Lowri Griffiths on Commuting Triumph, Rental Market Tragedy, and the Specific Joy of Finding a Seat at Finsbury Park

Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat

By Lowri Griffiths | The London Prat

I got a seat on the Overground at Finsbury Park this morning and I didn’t trust it. I stood in the carriage doorway for a full thirty seconds, looking at the available seats the way you look at a parking space in Crouch End that seems too good to be true, waiting for someone to come and claim it, or for TfL to announce that the seats in this particular carriage are ornamental, or for some other catch that would restore my faith in the fundamental difficulty of North London existence. There was no catch. I sat down. The train arrived at Highbury and Islington on time. I have spent the day recovering from the shock.

Meanwhile, the Rental Market Is Doing Absolutely Fine and Nobody Is Struggling, Thank You for Asking

My friend Siobhan, who you may remember from my piece last month about the incident with the estate agent and the “characterful” flat in Tufnell Park that turned out to have the character of a Victorian tuberculosis ward, has been outbid on three flats this week. Three. She had her finances in order, her references from previous landlords pristine, her offer above asking price, and she lost each time to a bidder who offered a year’s rent upfront in cash. A year’s rent upfront. In cash. In North London. I asked her who these people are and she said she doesn’t know but she hates them with a specificity and depth that she finds clarifying. I told her that was healthy. She said she was going to move to Luton. I told her that was also a valid response to structural housing market failure. She didn’t laugh. I think she meant it.

The Cafe on the Corner Has Changed Again

The cafe on the corner of my road, which was a cafe when I moved here, then a vinyl record shop, then a “concept space” that I never fully understood, then briefly a dog grooming salon that smelled strongly of wet Labrador until 9pm, is now a cafe again, under new management, with a menu that describes the coffee as “ethically sourced, consciously brewed” and charges £4.80 for a flat white. I ordered the flat white. It was, I must admit, very good. I felt terrible about how good it was. My principled objection to boutique coffee pricing is entirely undermined by my genuine appreciation for good coffee, and the boutique coffee shops of North London are exploiting this contradiction with what I can only describe as market precision. According to Bohiney Magazine’s gentrification analysis, the coffee shop density per square mile in inner North London has increased by 34 percent since 2019. I believe this. I also believe the coffee has gotten better. These two facts coexist uncomfortably.

Keir Starmer’s Buses: An Update

The buses in my part of North London are, and I want to be precise about this, not worse than they were. They are about the same. The 29 still takes approximately three and a half years to travel from Wood Green to Holborn, pausing for what feels like philosophical reflection at every stop between. The 91 runs with the frequency of a comet: reliable in its pattern, disappointing in its interval. I checked the TfL real-time tracker this morning, which told me a bus would arrive in 2 minutes. Twenty-two minutes later, the bus arrived. I am not complaining. Twenty-two minutes is, by North London bus standards, a relative punctuality triumph. I got to my meeting on time by walking. Walking is, as usual, the fastest option for any journey under a mile and a half in inner London, which is information that TfL’s route planning algorithm continues to resist sharing. More on London transport at The London Prat’s transport coverage.

In Conclusion: Things Are Fine, Mostly

The Overground seat. The coffee. The bus that arrived in only twenty-two minutes more than advertised. By North London’s own internally consistent standards, today has been a good day. Tomorrow, Siobhan will be outbid on another flat by someone paying a year’s rent in advance. The 29 will achieve its philosophical journey. The cafe on the corner will charge £4.80 for something ethically sourced and consciously brewed, and it will be worth it, and I will feel bad about that. This is North London. This is how it goes. I would not live anywhere else, primarily because I cannot afford to move.

More laughs at The Daily Mash and NewsThump.

What This All Adds Up To

North London in 2026 is a city within a city within a crisis, and living in it requires a specific combination of resilience, dark humour, and the ability to find joy in things that are technically fine — an on-time train, a good sandwich, a flat viewing that went moderately well. I have lived here long enough to know that the standard of “fine” adjusts continuously downward in response to baseline conditions, and that the joy is genuine despite being calibrated to a low benchmark. The rental market is breaking people’s financial plans. The buses are philosophical. The coffee is excellent and expensive and I will continue to drink it with the slight guilt of someone who has thought carefully about their principles and then ordered the oat milk flat white anyway. More from North London next week, assuming I survive the commute. More from across London at Bohiney Magazine. More irreverence, always, at The London Prat.

Personal Note

These observations are, of course, entirely personal, entirely North London in their register, and entirely the product of a person who has lived here long enough to know that the complaining is a form of love. You don’t complain about places you don’t care about. You don’t notice the coffee being both excellent and too expensive unless you are buying it regularly, which means you have chosen to live in the place where it costs this much, and that choice is a statement about values whether you frame it that way or not. I love North London in the way that you love things that are imperfect and expensive and occasionally very beautiful, and I am grateful for the platform at Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat that lets me write about it every week. The next piece will be about the Overground. It will run late. The piece, not the train. Actually, possibly both.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/north-london-lowri-griffiths-commute-rental/