Blue Dress Hot Mess

Mini-Series: The Tube Observer

07/05/25: Curzon Cinema, Mayfair:

We went from Tom Cruise to David Attenborough. I have long been in love with them both. (I reform my statement: I have long loved them both. To say I have long been in love with a man who turned 99 today (Happy Birthday, good Sir) is wrong on multiple levels). The end of the world to the end of our world. The latter is real, the former pure espionage. I have long loved them both, the spies and the seals. They are both an escape from the reality of the present moment. A movie trailer drum beat, with Tom Cruise running across Westminster bridge. A turtle caught in a fishing net. If we save the sea, we save our world, so David Attenborough says. I believe him. Tom Cruise asks me to trust him, one last time. I trust him. I give them all that I am in this little escape out of mine. A Curzon, off Mayfair. A pause from reality. 

Later:

We hugged goodbye at Green Park outside the Ritz. One friend left to get the tube. I hugged him goodbye, not making plans to see him again, but knowing — somehow — that I would. Alice and I stood chatting. There were rugby boys and high-heeled girls and leopard-print trousers with clashing leopard-print bags. There were homeless men, and there were morris dancers in Green Park, and there was a sitting red fox in the garden. London is full of Pret à Mangers and Itsus, and we agreed how small we felt. I said I thought I could live here: she said she knew she couldn’t, not forever. (She only moved here last July). We talked about marriage and babies – cliché, for girls in their early 20s, but we did. We talked about our mothers. I have decided that mothers are like parents in-law. Hard to come by, and an endless source of conversation. You love them really (or you hope you do). 

I have walked home. I have been told that I am a girl who wasted three years at university doing nothing (my First in Theology is apparently useless); I have been told that I have “gumption” (this makes me feel like Kate Winslet in ‘The Holiday’ – a pleasant feeling). I have been told I look “hot” in my new glasses, and I have been told I will be able to find a job just as soon as I am ready; everything will just fall into place (I hear Amanda Seyfried in my ears). I am ready. Who else do I need to tell? The Universe—London—the Westminster street? I don’t know. Big Ben has chimed 8.45pm. It is VE day tomorrow. The May sky is dark grey. The street is empty. The lights are on. I saw a Royal Mail van drive out of Buckingham Palace gates. Never has the mail been so Royal. Never a scandal so starkly scandalous. 

I am going in for a cup of tea. Good night.

08/05/25:

I am pulling funny faces at a little blond boy on the tube. We are on the Victoria Line, northbound. He must be 2, and he’s blowing bubbles. The world must be very wide from behind those circular blue eyes. 

Is being nobody a somebody to someone?

The 11.02:

He blew her a kiss at High Wycombe station. She had ginger hair – smiled – did a hand-flap wave. He walked through the barriers, not removing his sunglasses. Too cool for that; not too cool for love. 

I do not want to leave London. The feeling is unfamiliar for me. Usually I cannot wait for Marylebone, commuters, the train home (tickets valid via High Wycombe only). I am counting the small gains: the fact that I have spent 2 nights in the Big City and not bought a single overpriced coffee in a non biodegradable plastic mug (I used my sister’s instant granules instead). I am eating carrot cake at 11am and watching scudding clouds and passing stations, seating on a seat which faces forwards towards the future as though that will make me any more ready to face it. I am not. But the cake is sweet and yummy, and I have a puppy waiting for me at home. I am happy, if a little sticky from the cream cheese frosting.  I did London well this time.