UK Trip, New Year's 2026: I'm Just A Teenage Dirtbag, Baby (Still)
- bpk298
- Jan 18
- 14 min read
Reunited with Jay, my fiancé, for a New Year's Eve fireworks display on the Thames, a New Year's Day drag show at Two Brewers Pub in Clapham, a performance of The Devil Wears Prada: The Musical, and more. Had a few days to explore the quintessentially quaint villages of Cambridgeshire, as well.
Getting There: God Hates Me
I flew out of Syracuse on the afternoon of December 30th, which ended up being the snowiest day in 80 years - no small feat given that 'Cuse is routinely ranked as one of the five snowiest cities in the United States.
After a treacherous drive to the airport, where my mom dropped me off a full three hours early at my neurotic request, I sped through check-in and security only to arrive at my gate and learn that my flight had already been delayed by an hour. I gazed out the massive windows and saw staticky white: This is your brain on benzos.
Eventually, after another delay and an inordinate time on the runway, we took off, and - thanks to a proportionate delay in my flight from JFK to London - I ended up arriving in London only a couple of hours later than originally planned on the morning of December 31st.
The Fireworks: Literally
I bet you thought I meant my reunion with Jay, right?
Don't get me wrong: It was beautiful and relieving, to hug this man who is so much better than I deserve for the first time in over two years.
I am exceedingly fond of my knock-off Yoko, my Walking Spreadsheet, as I call him.
We've messaged every day, videochatted every Sunday, but over time, long distance takes its inexorable toll. Some part of me had started to believe that this reunion wasn't going to happen anytime soon, and - shockingly - some part of me had started to get complacent about that after years of pandemic-related setbacks to our plans to get married in the U.S.
We headed back to an apartment in Clapham, which Jay's friend had let us borrow for the weekend while he was traveling in Turkey. We stashed my luggage there, then headed to a nearby Thai restaurant called the Pepper Tree, which I am mentioning by name because it was one of the culinary high points of London.
The Pepper Tree offers a set lunch on weekdays. I ordered sweet corn cakes as a starter and crispy pork and shallot stir fry as my entree, both of which were truly delicious.
It was a perfect meal for after a long flight - satisfying without being too rich or heavy.
***
We headed back to the apartment so that I could rest for an hour or two while Jay finished up some work.
Jay's an important guy these days! (I mean, he's always been important to me, but now he's important to the rest of the world, too).
He's an accountant, and he joined the tech company that he currently works for to help put together its IPO after it de-listed from the NYSE and rejoined the Chinese stock exchanges a few years ago.
Since then, he's risen through the ranks; in fact, he received another promotion while I was in England!
I've never met a steadier, harder working, or humbler person in my life. No one deserves success more.
And it's looking like Jay will be based in England and / or Paris for the next year or two, at least, which opens up some interesting possibilities for the two of us.
By the time we dressed up and headed to our New Year's Eve cruise, Jay and I were fully synched up again.
There are a few different businesses that offer New Year's Eve fireworks cruises along the Thames.
We are too old - and I was too tired - for the party barge experience, so Jay had wisely picked a more family-oriented cruise. In fact, our group was mostly tourists, with plenty of children and older folks in the crowd (one British guy, who was wearing a pimp suit and hitting the bar hard, had evidently missed the memo; he stood up in the middle of the singer's jazzy version of "Frosty the Snowman" and screamed "WAKE UP!," following which the colossal bouncers took him somewhere for a little cool-down while the rest of us continued caroling).
We watched several of the higher-octane cruise boats go by. One of them was essentially a floating rave, with a vast, writhing dance floor and a light show that escaped the lower level of the boat to shoot outward and upward along the Thames.
At my advanced age of 37, watching the rave from the boat next door feels good enough for me.
Incidentally, I've mentioned before that the eels in the Thames may have become hyperactive due to the amount of cocaine that ends up in the river (London gets more snow than any other city, save for perhaps New York). I'm suspicious of the pimp suit dude's role in this whole ecological disaster, fam.
One other thing that I noticed early on during our time in London was that Italy must be bereft of Italians these days: Nearly every other conversation that I heard during our time in London was in Italian (no exaggeration).
I understand that many British people were either hunkered down in their houses / apartments or off to their country houses for the holidays, but the number of Italian restaurants and beauty shops present in every area of London absolutely floored me, and it's something that I don't remember being so pronounced when I last visited years ago.
It seems that Italy is filled with foreign tourists these days, and the Italians themselves have fled to London. What an idea for a short story in tandem!
The fireworks themselves were easily the most impressive display that I've ever seen, and the vantage point that we had - lower down on the Thames rather than up on the bridges from which most of the crowd was observing - gave us a really interesting perspective.
Most of the fireworks were launched from boats anchored near the base of the London Eye, but the Eye itself seemed to have been wired up, too. At several points in the show, champagne-colored, filigreed fireworks shot out horizontally from the wheel.
After a minute or two, we put down our phones so that we could fully appreciate the show.
The finale was beyond words - it felt lyrical, almost, like a story.
I've been struggling with being present for the past couple of years, but this fireworks display was so incredible that it just absorbed me for a moment.
I felt oddly rested afterward as I walked through unfamiliar 2 a.m. streets with the familiar stranger who I have decided to spend the rest of my life with (and who, improbably, has decided to do the same with me).
New Year's Day: I'm Just a Teenage Dirtbag, Baby
Jay and I partook of the great British tradition of the lie-in on New Year's Day (actually, we've been sleeping late together all over the world for years now).
That's one thing about England that I absolutely envy. They have really fought for workers' rights and reasonable hours / holiday time off. Almost every shop, even many in "downtown" London, closes by 5:30 or 6 even during the week, and over the holidays, most everything was closed.
