An afternoon in Primrose Hill

Inner-city paradise populated by the worst people on earth

Hello! Summer is here and I hope you’re happy (not sarcastic). The camera on my 700 year old macbook has broken, meaning I cannot do zoom meetings, proving once and for all that I am one of God’s favourites. I hope your July/August is feeling similarly blessed.

I’m going to keep it simple: now it’s hot, everybody goes outside. But the question for city-dwellers, with our limited access to nature, is of course… Where to go? I have many opinions about London parks, many of which obviously don’t deserve the title of park, some of which have the atmosphere of a glorified car park (Hyde Park), some are tube stations (Green Park) and others only exist in the minds of Americans (Holland Park). Beyond that, while there are many parks (pejorative) there is only one Hampstead Heath, which is different, better, wilder and charged with a kind of chakra-healing energy that may in fact re-activate you after your meridians become blocked (long story relating to a experience I once had with a reiki practitioner).

But Hampstead is already so folded into my personal brand that it actually becomes boring to talk about and probably even quite annoying. So, safe in the knowledge that I have established its superiority over London’s green spaces, I ventured a bit further into town towards Chalk Farm, over the railway bridge, and into Primrose Hill.

Primrose Hill exists in a reality of its own making. Bordered by the patchouli lollipop chaos of Camden Town on one side and gleaming white parades of embassies on the other, it sits a completely self-governed eco-system within which the standard rules of culture do not apply. It is a place that people wear Bape and sometimes look very good in it. A place that never relinquished its grip on the high-top designer trainer. Women wear boxers, baseball jackets and Cartier. Men either have fast cars and low body mass, or cycle around dressed like Hugh Grant, if Hugh Grant had a tooth gem and said the word “calm”. It is the most West London of the North West London postcodes, but can’t be categorised as such because of the number of teenage girls wearing Supreme. I obviously love it. I love it so much, even though it is populated by people who went to, and enjoyed, “international school”. Anyway I got the tube over there on the weekend to fall in love with it again, and did. Here are some ways to enjoy it, if you’re inspired to take a trip.

1. Get Bagel

‘Get Bagel’ doesn’t need a huge amount of explanation but I will elaborate a bit. The cobbling together of underwhelming snacks from the quite posh newsagents on the high street is always the low point of a day on Primrose Hill. In my correct opinion, “crisps and hummus” is an aberration and considering it lunch is just sad (big bitter olives make it even worse). Either you have to absent-mindedly pick at this nonsense until you felt sick and grumpy, or you delay eating entirely until suddenly coming to, dazed and stumbling down Parkway, paralysed by a mirage of choices, none of which are dignified. When there was a Lisboa in Camden this problem was much easier to solve, but that is gone, which remains a tragedy. “Get Bagel” is the solution, which you can enact at the completely stupid and over-priced new bagel place called It’s Bagels, which does, you have simply guessed it, bagels. I’m not going to tell you how much my pumpernickel salmon and cream cheese bagel cost because it would genuinely pain me more than when I revealed my true age in an earlier Substack post. But this bagel was, annoyingly, perfect, especially when accompanied by an iced Ozone americano with a splash of almond milk from Arvo next door. Arvo is an awful name, and everyone you interact with will BE AWFUL and have the fake cockney Primrose Hill voice and may be wearing a big scrunchie. You’re getting it takeaway, it’s fine.

2. Sit Park

Now you have fulfilled the base level of your triangle of basic needs, you can move up to the second level, which is squealing like a pig on a big soft blanket in the sun on the hill. I don’t know why I forget, for years at a time, about the view from Primrose Hill. The way it reveals itself to you as you get settled on the grassy slope, feels almost like being in a planetarium. Hampstead Heath’s equivalent Parliament Hill is majestic but it makes you work for it, and no matter how many benches they stick up there it will always feel like a breathless, momentary viewpoint to be awed at, and not a real resting place. The view from Primrose Hill on the other hand, refined and picture-perfect as a film set, is more than happy to be a diorama. It’s manicured, generous and still. Not a view of London to critique or write poetry about, but a London skyline to enjoy lazily and passively, as a backdrop to your own life. Everybody sitting in Primrose Hill is gossiping or reading a book or on their phone. The view is just there to remind you, if at any moment you need or want to be reminded, that yes, you are in fact sat at the centre of the universe.

3. Read Book

It’s good to carry something by Sylvia Plath when you go to Primrose Hill, more out of respect than anything else, and you don’t have to open it. Beyond that, I am currently reading Fail Worse by William Kherbeck and am in love with it. Another good book I read recently is Banal Nightmare by Halle Butler. But if I wasn’t reading a good book I’d probably just go on my phone and not feel remotely bad about it. Being outside doesn’t need to be a meditative, cerebral, nourishing experience. It can also be like being in bed, but in the daytime and not in your house.

4. Eat Limonia

If like me you have no holidays booked because: cost of living crisis, fear of flying, lack of proper organisation skills, allergies to most bed linen detergents – console yourself with a meal at Limonia. It is magical, and most magical in the summer when you can sit on the tables outside and eat charred fish and roast potatoes surrounded by complete cunts, just like real holiday. The waiters are wonderful, the lamb baked in lemon, grilled prawns and tunafish salad are oily and salty and fresh. Everything just tastes like what it is, the light is beautiful and as the tables are taken up, the air fills with a kind of tinkling murmur that sounds a bit like being in heaven. Also you will see a famous person. Mary Queen of Shops, for example.

5. Do Not Eavesdrop or Talk To Anybody

This I cannot stress enough. As I sat on Primrose Hill having the best afternoon of my life, three men in head-to-toe Trapstar with four enormous beautiful parrots on their shoulders came into the park and began to fly them. This was a sort of out of body experience for me, despite the fact they are actually there quite regularly. It is still shocking to see something so bright and beautiful and alive crying out and swooping in huge circles over the bird nets of London Zoo which cling cobwebby to the treetops below. These men first of all looked great, and second of all were friendly and funny and in a ‘men who fly parrots in the park wearing full Trapstar’ kind of a way, extremely normal. But their parrot flying unfortunately attracted an American woman and her teenage daughter, who came and sat down two feet from me, on the otherwise sparsely-populated hill. This woman was the most annoying person I have ever encountered. Rich people with Bimba Y Lola bags, Keratin blow-outs and undiagnosed personality disorders spawn in Primrose Hill. She made a phone call on loudspeaker and then loudly referred to the person she was calling (a young woman struggling with a small baby, which I shouldn’t know but again, loudspeaker) “dumb” and “a loser”. She performatively suggested to her daughter that they go to the “pub” for a “pint of beer”, words that emerged so awkwardly from her mouth the whole thing sounded sarcastic. Then she sat unbudging, laughing like someone with a degenerative mental illness, as her dog attempted repeatedly to catch the parrots. I considered the social ramifications of telling these people, one of whom I guess was a minor, to fuck off, and ultimately I chose not to. They did thankfully eventually fuck off, though I dread to think where they are now. In some Maida Vale garden eating shellac off their fingernails I imagine. Can you see why it’s so important to avoid contact with absolutely everybody in Primrose Hill. Because I’ve just written that. On my Substack.

Ultimately I do think last Friday was one of my best afternoons in living memory, lying on a wool blanket on the hill, glancing occasionally at the entirety of London, reading, posting on instagram and listening to women with Aperol spritz to-go cups bitching about their friends. But I paid a hefty price which you will too, and that is having to tolerate Satan in a Sandro top. Good luck, I hope this as been useful or at least entertaining. Let me know if you go, or you can just invite me as I do actually know you all personally Nothing else is really new with me, that I can think of right now. Ok bye xxxx