The flight over had been exactly what a cheap red eye promises and nothing more: no meal, no real service, just a dark cabin and the Atlantic going by underneath. I landed groggy and cleared immigration faster than I expected, which felt like the first thing that had gone right all day.
Gatwick's ticket hall gave me the first real decision of the day. I knew about the Gatwick Express because everyone knows about the Gatwick Express. What I half remembered, standing there with a suitcase and no plan, was that Southern also ran into Victoria, cheaper, and about to leave in three minutes. I pulled out my phone, opened Trainline, and bought the ticket standing up, thumbs moving faster than my brain was awake enough to follow.
Somewhere on that train into London a second decision started forming, one nobody had warned me about. Months ago, from a desk in New York, I had booked a photoshoot through Airbnb near Downing Street for this exact morning, and nowhere in that plan had I decided what happens to two bags during a photoshoot. I read through every luggage option my phone could find. Drop them at some shop I had never heard of, or somewhere technically open but forty minutes from where I needed to be. None of it felt right until I found London Left Luggage: a locker room, five pounds for the day, close enough to Downing Street to matter.
Handing my bag across a counter to a stranger, in a city I had been in for less than an hour, felt like its own kind of faith.
First time on the Underground, on a very hot day, in a carriage with no air conditioning and a whole car of Londoners pretending not to notice. I got off, dropped the bags, changed in a bathroom that was not built for changing in, and ran the rest of the way to Horse Guards Road.
My photographer was already waiting by the K2 telephone box at 1 Horse Guards Road. We started there, then Big Ben, the London Eye across the water, Westminster Bridge, my photographer telling me where to look while I tried to look like a man who had slept the night before. By ten it was over.
I have been on a fitness kick, which mostly means resisting things that smell good, but by then I was starving enough to stop resisting. Joe and the Juice got my money, mostly for the food and a little for the outlet next to my seat, where my phone finally charged past ten percent.
The rest of the day had no plan and I liked it that way. I walked the Thames from Big Ben down to London Bridge, took the tube to Tottenham Court Road, and let Oxford Street happen to me. I found a shop called The Spaces In-Between that I had never heard of and could not tell you what it sold, only that I went in. Covent Garden got the last of my attention before my legs asked for a break I did not have time to give them.
Five o'clock arrived without warning. I still had to collect the bags, cross the city, and reach Tottenham Hale for the Stansted train. The ride out felt like it lasted longer than the day already had, which is saying something, given the night still ahead of me.
