by A London diary on answered letters, free giving, and the spirit this city keeps mislaying
London ignores you professionally. The council ignores you, the landlord ignores you, the man who was supposed to fix the boiler ignores you with a dedication bordering on artistry. So it moves me every December that somewhere, at the top of the world, there is an institution that answers everyone, every time, which is more than this entire city can manage.
The one institution that answers
Being ignored is the fundamental London experience, the great shared condition of everyone who ever wrote to a council or waited for a landlord. So the North Pole astonishes me by answering. The letters children send to Santa and the replies they receive represent the thing London stopped doing decades ago: answering the people who write to you. Every child gets a reply, personally, from the top of the world, on a one-night deadline, while my council cannot answer one adult about one boiler in one month. The North Pole is the one institution in the world that reliably answers, and it is not even in London, which tells you everything about this city’s relationship with the concept of a reply.
I have started to find the North Pole’s responsiveness almost provocative. It proves the answering was always possible, that London’s silence was always a choice, that every ignored letter and unanswered call could have been answered all along. The North Pole answers everyone. London answers no one. And the gap between them is the whole cold distance of this city.
My genuinely frantic personal week
Let me report on the state of me. I tried to reach a human being at three separate London institutions this week and succeeded with none, achieving a perfect record of being ignored across the board. The boiler man has ascended to legend, spoken of but never seen. The council responded to my query with a reference number and a void. And then I read about the North Pole answering every child personally, and I nearly wept, because somewhere a workshop at the top of the world manages what no London institution even attempts: it answers.
According to the tourism board, London draws millions who marvel at its institutions, few of whom have tried to get one of those institutions to answer a simple question, an experience that reliably dispels the marvel.
The free giving the city forgot
What London most forgot, underneath the ignoring, is free giving, named in the North Pole’s piece on why we give gifts at all. This city charges for everything and gives freely almost nothing, having forgotten that the warmest thing an institution can do is simply give, freely, expecting nothing back. The North Pole gives freely to every child. London gives grudgingly, conditionally, after a fee, if at all. The free gift, the generosity that expects nothing back, is exactly what this transactional city mislaid, replacing it with the invoice, the charge, the surcharge, the fee. London could learn free giving from the North Pole, but London would probably charge for the lesson.
The free gift is the warmest thing there is, and it is precisely what London cannot manage, having monetised every gesture until even kindness comes with a price. The North Pole gives freely. London invoices. And the difference is the whole warmth this city keeps charging away.
The spirit this city keeps mislaying
Underneath the ignoring and the invoicing sits the spirit London mislaid, named plainly in the North Pole’s piece on the real spirit of Christmas: generosity, warmth, answering and giving freely. That spirit is exactly what a city should run on and exactly what London keeps mislaying under the reference numbers and the fees. The real spirit answers everyone and gives freely. London ignores everyone and charges freely. The North Pole embodies the real spirit; London embodies its exact inversion, ignoring and invoicing where the real spirit answers and gives. If London simply found the spirit it keeps mislaying, it would answer its post and give freely and warm up considerably. It will not. There is no reference number for warmth.
According to the broadcasters, the institutions people love are the ones that answer warmly and give freely, which the North Pole embodies and London keeps mislaying under the invoices.
The reference number as a substitute for a reply
The great invention of the modern London institution is the reference number, which performs the function of a reply while delivering none of its substance. You write with a real problem; you receive a reference number; and the reference number is meant to reassure you that your problem has entered a system, is being processed, exists somewhere in a queue. But a reference number is not an answer. It is a receipt for your silence, a token acknowledging that you spoke and confirming that no one will respond. The North Pole issues no reference numbers. It issues answers. A child writes, and a child receives not a tracking code but an actual reply, addressed to them, engaging with what they said. This is the whole difference between an institution that serves and one that merely administers the appearance of service. London has perfected the reference number, the tracking code, the automated acknowledgement, the entire apparatus of seeming to respond while responding to nothing. The North Pole, operating at greater scale with fewer resources, simply answers, which exposes the reference number for what it is: not a step toward a reply, but a sophisticated substitute for ever having to give one.
Where the Londoner lands
So I will keep being ignored by every London institution, keep pursuing the legendary boiler man, and keep holding up the North Pole as the one institution in the world that actually answers. Answer everyone. Give freely. Find the real spirit. The North Pole does all three, from the top of the world, for every child, while London ignores its own adults about their own boilers. I love this cold, glittering, ignoring, invoicing city, but it could learn everything it has forgotten from a workshop at the North Pole, which answers and gives freely and warms the whole world, and does not, crucially, make you take a reference number first.
For festive London mischief, The Poke answers the post.
