I write these words to you from the jaws of hell. Here in my favourite north London cafe, among the bare lightbulbs and the £3.80 cinnamon buns, I take shelter from the screaming terrors of Sadiq Khan’s no-go hellscape. Toddlers in pushchairs scream for salvation. A Lime bike comes dangerously close to running a red light. Like the Roman, I see the Blackstock Road foaming with much blood, albeit from this distance it may actually be a discarded pastrami sandwich.
“Welcome to London, don’t forget your stab vest,” reads a proposed tube billboard for a brand of vodka being promoted by the comedian Ricky Gervais. Gervais is furious that Transport for London has rejected his advertising slogan, and rightly so, because this is the sort of generational wit that deserves the widest possible audience. It is, of course, the most minor of inconveniences that the design was never actually submitted to TfL and only ever existed for the benefit of social media. Because when it comes to the nation’s metropole, you can say pretty much whatever you want and someone, somewhere will believe it.
