Dean Street, the back of six pm

It's a beautiful world when we dance in the light

The Christmas lights are up again. No flying angels for Soho, instead gingerbread men and mushrooms and candy canes and low key all the way here. Not in a festive mood, not yet, so late in the year and it’s not arrived yet; maybe a knowing that two weeks into the new year and the book will be out and it’ll be hit the ground running and so much to do before that but still these lights recall other Christmases, a particularly long and messy night last year, cut with joy and other things; a pub with lights off, candles on, no heating, austerity biting, and an Uber home that morning as the snow fell and fell and rare in the city for it to lie. For a few frosted hours it stayed, and stayed the following week too, walking home after a long day of filming, walking home up the hill I lived on then, sliding this way, that, my platform boots giving little traction; wearing the same boots tonight, I have not polished them since I bought them last year. Probably should. A stranger in The Tate two weeks ago said he liked my boots. Asked about polishing them. A bad parody of a Bright Eyes line. Everywhere is beautiful from outside tonight, sash and case windows steamed up, low lighting on. The pavement, busy. People going from work to drinks to dinner or some, simply home, hurrying to the nearest tube. Leave a city and you’ll fall smack hard in love with it and even the Christmas windows, the lights, the people not two weeks ago you cursed for clogging the pavement, they’ll all assume a new texture, taking on the elements of story and you will be enchanted by it in ways not possible when it’s up and in your face every single day. Nostalgia will at least stop short of the night bus, think of Francesca Ramsey’s Pinch Me, when she talks about going home on the night bus, 80% heartbroken, 20% iconic. Story of the last year that one. Sliding ratios too. Less iconic when the reality hits that you’re going home as these other good people are going to work and please please please don’t notice I am not wearing work clothes and my eye make up is smudged and some nights last year, the Christmas lights were brighter than should’ve been possible; leering through the condensation of the bus window, the moon too sometimes. Think of Plath, only she knew the true nature of the moon. Light borrower. Stop at the other side of the street to the restaurant I’m going to. I’m late, having stayed too long with a friend, hug them goodbye. Talk more. Another hug. Then run across the street, push open the door, the bar, glowing polished hardware, mirrors behind, high stools, men in waistcoats, and the rising hum of an early evening, quiet now, but by the time we leave, the choreography of an evening’s service will be in full flight. I will remind myself to hurry past Tottenham Court Road station, no more heartbreak on the night bus or the tube, 80% or otherwise, this time, turn left onto Oxford Street, where the Christmas lights will repeat and stretch all the way down the street, different ones this year, worse than last, they will drip and hang blue and white and it’s all absurd really; last one out, switch off the lights. I will notice across the road, a giant billboard for IKEA, something big is coming, and I will laugh, because I am a child, stop to take a photograph before Victoria Line, south.