The Metropolis

City Skills: The best places in London to pretend you're in a film

Mike Pollitt | Thursday 18 October, 2012 12:13

Sometimes you might find yourself wandering alone through this city, with only your imagination between you and the abyss. At such a time, pretending that you are in a film is a fine way of preventing your brain from tormenting you with recollections of your many personal failures, character flaws, and abandoned loves. Done subtly, no one need even know about the fantastic scenarios secretly playing out behind your miserable facial exterior. It’s an urban survival mechanism, and a useful skill to learn.

Here are some likely places to indulge in such fancies:

Place: Your local market
Film Genre: Romcom
Plot, thus: You’re alone and single, single and alone, on a sunny Sunday morning. With no lover to share the delights of the day, you head to the nearest food market to ease your despair. A lingering squeeze on an aubergine is the closest you’‘ll be getting to physical intimacy today. As your hand dallies on the luscious purple skin, the texture suddenly changes. You’re stroking the hand of a handsome stranger. They too like to come and absent-mindedly stroke the aubergine; it helps them get over a messy break up. You must be made for one another. But is that aubergine big enough for the both of you?

Humorous vegetable-based misunderstandings ensue.

Place: A windy tube escalator
Film Genre: Spy thriller
Plot, thus: The next train leaves in two minutes time. Miss it, and the whole town is gonna blow. You have the code in your pocket and some heavies on your tale. The wind whips your hair into a frenzy as manic as your heart. The clock ticks down. But just when you think you’ve made it, you see a gormless tourist standing before you on the escalator ON THE LEFT HAND SIDE…

Can you save the city before it’s too late?

Place: The British Library, British Museum, Tate, etc.
Film Genre: An elegaic arthouse short
Plot, thus: There’s a painting/historical object which no one truly understands but you. You like to visit the museum/gallery and sit in front of it for hours, contemplating its mystic power. One day, a handsome stranger sits next to you, and wordlessly contemplates the same piece. Nothing is said. The object’s power holds you both. The next day you return, as does the stranger. And the next day, and the next. Neither of you speaks, but through the object you connect. This is a love too pure for words. One day the stranger does not appear. They are gone for ever.

Only the object remains as a witness to your departed silent love. FIN.

Place: An independent bookshop
Film Genre: A winsome indie love story
Plot, thus: You go in looking for Ibsen. A handsome stranger is after some Proust. Your shared commitment to paying over-the-odds for books you could get cheaper on Amazon is rewarded with longing glances through the shelving and an immeasurable feeling of joint superiority. An irksomely protracted courtship unfolds in the bookshop’s basement room, in which smug literary references are mistaken for jokes. One day, just as you’re really falling for each other, the bookshop goes out of business. You only bought one book there between you, so it’s partly your fault.

So do you really love each other? Or was it just about the bookshop all along?

Place: You’re friend’s flat/house
Film Genre: Gross out comedy/Bromance/etc
Plot, thus: You and your mates sit around on the sofa all night watching TV, drinking beer/wine, making 90s references and moaning about the opposite sex. Everybody thinks it’s hilarious, so you don’t really need a plot at all. At the end of the night you are violently sick into a humorous household receptacle.

When are you going to do something constructive with your life you worthless slacker?

Previous City Skills:
The best public places in London to have a sleep
The best places in London to drink alone
The best places in London to break up with someone

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