Alphabet Dating

‘When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.’

Samuel Johnson certainly had his shortcomings. I’m specifically thinking of his hairstyle, which looks like he wrapped headphones in wool before placing them carefully atop his irritated face (source: Google Images). But when it comes to understanding our great city, the chap certainly had a point.

You might get bored of your London job or your London commute. But how could you possibly get tired of London itself? I’ve lived here for five years and I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface. At least once a week someone will mention something in London that I’ve never even heard of; a pop up bar on top of a car park; a restaurant where you eat in complete darkness; or an old cinema where you can sit on sofas rather than seats.

It was a Saturday night, over a year ago now, that my girlfriend and I were chatting about not making the most of living here. A bottle of wine and a box-set of the latest HBO series was a fairly typical evening for us. So we came up with the idea of ‘alphabet dates’. It was a simple plan to force us to do more fun stuff. We took it in turns to arrange dates that begin with sequential letters of the alphabet. She went first and bought us tickets to see Away We Go at the cinema – a sweet little comedy starring that bloke from the American version of The Office.

A couple of weeks later I took her to the Beatles to Bowie exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, which was great. A trip to Chinatown was next. And so on. There’s no specific time limit for each date – the only rules are that each one must be in London and something we haven’t done before.

Many months later and we’re approaching the end. There have been some standout dates along the way, including a speedboat ride along The Thames with the Baywatch music blaring out as we went, and a Finnish Christmas fair, where we sampled some rather chewy reindeer.

Since we started doing the alphabet dates we have definitely seen more of London, taking advantage of things we didn’t even know where there before. Quite a few of our friends have started their own versions and I recommend it to anyone starting to feel like they’ve seen everything London has to offer.

By the way, please leave a comment under this post if you have any ideas for our Z date. It’s my choice and I’m trying to avoid the obvious London Zoo!

Image by evgie courtesy of Flickr