George Devo’s weekly column on life in the capital, published every Monday morning…
My friend leads me into a dimly-lit bar, the low-ceiling and tight walls turning chatter from punters into an assault on my senses.
The year is 2022, I’m in the first year of my studies at Sheffield and the chatterers in question are students of University College London. I’m in their territory, visiting a friend from home who’s just started his second year at the central London institution. He’s just taken me to meet his friends in their favourite union drinking venue.
I’m glad to be inside – it’s a dark and freezing November’s evening – but also, ever so slightly, terrified. My mate from home has a lot of new friends, none of whom I know, and they’re currently lining a long mahogany table in front of me, their eyes blinking upwards, scanning this gawky newcomer and, my mind assures me, they’re not impressed.
My friend, in typically gregarious fashion, spots two coursemates from the other side of this wooden social obstacle and saunters off to natter with them. I do the most logical thing and head to the bar, only to return minutes later, to the same table and set of faces, but, this time, with an already half-downed pint of subsidised lager.
My eyes dart wildly, checking for free space on the long benches which flank the table. Real estate seems in vanishingly short supply, and I seemed doomed to remain in this social limbo for a while longer. However, I can just about make out a gap in the bodies and head towards it.
I sit down, heart-racing and mind-whirring, and force myself to meet the neighbours. A tall man sits on my right, a total, if affable, stranger. I look forwards and see a woman with a dark, messy fringe, and large blue eyes. Although it takes a moment to click, we both realised we’ve met before. Just once, briefly, on my first visit to see our mutual friend.
This time was different. I can’t remember exactly what we spoke about that night, but I know it certainly wasn’t brief. There were hours of mutual mocking, shared stories and a lot of laughter. The contents of our conversation might be fuzzy, I certainly couldn’t minute it for you, but I could vividly explain the feeling it left me with.
I know that, after an hour of speaking to her, I wasn’t anxious anymore. My mind had calmed and my heart settled. I knew that when I left my housemate’s Kentish town student house the next morning, bleary-eyed and a little hungover, that I wanted to see her again, and felt like some cyber-stalking may be needed on the train back up north.
It wasn’t all plain sailing from there. A lot of empty time passed, emotional agonising happened and poor excuses for texting one another were sent, but, as of today, we’ve been together for a little over sixteen months.
I’m guessing your reaction, reader, to this story, will sit somewhere on a spectrum that spans from a fleeting “Awww, cute” to a sarky “OK, well done. Good job being happy, can you do it quietly?”.
The latter would be fair – why can’t I keep schtum instead of ladling yet more self-indulgence on an already vanity weary audience?
Well, aside from the fact it’s Valentine’s Day this coming Friday and my girlfriend would’ve been less than pleased if I hadn’t made this edition somewhat topical, I think that night says something interesting about the city I’m living in currently, and what it means to me and others of a similar background.
I’m from Birmingham and she’s from Hampshire, yet we met in London. Only writing this column did I realise that my parents met in London, one from Norwich and another from Wolverhampton. In fact, only two out of twenty people sitting at that ever-so intimidating table that night were actually from the capital city.
I’m not offering a value judgement on this as I imagine this endless stream of transient interlopers – students, workers, placement-year-doing-columnists – might get annoying after a while if you’re a born-and-bred cockney.
But maybe that’s also the way London’s always been?
People from ‘the regions’ of the United Kingdom flock to the city in their youth for opportunity. Alongside that they find experience and variety.
Its sheer scale means a lot more lives have been shaped, and their directions fixed, in London than anywhere else in the UK.
It’s unique for that reason alone. More decisions are made and regrets established here than Exeter, Leeds or Birmingham.
Put as cornily as possible, more sparks are struck down here.
More nights like that sub-zero November one, sixteen months ago, happen in London. That can only be a good thing.
