We had not even sat down and I was already doing sums in my head
That is the romance of London. You get your coat off, you look at the menu, and your brain is still in the car park with the little spinning circle on RingGo.
He had driven. I had said fine, because my feet were already done in from the warehouse and I liked the idea of not being on the tube with a full face. Cute. Then we spent ten minutes circling like a pair of idiots, found a bay that looked legal, and the machine wanted more for two hours than I was planning to spend on a first round.
I laughed. He did that tight smile men do when they have been caught being generous and immediately regret it. I clocked the number anyway. I always clock the number. Maths degree, warehouse rotas, a brain that will not switch off. Very sexy, I know.
We sat down already behind
Date night maths in this city is unhinged. You think you are going for drinks. You are not. You are paying a cover charge for existing in Zone 1 with a vehicle attached.
Parking first. Then if you have been thick enough to come in at the wrong time, congestion. Then ULEZ if the car is the wrong kind of old. Then the pint. Then the second pint because you cannot sit there with an empty glass like you are timing him. Then you look at the card machine and pretend you have not just funded a small infrastructure project for the privilege of asking someone how their week was.
People online love a receipt dump. Uber this, cocktails that, parking sixty quid before you have even got in. I used to think they were being dramatic. Then I watched a man tap his phone four times in a car park and go quiet. That quiet is never about the app. It is about the night starting on the back foot.
We sat down already behind. That is the line I keep coming back to. The drinks had not arrived. The chat was fine. My lipstick was doing what it was supposed to do. And the date was already slightly in debt.
The machine does not care that it is a date
London parking is not one price. That is the first lie. Central car parks will have you if you just turn up. Pre-book and you might get away with something almost reasonable. Turn up on a Friday and you are paying tourist rates with worse lighting.
On-street can look cheaper until you realise you are on a clock. Two hours. Four if you are lucky. City bays that want the best part of a tenner an hour depending on what you drive. I am not a policy girl. I am a woman standing in a side street in smart-casual, holding her bag shut because the wind is rude, watching a grown man swear at a screen.
Sunday is free in a lot of places. Nobody tells you that when you are trying to be spontaneous on a Thursday. Spontaneous in London is just unplanned spending. There is a difference.
I have seen people treat the parking app like it is flirting. Oh I will just extend it. Oh another thirty minutes. Oh we are having a nice time. Meanwhile the bay is eating the evening in little bites. That is not chemistry. That is a standing order with a time limit.
The pints never stood a chance
Average pint in London is sitting around six fifty now. Some bars have gone full Mayfair and decided ten quid is a personality. I am not drinking in Mayfair on a warehouse wage. I am also not pretending a six quid lager is a treat when I have already paid to store a car like it is a coat.
Two rounds. Not even messy. Just enough to take the edge off the week. If you are both drinking, you are looking at twenty-five, thirty, easy, before anyone has said anything interesting. Add a bowl of chips because you skipped dinner like children. Add service because the machine asks and you are not going to be that person on a first drink.
Then you remember the parking.
That is when it gets funny in a way that is not actually funny. The drinks were the point. The drinks were the cheap bit. The car made the cheap bit look like a rounding error. I told him the parking cost more than our pints and he tried to laugh it off. I did laugh. Then I did the sum again on the toilet like a woman who cannot leave a number alone.
I was right. Obviously I was right.
Arriving is a fee. Leaving is another one.
London charges you for turning up. Then it charges you for going home. That is the whole personality of this place.
If you drive, it is the bay, the zone, the chance of a PCN because you misread a sign that was designed by someone who hates joy. If you do not drive, it is the tube until it stops being useful, then an Uber that has decided 11pm is surge o’clock. I have paid more to cross the same three miles at night than I have spent on the actual date. That one lives in my banking app like a petty little ghost.
People will tell you to just get the train. I do. Most weeks I do. I like the overground. I can do my face in the window like a menace. But the second you let a car into the plan, the night stops being two people and starts being logistics. Logistics is the death of flirting. You cannot be filthy and funny when one of you is thinking about a yellow line.
I still get why people drive. Rain. Heels. A dress you do not want on a stranger’s backpack. Meeting someone who lives in that awkward bit of the map where two buses feel like a character test. I am not above it. I am just not going to romanticise it. A car on a date in this city is rarely freedom. It is a bill with seats.
The bit nobody puts on the grid
What you post is the drinks. Warm light. His jumper. My lip. What you do not post is the row about whether the bay was actually resident only. You do not post the moment he went in his pocket and I went in mine and we both did that polite no-you dance that is really about who is more embarrassed.
I can split. I prefer splitting when the night is already lopsided. I do not need a man to fund my life. I also do not need to pretend I did not notice he spent more getting us there than he spent being there. That imbalance sits on the table next to the glasses. You can ignore it. You can make a joke. It is still sitting there.
My flatmates got the voice note on the way home. Of course they did. That is the real date now. The recap. I said the parking cost more than the pints and one of them sent the bone emoji. Very supportive. Very useless. I still wanted to tell someone, because if you keep that sum in your head it turns into a mood.
So what do you do, then
You meet near a station. You pick a pub that has not decided it is a rooftop. You drink where the pint is still a pint and not a concept. You walk if you can. You pre-book the car park if you absolutely cannot. You do not circle. Circling is how London wins.
You can also just say no to the car. I know that sounds obvious. It is amazing how many nights start with shall I drive like it is a favour, when it is actually a trap with heated seats. I have started saying tube is easier. It is. It also means I arrive as myself, not as a passenger in someone else’s stress.
If he insists on driving, I want the plan. Where we are leaving it. How long. Who is paying the app. I used to think that was unsexy. It is not. What is unsexy is standing in the rain while a machine rejects a card and the reservation is in fifteen minutes. Specific is not difficult. Specific is how you still have a good time.
And if the night is good, it is good in spite of the city, not because of it. I can fancy someone in a booth with sticky floors. I cannot fancy the version of the night where we spend the first twenty minutes negotiating with infrastructure. I have a high drive. I do not have the patience for a RingGo interlude. There is a difference.
I still went. That is the joke.
I will moan about this city and then I will put mascara on and go out in it. That is the arrangement. London is brilliant and exhausting and it will empty your account for a bay you only needed because you wanted to look like you had your life together.
The date was fine, by the way. Not fireworks. Not a disaster. He was decent. The pints were fine. The parking was the main character, which is the most London sentence I have written all year.
I got home, kicked my shoes off in the hall, and opened the banking app like a ritual. There it was. The bay. Sitting there bigger than the drinks. I screenshotted it for no one. Then I put my face cream on and thought, next time we walk.
We probably will not. Someone will say I can drive, it is easier. I will say alright. And I will do the sum again before we have even ordered, because this city charges you for arriving, then it charges you for leaving, and the pints never get a fair fight.
