A kaleidoscopic look back at 2023’s most hackle-raising moments, experienced while negotiating London on foot, on the Tube and by car.
However you travel in London, you’re bound to encounter something interesting. People are always getting into altercations. Or trying to blag stuff. Or saying weird things to each other. Or missing connections.
This is a round-up of my 2023 spent travelling the capital. These vignettes were recorded while negotiating London on foot, on the Tube and by car
There is no ULEZ or congestion charge for reading. But please remember to touch in and out at the beginning and end of the blog.
January: a cold and literal morning
It’s late January. It’s one of those mornings that seems to resist you at every turn.
The boiler fails to come on, the roads are more choked than ever. The homework is not in the school bag. It’s the kind of morning when having a head start means that you just about make your appointments.
Completing the commute feels like slowly and joylessly solving a series of slide puzzles
Yet there’s still some abstract pleasure in seeing the low, pale amber sun cutting through a steaming, frost-dusted South London morning as I join the traffic.
Even a chilly slog like this is improved with some good lighting.
Somewhere in my brain, a point of sensory data registers. My toes are slowly numbing again, because I’ve forgotten to activate the air con.
I note that, outside, the temperature has edged up from -4c at the start of the commute, to -2c.
Completing the commute feels like slowly and joylessly solving a series of slide puzzles. I find myself edging into tiny gaps, hawkishly checking wing mirror proximity, ignoring pointless honking, crawling toward busy junctions.
Soon I realise that I’m stuck in a thicket of cars on Thicket Road.
As if sensing that this is the prime opportunity to contribute to the existential mockery, my shuffled playlist segues into Who Knows Where The Times Goes?
I can cope with the cold, but does the morning have to be quite so literal as well?
April: Micra aggressions
During rush hour in late April, I make the mistake of slowing down to allow a silver Nissan Micra to join from a junction ahead on my right.
After a comical pause, the vehicle finally processes in stately fashion across the road, giving me ample time to reflect on the recklessness of my charitable instincts.
My remorse deepens as I get a full look at the rear of the vehicle: lightly dented, with a single functioning brake light.
As the Micra trundles along, the exhaust box gently sways beneath the undercarriage like the ripe udders of a trotting sow.
Yet somehow, I don’t get the impression that this jalopy is on its way to the garage. I think it’s being run into the ground, like the plough horse that you’d rather see collapse on the job than at the hands of a merciful veterinarian.
Of course, it transpires that the Nissan is taking the exact same route as I am.
The elderly driver approaches every curve and corner with the circumspection of a battleship commander negotiating a mine-riddled harbour.
I am never being this courteous again.
July: Nucci and the e-scooter
It’s about 1.30 on a sunny, late July day. I’m walking home along the main road, when I hear a very loud noise.
I look up to see that, at a junction up ahead, a man has clattered his electric scooter into the front driver-side portion of an old grey estate, which was in the process of turning right onto the main road.
The car driver is an elderly lady who, at this distance, reminds me of Nucci Gualtieri from The Sopranos. She’s shouting apoplectically from behind the closed window.
The scooter driver, clad in a black tracksuit and baseball cap, seems momentarily dazed by the incident. Then, the driver’s incandescent rage, and her lack of basic concern, seem to hit him like a bucket of ice water.
After steadying himself and righting his apparently undamaged scooter, he serves up a return volley of invective and jumps back on the deck.
It seems like, if the e-scooter was on the road, then the incident is probably the driver’s fault. Presumably, she pulled out without spotting the narrow form of the man zipping toward her, so close to the curb.
But then again, the scooter might have been on the pavement. While I don’t want to tar everyone with the same brush, I haven’t known e-scooter drivers to show much consideration for other road users and pedestrians in recent years.
The car appears undamaged, albeit sufficiently dowdy that a minor dent or scuff won’t make much of a visual impression anyway.
The two drivers continue to exchange pleasantries, as the scooter circumnavigates the rear of the estate, which, in turn, lurches onto the main road.
Around them, several inconvenienced motorists remain stationary and quiet, on sufferance.
By the time I arrive at the junction a few seconds later, it’s as though the whole thing never happened.
September: military dress or black tie?
I’m on the Tube, heading to Oxford Street in the dissipating glow of a September heatwave, to buy a dinner jacket.
I’ve been offered a ticket to a gala dinner, requiring me to retrieve my Black Tie to comply with the strict dress code. Notionally, there were other options. The invite stipulated ‘military dress or black tie.’
I haven’t had to wear my black tie in three years. I was worried that maybe the trousers would be a little tight around the waistband.
But, in a rare break from a catalogue of middle-age indignities, the trousers still fit. Thanks to a long chain of regular gym visits, it is the jacket that is too small, around the chest and biceps.
It’s still a pain to have to replace part of the outfit, but at least it’s not because I’m out of shape.
I am sick of this energy-sapping heat wave. It’s an unexpected delay in the usual climatic order.
I’m sick of shuffling desk fans around the house to keep everyone comfortable. I’ve had it with itinerant sleeping arrangements. I’m tired of getting on public transport and hoping for the best.
Sitting across from me on the Tube are two members of the Mexican military. A Colonel and Brigadier General are on their way back from a defence trade show.
They’re in full military dress: caps, shiny patent shoes, thick jacket and trousers in leaf green.
I’m in shorts and a t-shirt, and I’m only just managing not to melt.
The two Mexican comrades seem to be coping well with the heat. Their boxy uniforms are so substantial that they almost look like mini conveyances of their own. They share a smartphone for a moment, chuckling over something on the screen.
Maybe they’re so relaxed because this heat is nothing compared to the temperatures back home.
So: military dress or black tie? I’d still rather them than me.
