Sometimes London’s vastness still catches me out. Citymapper says it’ll take 1h20m to get to a friend’s flat? Eh, we were never that close anyway. But the capital’s very size is what makes it a place for everyone.
Perhaps having grown up here, I forget what a magnet the city is for others. People come to London from all over the country – indeed from every corner of the globe – because they sense that in our city they can find their community and be their whole selves.
There is just so much to do. Interested in effluence? Take a tour of Victoria sewage works. Had a stressful day? Go axe-throwing at night. And if you want to celebrate 50 years of Pride in London, I have good news for you on that front too.
More than 1.5 million people are expected to take part in the celebrations, either in the parade or as spectators, half a century since the UK’s first Pride march was held in 1972. With a focus on unity and equality, it will retrace part of the same route marched 50 years ago.
It is absolutely true that Pride is both a party and a protest. There is further to go to reach true equality, and we only have to look around to see that rights formally considered settled law can still be taken away.
Though I have to admit, whenever I hear phrase ‘party and protest’, it makes me think of a 1990s advert for Chicago Town pizza (or was it Goodfellas?), whose tagline from memory was “it’s a pizza and a pie!” I can’t find it on YouTube but I watched enough TV as a child to feel sure it happened.
Check out Jochan Embley’s guide to what’s on this weekend, including a bunch of free stuff, from discos to queer spaces and drag nights.
Elsewhere in the paper, having resigned as government deputy chief whip, the Conservative Party faces growing pressure to remove the whip from Chris Pincher MP, after accusations he groped two men at a private members’ club after admitting he “drank far too much”. (Today I learned Pincher has an actual drinking column.)
In the comment pages, Emily Sheffield says abuse by the powerful like R Kelly and Ghislaine Maxwell happens when others are silent: it can’t go on.
While I write that it is not alarmist to ask whether 2020 was America’s last free and fair presidential election. Nor to start the debate on what the rest of the West does without a democratic superpower by our side. There’s also a little bit at the end about the great Serena Williams, and why going out on top is overrated.
And finally, have we reached peak ‘elevated’ fried chicken? 41 lessons the ES Mag’s Food and Drink Editor, Joanna Taylor, has learned from dining out in London over the last six months.
