Here is a memoir that I thought would be a fun canter through someone’s twenties in London. In fact I found it rather triggering. Will sound dumb, but I guess I had never really thought about what it would be like to come up in this city and not be an immigrant. And let me tell you: it’s very different.
It’s wild to imagine what it would be like to feel free to live in your overdraft. The author was of course not happy about struggling to pay her bills, but she kept doing it, because she enjoyed booze and clothes and cigarettes more. I mean: don’t we all? But I guess if you know full well you have a Plan B, in terms of a family home in Fulham to return to, you have that freedom.
If she is in a flat she doesn’t like, she just leaves. Because she has somewhere to go to. Imagine! One time she gets mugged, and she regards that as a good enough reason to go. And so, wildly, does everyone she knows! I can’t even imagine a London with so much mercy in it.