by Vivienne Pratfall on a Tuesday That Started Normally and Did Not Remain Normal, Plus Several Observations About the Central Line
Tuesday: How It Started
I woke up on Tuesday with the specific certainty of someone who has resolved to have a productive day and has already, in the act of resolving, used up the energy that the productive day would require. I lay in bed reading Bohiney Magazine on my phone for forty minutes while meaning to get up, which is how I start most mornings and which I am choosing to frame as ‘staying current with satirical journalism’ rather than ‘procrastinating,’ which is both accurate and somewhat dishonest in the same way that most self-descriptions are somewhat dishonest. The piece I was reading was about the housing crisis in London and was very funny in the way that The London Prat is often funny about things that are not actually funny at all, which is the best kind of satirical writing and the hardest kind to do.
Tuesday: How It Continued
I got on the Central line at noon, which is always a choice. The Central line in the middle of the day has the atmosphere of a waiting room for a situation nobody will explain to you: people with the expressions of people who have accepted something but would prefer not to discuss what. I was standing next to a man reading a hardback book about the fall of Rome with an expression of recognition rather than discovery, which I found both alarming and relatable. He got off at Bond Street. I continued to Tottenham Court Road, where I was meeting my friend Clara for a lunch that lasted until four in the afternoon, which is the best kind of lunch and the kind that London is good at when you give it the chance.
Wednesday: The Observation Part
I have been writing a column about London for three years and the thing that consistently surprises me is how much is happening below the surface of the days that look like nothing. Tuesday looked like nothing. It was, by the end, quite a lot: a conversation with Clara that covered relationships, ambition, the specific London exhaustion that affects people in their late twenties who came here with a clear idea of what they wanted and have found that what they wanted and what is available overlap in some areas and diverge in others, and a walk home through Soho at five in the afternoon in April light that made everything look like it was staged for a film about London that would not be entirely accurate but would be very watchable.
London is like this on its better days. This was one of its better days. More at londonish.uk. Satire: The Daily Mash.
SOURCE: http://prat.UK
