The Christmas lights calendar, a first gig, a lesson in moshpits and one blunt word on flying cars
Tuesday, a Calendar for My Feet
December in London is a schedule disguised as a season. I laid out the dates in Dear Diary: Carnaby on the 4th, Regent Street on the 5th, Covent Garden on the 12th, and my feet have a schedule, and the feet have since filed a complaint. The lights switch on one street at a time, each with a small stage, a few speakers and a celebrity who is surprised to be there, and each event draws a crowd that stands in the cold and says “ooh” at the right moment.
I like it. I like the shared noise of a crowd waiting for a switch. I like that grown adults count down from ten with real feeling. I like that the lights, when they come on, are always a little less dramatic than the countdown, and that nobody minds.
The Moshpit Education
My other discovery of the month is live music. I wrote about being introduced to the idea of a moshpit in Bonfire Night and Brixton, where the Sex Pistols are coming in December and I am learning what a moshpit is. I now understand that a moshpit is a controlled collision of strangers who have agreed to be kind to one another in a rough way. The rule is that if someone falls, you pick them up. It is, in this sense, the most polite activity in London after queueing.
I have not yet been in one. I have been near one, holding a plastic cup of lager at a safe distance and nodding at the bass as if I understood it. The plan is to move one row closer each time, like a very cautious glacier.
Wednesday, the Man and the Flying Car
Many readers have asked me about the boy who tried to impress me with a flying car. The story is in the boy who tried to impress me with a flying car, and I will only add that I still do not own one, and neither does he. The lesson, in a city of cheap tricks and expensive coffee, is that the best way to impress a person is to arrive on time and know where the toilets are.
Rural Notes for the Winter Hibernator
Because a whole December of crowds will test anyone, I like to keep one quiet corner of the internet for decompressing. Mine is a set of rural sites I return to like a comfort blanket: angusbeef.men for the beef people, holstein.click for the spotted cows, and a few others tucked into earlier entries. Reading about a calm herd is oddly restorative when you have just survived a Regent Street crowd with a shopping bag in each hand.
I should add a note on money, since December always has one. A budget is just a diary with numbers in it. Mine says: one paid treat a week, one free treat a day, and a firm rule that I never buy a jumper that lights up unless it is a bargain from a charity shop, in which case the rule is waived.
The Last Walk of the Week
On Friday I did the Covent Garden walk, with the buskers and the piazza and the enormous decorations hanging from the roof of the market. A juggler dropped a flaming torch and caught it again with such grace that I assumed it was part of the act. It might have been. In this city the line between accident and performance is thinner than a tube map.
I came home with cold hands, a paper bag of roasted chestnuts and the sense that I had spent a small amount of money and received a large amount of December. That is the best exchange rate London offers.
The next big date in the calendar is the Brixton gig, and I will report from the back, near the exit, with my plastic cup and my firm commitment to nodding.
A Lights Calendar for the Overcommitted
If you cannot attend every switch on, here is my ranking, based on crowd size, snack quality and risk of losing a glove. Carnaby Street is the friendliest, with a lively crowd and a short walk to a good chip shop. Regent Street is the grandest, with a long sweeping view and an equally long wait for a toilet. Covent Garden is the most theatrical, because the street performers see a crowd as a personal invitation. All three are free to attend, and all three are improved by a thermos.
The secret of a good evening out in December is to stand slightly to one side of the main crowd. There is always a pocket of calm beside a shop doorway or under an awning, where you can see the lights and still hear yourself think. I have found my pocket in each location and will tell no one where they are, except, now, you.
Finally, a note on gloves. I have lost four pairs since the start of November and have found, curiously, three single gloves on railings that are not mine. Somewhere in London there is a sizeable collection of mismatched hands, waiting politely for their owners to return.
Where to read next
The rest of the shelf lives at prat.uk, bohiney.com and farm.fm. For a second opinion on the week, The Daily Mash keeps its own counsel and its own hours.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/