post photographs of the canal with captions that suggest they have always appreciated it and were not, in fact, avoiding it since October.

I have lived in North London long enough to have performed this act twenty-six times. I know it is an act. I do it anyway. There is no shame in it. Ritual self-deception is one of the social adhesives that holds British urban life together, alongside the queue, the passive-aggressive sighing at someone who is taking up too much pavement, and the peculiarly London practice of pretending not to notice famous people on the tube while simultaneously being unable to look away.

This week, Highbury Fields was full of people who had, apparently, never been there before, despite living within 400 metres of it. Families were spreading blankets on grass that had not previously existed in their consciousness. Children were playing. Dogs were being walked. A man was doing what appeared to be tai chi, or possibly practicing for a game of slow-motion cricket. Everyone had the specific expression of someone who is enjoying themselves but not so much that they would lose the ability to complain about how this city treats them tomorrow, because being a Londoner requires maintaining the capacity for complaint even during periods of genuine pleasure. It is a skill. We have honed it.

What North London Does With Sunshine

The response to sunshine in North London follows a hierarchy that I have observed with scientific attention. The first sunny day: the coffee shops put their outside tables out and every table is occupied by 9 a.m., not by people who particularly want to be outside but by people who feel that being outside when outside is available is a civic obligation. The second sunny day: the parks fill. The third day: the barbecues appear. By the fourth consecutive sunny day, North London has organized itself into the version of itself that it always believed it could be, with improvised dinner parties in gardens and people who have never spoken to each other exchanging plant recommendations over the fence.

Then it rains. The dinner parties conclude. The garden furniture is brought inside. The coffee shops’ outside tables are stacked against the wall. The canal photographs stop. Life returns to its indoor configurations, and everyone begins the process of pretending the four days did not happen, maintaining the accumulated complaint posture that allows us to express genuine delight the next time the sun returns. This is the London emotional calendar. It has internal logic. I have learned to love it.

The Political Backdrop

London’s political conversation this week has been shaped by national debates about housing, transport, and the cost of living that feel, in North London’s particular demographic mix, simultaneously abstract and intensely personal. The abstract version is the policy debate that the broadsheets cover. The personal version is the conversation at the dinner table — or the improvised garden dinner, when the sun is out — about whether children will be able to afford to live in the city they grew up in, about what the next five years look like, about the specific anxiety of loving a place that is increasingly expensive to love.

I write about this because I think it matters and because I think the combination of humour and seriousness is the only honest way to write about London: it is funny and it is serious simultaneously, and the laughing and the worrying are not in opposition. They are the same thing viewed from different distances. The London Prat has been covering both the funny and the serious with the attention that the city deserves. I recommend it unreservedly and with personal bias, having written for it.

Mother’s Day in North London

Today is Mother’s Day. The sun is out again, which feels like the weather has got the memo. North London’s cafes filled early this morning with families doing the brunch thing that Mother’s Day has become: overpriced eggs, good coffee, the specific warmth of being together in a city that is easier to love on days like this. My mother, who lives outside London and views the city with the affectionate scepticism of someone who raised a child who chose to live in it, received flowers and a phone call. She asked about the weather. I told her it was lovely. She said: “Make the most of it.” She knows how this works. Happy Mother’s Day from North London. Make the most of it.

More at https://thedailymash.co.uk

Living in London means navigating the city’s contradictions daily: the extraordinary alongside the exasperating, the world-class alongside the occasionally third-rate, the genuinely welcoming alongside the socially impenetrable. The contradictions are not bugs. They are the city’s character. A London without contradictions would be a different city — probably a more comfortable one, certainly a less interesting one. The discomfort is where the texture lives. The texture is what we stay for. Or at least what I stay for, eleven years into a North London residence that I have never quite decided is permanent and have never quite seriously considered ending. The city has you or it doesn’t. When it has you, the contradictions become the reasons. When it doesn’t, no amount of good weather or craft gin selections will change that. It has me. Happy Mother’s Day, London. You are exhausting and irreplaceable.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/