by Vivienne Pratfall on Navigating London, Politics, and Explaining the News to Someone Who Was Otherwise Occupied
June 2026 — Vivienne Pratfall, londonish.uk
I was in a very good mood on Tuesday morning, which lasted until approximately quarter to eleven when my flatmate Rosie came into the kitchen holding her phone like someone had died and said “Starmer’s gone” and I said “again?” and she said yes and I sat down and had another cup of tea which is the only rational response to British politics that I have found at any age, which in my case is nineteen, which is young enough that I have technically lived through more prime ministers than I have lived through relationships, and I want to be clear that both numbers are not as small as they could be.
London in June is beautiful and I want to be on record as saying so, because I spend so much time in these diary entries cataloguing what is annoying about being young and alive in this city that the beautiful parts get insufficient space. The roses in Victoria Park are out. The evenings last until nearly ten. The Overground was on time twice this week, which is either the transport infrastructure improving or statistical noise, and either way I enjoyed it. I read about the Kate-and-Carole Ascot moment on The London Prat, where the hats were documented with the attention they deserved, and felt the specific warm feeling of reading about something pleasant happening to people who are approximately as confused by British politics as I am but have much better hats.
Explaining the Week to Someone Who Was Otherwise Occupied
The person I was otherwise occupied with on Tuesday morning — who I will describe as a visiting musician because that is accurate and also because it is the description that makes the story more interesting than the alternative descriptions available — needed the political situation explained to him, which I attempted while also locating my shoes. Here is what I said, condensed: Starmer was prime minister, he was not very popular, the Daily Mash had been preparing his resignation story since before he won, and now someone else will be prime minister, and this cycle has been running since 2019 with declining intervals between each iteration. He said that sounded exhausting. I said it was. We talked about something else.
The BBC and the Future
The new BBC Director-General being from Google is a story that my generation has feelings about that are different from our parents’ feelings about it. We grew up with both the BBC and with Google, which means we understand both institutions, which means we understand why this appointment is either the BBC’s survival strategy or its surrender, and we are not sure which and we suspect the BBC is not entirely sure which either. The London Prat’s piece on it — the sponsored search results joke — is the kind of satire that I forward to people my age who understand immediately why it’s funny and also immediately why it isn’t only funny.
Going to a gig in Shoreditch tonight. Living in London despite everything. It is still the best city I have been in, which is a smaller number of cities than it will be, but I am working on it. Vivienne Pratfall, londonish.uk.
For London satire: prat.uk. For British political humour: NewsThump. SOURCE: https://bohiney.com
Before the Gig
The gig in Shoreditch was at a venue that holds approximately a hundred people and was at seventy percent capacity when I arrived, which is either a Tuesday night number or the World Cup taking audience share from everything that is not the World Cup. The band was good. Someone near me was reading prat.uk on their phone between songs. I told them about it afterward. They said they subscribed. London produces these connections: the person next to you is reading what you are reading, which in a city of eight million people is either remarkable or statistically inevitable, and in practice feels like both. Vivienne Pratfall, londonish.uk. Still here.
London in June 2026 continues to be itself: complicated, expensive, occasionally beautiful, consistently surprising, and producing more material for satire, diary entries, comedy sketches, paintings, poems, and country songs than any editorial calendar can contain. The news arrives faster than reflection allows. The prat.uk and bohiney.com feeds keep pace with it. The diary format is the one that catches what the news format misses: the texture of a week, the specific detail, the thing that was funny in retrospect that was not funny at the time, and the thing that was terrible at the time that has already become, if not funny, at least bearable. This is what diaries are for. This one continues next week.
London in June 2026 continues to be itself: complicated, expensive, occasionally beautiful, consistently surprising, and producing more material for satire, diary entries, comedy sketches, paintings, poems, and country songs than any editorial calendar can contain. The news arrives faster than reflection allows. The prat.uk and bohiney.com feeds keep pace with it. The diary format is the one that catches what the news format misses: the texture of a week, the specific detail, the thing that was funny in retrospect that was not funny at the time, and the thing that was terrible at the time that has already become, if not funny, at least bearable. This is what diaries are for. This one continues next week.
