East Croydon is rising-up – towering, compact and congested – beyond the smeary window I am peering through as the train screeches, metal wheels braking on metal tracks, alongside the hustling station platform. Croydon, the wild southern sister, the sleepless gatekeeper, the holder of the invisible lock and key to the Big Smoke.
And speeding away from the platform, ever onwards to the city waiting on the near horizon, the passengers contemplate the territorial pissing’s of half-arsed, scribbled, graffiti tags on railway brickwork, as the train ghosts ever closer to the dense concrete jungle of London. And, after a blink of the eye, weaving through the Ballardian high rises into its beating heart, its facemasks at the ready to face the zombie apocalypse.
Heading north underground, I arrive squinting in the scorching midday heat outside Camden Town station. After a rapid survey of the landscape, I discover the World’s End has in fact ended. The door of the famous Camden boozer is now under secure lock and key, blocked off with black iron bars. Another pub headstone erected in the crammed memorial graveyard of Lockdown.
Sipping on a flat white in the dark corner of a branded Costa Lotta I wonder at how the city flatlined, its beating heart tragically resuscitated in the aftermath of the apocalypse. Reeking of bankruptcy and debt, the coffee shops have gone to bitter seed, fashion boutiques boarded up, and bargain basement travel agents off on a flight to nowhere. And swigging down the dregs of tepid corporate coffee, it’s time to hop on the Tube and head over to catch-up with an old mate last seen thirteen years ago.
It’s the hottest day of the year, in the hottest part of the day, as I make tracks and stride through the hectic street life of Essex Road in NW1. It’s all drop-tops, booming ragga sounds and frustrated car horns coming from the congested traffic lanes. The dumb pigeons peck the pavements for scraps, as the masses and classes search for the shade. Even the muscled estate dogs have stopped straining on the leash, as the sun weaves its summer magic.
The remainder of the day is a tale of two city boozers.
An hour later, I find myself in the trendy beer garden of a landed gentrified pub in the leafy borough of Islington, surrounded by streets of million-pound piles, ordering IPA through a phone app at premium city prices.
As the sun beats down through the trees and monied Londoners in designer threads splash the digital cash, I break bread and bang the world to rights with my old mate in a cool corner of the garden in a catch-up for the ages.
Then it’s a drunken hop, stagger and crawl over into the borough of Hackney, and a no-frills pop-up boozer with a make-shift beer garden in the road. No masks or hand sanitiser here, as the manor youth gather in numbers, drinking for Britain and settling old Lockdown scores. And as the sun goes down and the shadows lengthen, the rum and coke flows in icy rivers, as the moon climbs over this insomniac city that never sleeps.
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