Twelve Hours in London and a Five Pound Decision

Gatwick, early morning, and the first decision of the day was already waiting at the ticket machines: the Gatwick Express, or the Southern train that was cheaper and leaving in five minutes. I took the Southern. The whole day would run like that, decisions made fast, on platforms, with no real idea what I was choosing between.

Thirty-odd minutes into the city, a bigger one. Months ago, from a desk in New York, I had booked a photoshoot through Airbnb near Downing Street for this exact morning. Nowhere in that plan had I decided what happens to my luggage. I could drag everything past Big Ben and try to look relaxed in the photos, or spend time I did not have finding somewhere to leave it. My phone turned up a shop near Trafalgar Square: five pounds, twenty-four hours.

Handing everything I owned across a counter to a stranger felt like a small act of faith.

I changed, squinted at a tube map I did not understand, and ran.

My photographer was already waiting. We walked the river, the Big Ben clock tower over one shoulder, the gates of Downing Street over the other, while he told me where to look and I tried to look like a man who was not sweating through his shirt. Posing does not come naturally to me. Being photographed in front of Big Ben the morning after leaving my desk is its own kind of jet lag.

By ten I was starving and trying to be responsible about it. I have been on a fitness kick, which in a new city mostly means walking past everything that smells good. Joe and the Juice won, partly for the food and mostly for the outlet next to my seat.

It was a hot day, properly hot, and I found out the hard way that some Underground lines have no air conditioning, a fact an entire carriage was enduring together in silence. Covent Garden got some of my money. The Thames got the rest of my afternoon. I found a spot by the river and sat doing nothing at all, and somewhere in that hour by the water the day stopped being a checklist.

In the evening I collected my bags (five pounds well spent), rode out to Stansted for the cheap way to Zurich, and watched my Ryanair flight slide down the departures board, delayed. I bought water and settled in. The night was going to be long.