New York claims to be the world's capital. Londoners know this is rubbish. For one thing, New York isn't even a capital, and for another, let me propose a quick thought experiment.
Suppose you wake up tomorrow and New York has vanished. It's gone. Manhattan is a forest again, and Queens has bears roaming around. Who chooses its replacement? America does, of course. New York is where the mighty American business blob congregates, so the world goes there to trade with the US. Should New York disappear, America will elevate one of its cities to be its new commercial hub.
Now suppose London disappears. Who chooses its replacement? Answer - the world chooses. London isn't important because it's where Britain does business. Frankly, Britain is too small to sustain such a city. Instead, London is where the world goes to trade with itself, and to interact with itself, and to show itself off. Should she vanish, it won’t be Birmingham, Manchester, or Edinburgh that replaces her, but somewhere with more international panache. Paris maybe? Or Berlin, Brussels, Tokyo, Seoul? All excellent options. For now, though, London wins.
And there is something else - professional Americans are descending on London in hordes. They're renting flats, filling theatres, and adding life to the bars. And I like it. I predicted it happening, too. After Trump’s election, I wrote that Britain's productivity woes might be alleviated by an influx of American workers. I thought the new arrivals might jolt us from our languor by outcompeting locals on the career ladder, forcing a bit more fire into our bellies. Alas, I was only half right. Inbound Americans are simply adapting to our way of doing things and becoming versions of us with more "r" sounds, and slightly more confidence. We can't blame them.
London is the truest of melting pots in that it melts anyone who arrives, infinitesimally changing itself, but completely remoulding you. It's similar to the Borg from Star Trek, if the Borg enjoyed binge-drinking and chlamydia. American arrivals might land with a killer instinct, but by the time they've left Heathrow, they're eating a Greggs sausage roll and leaving emails to pile up in their inbox. Once they've moved into a flat in Clapham, there's no saving them - they've been Londonified. They might even buy acoustic guitars they can't play.
Which brings me to the thorny issue of the full English breakfast. I'd never heard the term as a child because in London, the “full English" was called the full Monty, and it was rarely eaten like that. Most people swap out a few ingredients - black pudding, for instance, is frequently discarded - and the resultant dish is called a "fry up". Nobody cared what you put in it.
Now some of our American arrivals are making TikToks about the full English breakfast and assigning culinary rules to it. Like you have to include baked beans (I don't!), and you need to use unsmoked back bacon (I won't). It's a breakfast that serves two purposes - it's something the kids will eat on a Sunday, and it can blast away hangovers. Flexibility in the ingredients is the point. And don't even start on healthy alternatives, the only healthy way to eat a fry up is infrequently.
Just to correct a few other misunderstandings: you absolutely can decline tea at someone's house; you can also ask for coffee instead; everybody who eats jellied eels remembers World War II; and most beer is served chilled, although some is brewed to be drunk at room temperature.
On the other side of the coin, some stereotype-esque things that are floating around social platforms are true. The "meal deal" - a cheap sandwich, drink, and bag of crisps - is very popular despite how disappointing it is; football stadiums have awful food, but cricket grounds do well; Indian food is massive, although how this squares with the American belief that we’ll only eat bland dishes escapes me; and despite the ubiquity of Brits travelling around East Asia, most people can't use chopsticks.
Finally, and do hear me on this, "sorry" is a utility word, not an apology. Soz.
