T rends in big cities always move at a zip, but over the past few years it seems that London has become a particularly faddy place. The en vogue trainer of the moment changes like the unpredictable weather (Adidas Gazelles and Sambas appear to have clung on for the moment, but sports shoes by typically uncool brands such as On are waiting to swoop in at any minute). Styles you thought were long since dead get resurrected overnight (we are living, hellishly, through the boho revival).
Where hobbies are concerned, the winds of change breeze by so frequently that it’s common to see your friends suddenly taking up activities that you would never associate with them in a million years. It was wild swimming a few years ago, when you couldn’t meet up with friends without someone mouthing off about Hampstead ponds or trying to get you to catch E coli with them at “ Hackney Beach ” (reader, it is not a beach). And for 2024, weather permitting, I believe it will be something else.
Recently, I have been hearing a lot about – and I am being serious now – pétanque . The cool boys appear to be playing a variation of boules, the French sport (and something I previously knew only as something my grandad competed in with a devoted passion in his 60s). They are wearing their little caps branded with the names of their friends’ record labels and independent food magazines, their pairs of Dickies trousers and their orange-lensed sunglasses, and they are trying to get their larger.