Blue Dress Hot Mess

Notes App Contemplations in London in July

11/07/25:

London pops. We are like kernels of corn in the microwave. We burst and make noise and gain flavour in this oven and its infernal heat: it is lunchtime in Victoria. 

On Oxford Street all I see are Prada sunglasses and a homeless man so thin it looks as though he has abs. The rest is all feet. I walk with my head down.

We stop at Kings Cross St Pancras and all I want to do is get off and go to France. To Paris. I want to go home. 

The tube has miraculously emptied. It is 32 degrees. No one else is going to Seven Sisters on a Friday afternoon in the heat of early July. We are in a sweltering, hurtling missile beneath London’s guts. I am uncertain as to when it may explode. I must remember to get off.

A thin man with tattoos and gold heavy chains around both wrists – handcuffs – vapes inside the belly of the tube. I wriggle uncomfortably. That makes me feel sick. 

There had a stench of weed and a general sense of this being a Dead End. The corner shop sells plantains and rainbows. Three for £1. The rainbows come free. 

I tell a girl doing bead embroidery on the table next to me in the Wine Bar in which I have met a friend that she is very talented. She is sewing a crab, bead by bead, orange by red, shell by crooked shell. We talk about how easy it is to create something beautiful, and I leave smiling and feeling as though I have done a Good Deed; my compliment had “made her day”. I walk down the street with half a glass bottle of Mate Green sparkling tea and feel conspicuous. My dress is yellow with black spots; my hair band is blue with gold thread, made by a charity which raises money for Ukraine. Bad, bad things are happening in the world. I want never to forget that. But always to acknowledge my own joy. It is a juxtaposition in which I pirouette without ceasing. Get me on Grade 6 ballet. 

My skirt is so short that the bristles of the seats on the tube rub disconcertingly against my thighs. It think briefly of the grime – the arses – then I block the thought in one strong, conscious move (mental strong-arm emoji. Or maybe the Ninja).

A father and his daughter are licking sticks of ice cream. I watch them, a little fascinated. I do not think the tube is a very nice place to eat an ice cream. It feels contaminated in the warmth of its un-circulating air. But the ice cream looks good. Lick-lips tempting. White-chocolate-Magnum-vanilla. It is so hot, I would eat it too, even despite the white chocolate. Ideally, I think, the ice cream would be fruity; or dark; or pistachio or mint. How posh am I? I like dark chocolate, please. It shows up better when I inevitably drop it down my dress. 

I brought socks with me in my bag in case I got blisters from my semi-new shoes. I am part mother, part student. I have a foot in a night club and a foot in a Pilates class. I am mentally pirouetting again; perhaps I’ll get a Distinction.

I pull on the new Missoni jumpsuit and hook the same earrings into my ears as I wore to her 21st. Now she is shagging my ex-boyfriend. I feel sick. It is 1:28 a.m when I take them off again. 

I am walking down Berkeley Street pretending I know where I’m going. There are boys with pints outside a pub; they are practicing golf swings. They talk about Tony Blair. Could it be more boring?

I am there when Big Ben chimes midnight and a half. I am cat-called by a man in an Uber. Hi. How are you, hun? I’m well, thanks, mate. You? A drunk man belches and tells me to Get Home Safe Luv. I can only hope that I do. 

12/07/25:

I get up at around 3 o’clock. I open all the doors and windows. I move methodically around each room of the flat in order to find some semblance of a breeze. Dawn is a dove-grey husk on the horizon, puffed with lavender clouds. I feel sick and my head pounds. I am running off three hours’ sleep and paracetamol.

I see a single black and white magpie flying left-to-right across the apartment blocks opposite and think I can’t be dealing with bad luck today. I ring my mother and she tells me it might be easier just to get new friends. I’m inclined to agree, except I kind of liked the old ones. Had thought they kind of liked me. But maybe actions speak louder than words. In a city where I had thought my entire friendship group had congregated, I have never felt more alone. I am isolated from them, sitting on a tiny island high in the rooftops of central London, dipping my toe into the water and withdrawing too-quickly with the cold.

I move to the other side of the island, and dip again. This time it is new friends; someone else’s birthday dinner. New connections. His curly brown hair in the streetlights of Mayfair, cut almost too like a mullet to belong to a grown-up. His cocky sideways glance and his lingering hug goodbye outside a club I refuse to pay to get into. He asks for my number, and says humbly that it is very forward of him. I laugh and hardly believe what I am hearing. (Why would I? Men leave me and apparently a year and a half later it is perfectly acceptable for best friends to desert me for those self-same men. I have reason to feel betrayed by humanity and trustful only of animals). He is the first person ever to ask for my number with the explicit reasoning of taking me on a date. I tell him so (I shouldn’t have done — I was drunk). In hindsight, someone did ask me on a date before. He was blond, and told me I looked like a Bond Girl (enough to let anyone into your knickers; honestly, men, watch and learn). It was 10 days post-heartbreak. I bailed on the blond boy three hours before.

I think dating has codes which begin from the very first hello and never leave until there’s a ring on your finger. Code 1: asking a girl ‘for a drink’.

I walk all the way home at one thirty in the morning, swinging my handbag as I cross Trafalgar Square and smiling manically to myself in the hot July night. I am wearing only a blue-shimmer jumpsuit. I feel silver-kissed. Perhaps I look like a wood louse. It is Missoni – one of the few perks of working at a designer outlet and my sole purchase from a staff-only sample sale. I feel like liquid gold. I have champagne on my breath which now — as I write this, the next morning — tastes foul and stale and oddly like salty fish. I am glad he made no move to kiss me. I wouldn’t have known what to do. Salty fish leaves a lingering impression at least.

I scrape my tongue and sing Olivia Rodrigo in the shower. I wipe off last night’s lip gloss which has stuck in gum-like clumps to my raw lips. Saturday morning – 10:07. I feel ok. Hangovers pass. Friends can too. Polka dots and butterfly wings. 

The bus smells like baby sick. That doesn’t help.