Let Go and Love London

I don't know if you know this about me, but I can sometimes be a little bit "moody" or whatever.

I know it's difficult to believe, but even though I might seem really stable and level on the outside, I can sometimes be a little bit emotional!

I was a mess when I arrived in London, and I stayed a mess for a couple of days, and then I got tired and turned into more of a mess, and I honestly don't know how anyone has been able to endure me when I've hardly been able to endure myself. But I was pretty sure that through all the messiness, there was no WAY I was going to fall in love with London like my travel-mad parents or Aunties. Surely I would be too involved in my own calamitous state of mind to even notice I was in a cosmopolis.

Well, now that I'm leaving London in the morning, it's pretty clear to me that I adore this place. I adore it. And I especially adore Vauxhall, which feels like home. My whole mental map of London is constructed around Vauxhall, my safe haven of grime and glass and bustle and sirens.

Stu and I were both exhausted when we woke. We briefly toyed with the idea of going back to Emmeline Pankhurst's old house in Russell Square, but we decided instead to go to Hampstead, the highest point in London. We could at least have a coffee there and go home (to Vauxhall) straight away if it was crap.

Hampstead is lasciviously charismatic with its English cottage cutesiness and multi-millionaire gentility. The place is a postcard London has sold to itself: luxury morality and cobblestone exclusivity. My serotonin levels were off the charts just looking at the hanging flower baskets from the wrought iron streetlights. We ate at Heath Street Bakehouse, served by an androgynous barista with a public school accent. The coffee was so good I could have wept. The pain au chocolat was an oral odyssey of flavour and perfect textures, no apron of flakes on my clothing, no smear of filling on my fingers.

Thence to Hampstead Heath, right at the highest point in Hampstead. The place is a notorious beat, which is to say, a place where men seek out public sex with each other. We saw so many dog walkers, I was sure we'd be fine. And apart from that, the place seemed depopulated now that holidays were over and school was back. It was only once we'd gotten into the phone's dead zone that a man started following us. And kept following us. We got scared and turned back. And he kept following us. I was supremely agitated, ready for violence, and I locked eyes with the man and tried to show an expression on my face like murder.

He showed no fear, but only satisfaction as he finally turned away.

It took me many hours to shake off the anger and the hurt. I put some nightmare doodles into my travel art journal.

I look forward to the gay world having it's "Me Too" reckoning. It hasn't happened yet.

Stu was lovely trying to settle me down. We caught the tube to Knightsbridge thinking Harrod's might help me get level again. And the chocolate hall nearly did. But then I ran out of energy again, so we went home for the afternoon.

We tried to go out one more time, to The Rose Pub in Vauxhall, and I was doing well with my lemonade and my view of the Albert Embankment, but no, I conked out again. Home for takeaway Peri Peri Chicken and TV news about Liz Truss becoming the UK's new awful Prime Minister. I don't know if she'll be any more awful or less awful than the previous awful Prime Minister, but good luck to her.

I have organised one last thing for my time in London, because I have a deep love of symmetry: and that is to have a shave at The Hair Lab with Misho Isaev again. It was the first thing I did, and it will be the last thing I do here.Read more