Friday Night in London

Here it comes again.

The sun sets, leaching what little colour there is in the residual clouds of the Atlantic storms and I am faced with that weekly question - what should I do tonight? Most days of the week this is a moot point as I have become a devout member of the 8-hours-a-night lobby but on weekends something stronger overrides the waves of sleep.

Guilt.

From my window I can see the lights of Canary Wharf glittering in 50 shades of halogen. The Isle of Dogs looks actively electric, like Gotham but on steroids and behind it lies more of the capital by night. The city stretches on for miles, its pubs and clubs and famous landmarks all still overrun by tourists and drunk locals, who stagger between the floodlit monuments. And I spectate from afar knowing that on Friday night I have no excuse not to join in.

As the sky darkens the pressure starts to mount. Look! There it is! So exciting in the distance! Why aren’t you in it? Why aren’t you at one of the million events on in London tonight? The issue with relocating, however, is that is takes time to find one’s feet and one’s friends, which are the base requirements for a successful social life. Of course, I could go out by myself on a Friday night and sometimes I do, but doing that every week would soon become melancholic. This is why when it finally happened, when I finally had a Friday night out, it came six months after moving and felt worthy of blog a deconstruction thereafter.

It started with friends, the base constituents of a social event. After half a year I had spoken to my colleagues enough times to remember most of their faces if not their names. We had just started sticking loosely together at meetings when one brave soul suggested a night out the following weekend. Many of us jumped at the chance to do something in a group, which is a rarity for most of us single-occupancy dwellers.

The question then came as to what we should do? And this is where the sheer size and opportunity of London can lead to a failure to launch. There is almost too much choice, too many possibilities for fun and food. Rather than booking a table at the local Chinese restaurant, as had been the case in previous cities I had worked in, London offered a whole town of Chinese restaurants, none of which were particularly local to any of us, scattered as our home addresses were across the big city. Unending debates about cuisine and location were gladly sacrificed in the interests of not clogging the Whatsapp stream. We would be having Korean somewhere central.

But something threatened the night out. As I plodded back home from work that Friday I could feel inertia setting in. Canary Wharf was just beginning its nighttime display but it seemed far far away and central London was further still. The lure of pyjamas proved almost fatal to my motivation. But somehow I managed to ignore the siren call of soft flannel and left the flat again.

I am not sure whether the others had faced this war of wills too, for most of those who had rsvp-ed, showed up. This disparate group of adults descended the stairs of Kimchee in Holborn and from there the fun began. Relying on trusted methods to diffuse social anxiety, we started with Soju before even ordering food. It worked to such great effect that by the time the bibimbap and bulgogi were brought out tongues had been loosened and conversation had moved onto juicy office gossip.

In a jovial haze we tottered through the streets of London, walking past historic monuments and making silly jokes. It brought to mind similar tipsy walks from University years but how much better it was now with earnt money in the pocket and without the self-consciousness of new adulthood.

Liberated, we took full advantage of what London had to offer. From the restaurant we went to a refined wine bar, only to roll at closing time from there to its polar opposite, a sticky karaoke bar. Packed into a 8 x 8m purple padded cell, we belted out power ballads with our arms slung across each other’s shoulders, newly minted brothers in arms rather than work colleagues.

When we finally emerged after two hours of raw singing London was still awake and open for business. The indefatigable touch-screens at MacDonalds took our orders, only for a zombified worker to hand us our brown bags of burgers and fries. It was a cliched end to the night out but like most cliches, at its heart it was satisfying.

Such night outs cannot be replicated every weekend but having experienced it once, I know there is potential for more. No longer am I filled with anxiety as the sun sets on a Friday night. Instead I walk to my window and look forward to the lights of London turning on.