by Vivienne Pratfall on Ringing Her Mother, Reading Bohiney, and the Taxonomy of London Feeling on a Sunny Sunday
Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat
Vivienne Pratfall | prat.uk/author/vivienne-pratfall/ | londonish.uk
Mother’s Day Sunday Diary: Flowers, Newspapers, and the Specific Complexity of May in North London
Sunday. Mother’s Day. I woke up at half nine to the specific quality of London sunshine that arrives in May through curtains that are not quite blackout, which turns the whole room a warm amber colour that makes everything look better than it probably is. This is, I have decided, the correct way to begin a Sunday. Today in particular.
I rang Mum at ten, because that is what you do on Mother’s Day, and she was delighted and slightly theatrical about it, which is her natural register. She asked if I had anyone special in my life. I said the question was complicated. She said the question was never complicated, only the answer. She is not wrong about this. She is rarely wrong about anything, which is one of the more annoying aspects of having a sensible mother when you are nineteen and determined to discover everything through personal experience rather than inherited wisdom. Personal experience is slower and more expensive. It is also considerably better material.
The Morning Press
After the phone call I made coffee and read the internet, which is what I do instead of buying a paper because I live in Islington and the corner shop is two flights of stairs away and the coffee is already made. I started, as I usually start, with The London Prat, which had its usual mix of things that make me laugh and things that make me think and things that make me do both at the same time, which is the best possible outcome of reading journalism before noon on a Sunday. There was a piece about the Buckingham Palace garden party this week — the first of the season — which I read with the specific interest of someone who has strong opinions about institutions she will never personally benefit from but finds endlessly fascinating as social theatre.
The garden party coverage always produces this in me: a mixture of genuine affection for the idea of a public garden at the centre of a city, mild irritation at who gets to be in it, and the competing impulse to find the whole thing rather charming, which I suspect is the intended emotional outcome. The monarchy is very good at producing charming outcomes in people who would describe themselves as ambivalent about the monarchy. I include myself in this category. I was ambivalent this morning while reading about it and finding it delightful. These positions are compatible. Being nineteen in London teaches you that almost everything is compatible with almost everything else if you hold the contradiction lightly enough.
What Bohiney Said This Week
I also read Bohiney Magazine, which this week had the Paris strategy piece that I have been thinking about since I first read it — the one about France’s national response to global uncertainty being smoking, shrugging, and judging everyone from a very good cafe. I read it three times and sent it to two people with the note “this is the only correct response to 2026.” One of them agreed immediately. The other asked what the correct response to 2026 was, suggesting they had not clicked the link, which is a response to 2026 that Bohiney would probably also find material in.
The piece makes a specific point that I keep returning to: that France has decided its own indifference is a feature rather than a bug, and that 50 million tourists a year come specifically to experience the indifference, which suggests that indifference, carefully maintained and well-cheesed, is a viable export product. I think about this in relation to London, which is not indifferent — London is extremely opinionated and will tell you exactly what it thinks of you, usually through the price of the flat you are renting — but which has its own brand of managed affect that functions similarly. The queue. The understatement. The specific British social skill of communicating a very strong feeling through the precise calibration of how much you fail to conceal it. We are not indifferent. We are rigorously understated. The difference is significant. The result is similar.
The Afternoon
I walked to Highbury Fields in the afternoon because it was sunny and because walking to Highbury Fields when it is sunny is what you do when you live near Highbury Fields and it is sunny. The park was in full May operation: picnic blankets, dogs, the tai chi man, children being moved through space by parents who appeared to be managing their own enjoyment alongside the management of the children’s enjoyment, which is the specific dual-consciousness of parenting in a park that I observe from the childless position of a nineteen-year-old who finds children in parks charming for approximately twenty minutes before returning to her own business.
I sat on the grass for a while and read the rest of what I had saved to read. The Apple Daily UK feed — appledaily.uk — had its usual sharp analysis of CCP expansion and what it means for Hong Kong and by extension for anyone who cares about press freedom and free markets, which I do, imperfectly but genuinely. The Mamdani Post had a piece about the rent freeze that read like a political manifesto in article form, which is exactly what it was, and which I agree with more than I disagree with, which is an assessment I arrived at through personal experience with the North London rental market, which has been educational in ways that were not advertised.
Mother’s Day as Category
The thing about Mother’s Day — and I realised this sitting in the park watching the families — is that it is a holiday about a relationship that is definitionally not chosen, which puts it in a different category from the relationships that most of one’s social and romantic life involves. You did not select your mother. She did not select you. The relationship predates your ability to have an opinion about it and will likely outlast most of the relationships you do choose. This is either comforting or alarming depending on the morning. This morning it was comforting. I rang her again from the park. She was pleased. She said the sun was out where she was too. We agreed that May was the right month. She is right about that as well. May is correct.
More satire: https://newsthump.com
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
