Ben Machell on London's eternal youth

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Ben Machell3 March 2016

For the past dozen years or so, every time my dad has come down from Leeds to stay with me in Hackney, he has consistently made the same joke. We’ll be out for a drink and he’ll pause, look around and say, ‘Bloody hell, this is like being in Logan’s Run!’

If you’re not massive on mid-1970s sci-fi movies, then you may be interested to learn that Logan’s Run revolves around a futuristic vision of society in which everyone is young and hedonistic, because, in order to prevent overpopulation, you are killed upon reaching the age of 30. That’s my dad’s London joke. Every single time.

I used to roll my eyes. But then I hit 30 and, rather than being promptly terminated, I simply kept getting older. And now, on the verge of 34, as I walk around the same places I’ve always walked around, I’ve begun to see what my dad had been seeing for all those years. Young people. I’d never really noticed them before but there they were, stressing me out by riding bikes without lights on and putting their empty Kopparberg bottles in the general waste rather than the mixed recycling section of public bins. But I can’t begrudge them. London is — or at least should be — a young city, which means the clock is ticking for me. Only last week I was queuing for the Overground and all the people around me had their headphones on and were nodding along to their music. I, on the other hand, was listening to the Ancient Warfare magazine podcast, which is about as cool as it sounds. Still, just to be on the safe side, I thought I’d better start nodding along, too. I didn’t want to freak anybody out.

Coincidentally, I was just reading Claire Tomalin’s brilliant biography of Samuel Pepys and her description of the busy, boozy social life of junior office clerks in 1650s Whitehall was strikingly prescient. ‘They tried out new drinking places and borrowed and lent small sums of money to one another,’ she writes. ‘They gossiped about the great and made knowing jokes. Some lived with parents, some with friends or in lodgings… Some had rich uncles in the background and most had a keen eye for promotion possibilities.’

I mean, how familiar does that sound? Chuck in Tinder, Chicken Cottage and night buses, and you’re pretty much reading about every young Londoner today. I can’t help but find that magical.

Follow Ben on Twitter @ben_machell

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