I personally am not at a stage in my life where I feel even remotely motivated to share the things I know (I'm 22, I know nothing), but I am aware that there are [edge] cases where people may benefit from some disclosure of the things I’ve learned.
I've been totally floored by a few Londonian idiosyncrasies. Here are some things that have struck me.
Hot sauce
Story one: As we youth often do, I was at a McDonald’s quite late the other day. I ordered chicken nuggets with *sour cream and chive dip* because everything else was far out of my taste buds’ range (this should say something), and, matching intuition, I was wildly dissatisfied. But hot sauce is always a fair bet––if it tastes bad, just drench it in some spice, ya? Well I went to the counter and asked for some. “This is a McDonald’s” the cashier said. “Why the f**k would we have hot sauce?”
Story two: Stef and I went to The Yurt so that I could try the English-famous “bubble and squeak,” an absurd mix of leftovers. They were out of whatever goes in bubble and squeak, so I got a kidney bean and lentil soup instead. Of course, I wanted hot sauce, so I went to the cashier and asked for some. “There’s mustard to your left,” he said.
Guns exist
My head was down on a long walk home, during which I mindlessly scrolled away and rinsed Lorde’s “Stoned at the Nail Salon.” All of a sudden my vision was interrupted by an orange dot at the center of my jacket. I looked up to see a ski-masked person holding *something that looked like a gun* with both hands, something like six or so feet away.
I immediately booked it in the other direction, running faster than I thought was possible through all kinds of alleyways. (This was probably a bad idea.) To the lectures of literally everybody I’ve told about this, walking home that late won’t happen again.
I thought it was impossible––aren’t guns banned here?––but there have been more than 20,000 incidents of gun violence over the last decade in London.
Peng and peak!
Peng is sexy, peak is not.