London Observer: We Spent a Week Watching Londoners and Here Is Our Full Report

An Anthropological Study Filed From a Bench in Victoria, a Staircase at Waterloo, and a Bus on the 73 Route

Day one of our London Observer experiment began at 7:43am on the Northern line, southbound from Archway. Within four minutes we had observed: one man eating a full cooked breakfast from a sealed Tupperware container with no shame and considerable scrambled egg; one woman completing a comprehensive makeup transformation between Stockwell and Clapham South with the focused precision of a surgeon; and forty-three people pretending to read their phones while absolutely watching the man with the eggs. Nobody said a word. This is London. The eggs were not discussed.

Behavioural Patterns: Week One Findings

According to behavioural data gathered by the UCL Urban Laboratory, Londoners walk 14% faster than the national average and apologise 340% more than is strictly necessary given the circumstances. We can confirm both. During a single hour of observation near Oxford Circus, we witnessed nine unprovoked apologies, including one man who apologised sincerely to a bollard, paused, appeared to consider whether the apology was warranted, and then apologised again slightly more quietly, apparently deciding on reflection that it was.

The Unspoken Social Contract of the Tube

London runs on an elaborate system of rules that no one explains and everyone somehow knows by instinct or osmosis. You do not make eye contact on the tube. You do not stop at the top of an escalator. You do not eat a burger on a bus without accepting the full social consequences of that decision. You stand on the right. Always the right. A tourist stood on the left side of the escalator at Holborn on a Tuesday afternoon. The resulting collective psychic disturbance was reportedly felt as far away as Hammersmith, which is either an exaggeration or a measure of how strongly Londoners feel about escalator protocol.

The Things That Surprised Us

We did not expect the kindness. London has a reputation for coldness that is, upon examination, not quite accurate. It is not cold. It is professionally neutral with periodic and genuine warmth at unexpected moments. On day four, a woman on the 73 bus helped a tourist with directions for six minutes, drew a small map on a receipt, and then got off three stops before her own destination to walk the tourist to the correct turning. She asked nothing in return. She had somewhere to be. She helped anyway. This is also London. It does not make the news because it happens constantly.

Final Observation: The Optimised Man

On day seven, outside a Pret in Canary Wharf, we observed a man in a suit eating a sandwich while answering emails while listening to a podcast while conducting a phone call while hailing a cab with the hand that was also holding the sandwich. He appeared neither happy nor unhappy. He appeared optimised. It was the most London thing we have encountered in seven years of covering this city. For more acute urban observation, Bohiney Magazine’s London Observer desk has been watching Londoners so that you do not have to, and filing reports with appropriate wonder and mild alarm.

SOURCE: https://prat.uk