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“Who here is a police officer Lydia? You always have a good story…”
I smile nervously, covering my face. It’s after hours in Soho, the time of day when the outside feels alive. Attention in any form feels inherently incongruous.
Tiny buildings mean the usual suspects drink outside - an overspill often marked off by a cordon. A story is swapped here, contacts exchanged there, a joke woven between the two. It’s May 2022, a time when shadows dance and music plays into the early hours - “CHAMPAGNE!” cries a male voice at every given hour. People watching is almost addictive in this time frame - the gossip that spills into the open like fine wine, the unexpected stories collected in an arts space. It’s where TV began, an escapee from the train to Auschwitz plays live music weekly, the artist’s plot their art. You start to wish for more blue nights like this, moments in time suspended and captured while a world outside continues to turn. It’s a grubby glamour of sorts, a night like this.
The further the outskirts, the pithier the caption of the chalkboards, the more hipster an establishment:
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