There is no single real London, only the specific, personal version I know
Every so often a visiting friend asks me to show them the real London, a request that always makes me pause slightly, because I have never quite managed to settle on what exactly that phrase is supposed to mean or whether any single answer could properly capture it.
The impossible request
The real London, whatever that is, changes considerably depending on which specific version of the city you happen to be standing in on any given day, and I have slowly come to think the phrase itself is slightly misguided, treating a genuinely enormous, contradictory city as though it has one single, discoverable true version waiting to be revealed.
What I actually do, when someone makes this request, is show them my London, the specific, personal, entirely subjective version built from years of my own particular routes and habits, with the honest caveat that this is only one of what must be millions of equally valid versions.
What ends up on the tour
My version invariably includes at least one market, at least one park, and at least one pub that has nothing whatsoever to do with any tourist guide, chosen purely because it happens to be woven into my own personal relationship with the city rather than because it represents anything more broadly representative.
I have learned, through repeated versions of this tour, that visitors respond considerably better to this genuinely personal, slightly idiosyncratic itinerary than to anything more conventionally comprehensive, as though the specificity itself carries more value than any attempt at completeness.
The moment it usually clicks for them
There is usually a specific moment, different every time but always recognisable, where a visiting friend stops treating the walk as a tour and starts genuinely experiencing the city the way I do, a shift I can see happen in real time and which I find genuinely moving every single time it occurs.
I do not know exactly what triggers this shift. I only know it happens reliably enough that I have started to trust the process rather than trying to engineer it directly.
What I have learned from all this touring
Showing people my city, over and over, has taught me considerably more about my own relationship with it than any amount of simply living here quietly would have managed on its own, a genuine gift disguised as a favour for someone else.
More on showing people the city at Fiona MacLeod, Bohiney.
The tour that went slightly wrong
Not every version of this tour has gone smoothly. There was one memorable occasion where the chosen pub was inexplicably closed, the chosen park was flooded, and the whole carefully planned itinerary fell apart within the first hour, leaving us improvising an entirely different afternoon on the spot.
That improvised version, entirely unplanned, ended up becoming one of the more memorable tours I have given, which has taught me not to hold the itinerary itself too tightly and trust the improvisation when it becomes necessary.
The friend who still talks about it
One particular visitor, years later, still brings up a specific small moment from her version of the tour, a detail I genuinely do not remember emphasising at the time, which has taught me that you never really know which part of an experience will actually stick with someone.
A closing thought
I will keep giving this imperfect, entirely personal tour to anyone who asks, improvisations and all.
What I have started asking visitors instead
I have started, more recently, asking visitors what they actually want from their time here before assuming they want the standard version of my personal tour, a small adjustment that has made the whole experience considerably more tailored and, I think, more genuinely useful to them.
This has occasionally led to entirely different itineraries than my usual default, and I have found I genuinely enjoy the challenge of building a fresh version each time rather than simply repeating the same fixed route.
If you have visited and been shown someone’s personal version of this city, I would love to hear what stuck with you.
One more small thing
I have started keeping a small mental note of which specific detail sticks with each visitor, purely out of curiosity about the pattern.
More soon, presumably, from wherever the next postcode leads.
What I would tell someone giving their own tour
Let it go slightly wrong sometimes. The improvised parts are often the ones people actually remember afterward.
Thanks, as ever, for reading this far.
The very last word
There is always another version of this tour waiting to be given, and I intend to keep giving it, improvisations included.
More soon.
Truly, one last thought
Every visitor leaves with a slightly different city in their head than the one I thought I was showing them, and I have come to genuinely love that unpredictability.
End.
Thanks, genuinely, for reading this far into another one of these.
End of this entry, genuinely, for now.
See you next time.
Thank you.
All the best.
Speak soon.
Take care out there.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