It's foolish that we don't give people proper time off in the U.S., because it is self-defeating in terms of long-term productivity and social stability, but don't try to make that case to our billionaire overlords. Speaking of our billionaire overlords, don't even get me started on Venezuela (what a strange thing that was to wake up to).
On New Year's Day, we kept things low-key. We went to a drag event at Two Brewers Club, which was close to where we were staying. By this point, I was pretty worn-out from the travel and the time difference, so we left fairly early on.
We visited a club / restaurant called the Sky Garden, then went for a night walk around the neighborhood that we were staying in and called it an early night.
The Devil Wears Prada: The Musical (with Music by Elton John)
Jay got us tickets for the show because he knew that I had enjoyed the book and film versions of The Devil Wears Prada. (Lauren Weisberger is a Cornell grad, by the way).
We left for the show several hours early so that we could do a walking tour of downtown London. We hit Buckingham Palace, Big Ben / Westminster, and several other iconic sites, but mostly, we just wandered around.*
*While meandering, Jay and I learned that probably half of the plaques / monuments in the city of London have to do with deaths and damage sustained during the Blitz. The stiff-upper-lip character that the British displayed under Churchill's leadership during that time, as well as the deep and lasting effect that the bombing campaign had on the city's psyche, cannot be overstated. As I've mentioned before, Churchill was a heavy drinker who was haunted by his "little black dog" of depression; he was also prescribed barbiturates and amphetamines at various points in his life.
If you've never been to London, it is truly one of the pleasantest cities in the world to walk around in. It's a city of large, well-manicured parks surrounded by very old buildings from a mishmash of architectural eras.
We strolled through Hyde Park. Later on, I met my British friend Jess at Regents Park, another gorgeous green space, but honestly - a lot of the smaller, less well-known parks were just as beautiful.
The weather was around freezing, with some rare snow accumulation on a couple of mornings, but the thing about England is that the windchill bite just isn't there - at least not in the greater London area. There wasn't really any time during our trip when I felt uncomfortable due to the cold (or like it was limiting my ability to do what I wanted to do outdoors).
Dominion Theatre was worth visiting in its own right. It was built in 1921 by the Milburn brothers, and it has this Art Deco majesty that fits the West End vibe perfectly.
I'm going to be honest about the play (even though I lied to Jay): Not overly impressed.
I grew up going to Broadway shows. I would tag along to Yankee games on the condition that my mom and dad take me to a musical afterward (family photos show me reading a book in the Yankee Stadium stands while the rest of my family cheers their team on).
Whereas once musicals were typically free-standing pieces of art - only occasionally made into films if they were super popular - we are now in an era in which nearly every successful book, movie, or TV show - from Stranger Things to Harry Potter to Matilda - gets optioned for stage.
It's an additional revenue stream for authors, which, as a general proposition, I support (although in practice, it seems to be only those authors who already have money and connections whose works become shows).
However, there seems to be little thought given to whether any given work is truly suitable for the stage. In the case of The Devil Wears Prada, it was far from a worst-case scenario, but the result wasn't impressive at all, either.
Elton John wrote the music, apparently. I usually appreciate his stuff, but I'm going to be honest - there were a couple of numbers, including "House of Miranda," that sounded like something a struggling artist character would write as part of a hated day job a week or two before offing himself.
What saved the show were solid performances by the women who played Andy, an aspiring journalist who is forced to take a job as the executive assistant of a notoriously demanding fashion editor, and Miranda, the aforementioned boss from Hell.
The scale of the Dominion's stage also provided opportunities for some really cool effects, including a smoky runway scene with a mirrored background and vanity-style bulbs bracketing the stage.
Overall, though, my opinion is that - if special effects are what you have going for you - film is probably a more suitable medium.
It was worth watching as part of a nice day out in London, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone else.
The Drag Show
I'm a terrible homosexual: I'd never been to a drag show before (although, like everyone else, I'd seen clips of Ru Paul).
When we showed up for the Two Brewers show, I was edgy. I know this is goofy, but I hate shows with audience interaction because I spend them dreading that I'll get called on (and my facial expression while experiencing said dread almost guarantees that they will pick me).
Despite the holiday, it ended up being a crowded show, and - God, I wish I could remember the name of the performer, because she was amazing.
She had this understated Gothic vibe and a voice that could reach a little deeper than you'd expect. She sang (actually, we all sang) "Oh, What a Night," "Proud Mary," "I'm Just a Teenage Dirtbag" - three songs so different that listing them together seems wrong. But, like all competent performers, she made them her own and united them in style.
The comedy component of the show was carried off well, too. Requests for New Year's resolutions from the audience members ended with one young woman sharing that she had never experienced an STD and was really hoping to get chlamydia in 2026.
"I need to stop forgetting my bag in clubs," another girl shared.
"Which bag? Oh, well, I guess the coke bag is inside the other one, huh?" The performer replied without missing a beat.
I've heard other LGBTQ people who are more familiar with drag say that, as when anything goes mainstream, some of the subculture-specific magic of drag has been lost.
I think I can understand where such people are coming from. At one point in the show, the performer had us turn to the people we came with, look them in the eye, and tell them that we loved them (then, we did the same thing with a stranger).
She asked questions about the first female friends who everyone confessed their gayness too, and she made on-target jokes about drugs, venereal disease, and dead-end jobs.
I can totally understand, especially for the early-twenties people in the crowd, what it must mean to have a space like that to feel fully comfortable in for the first time.
Drag might be mainstream entertainment at this point, but it is pure catharsis for a portion of the LGBTQ community who don't really have many safe spaces in which to process their personal histories and express themselves.
It was some of the best live music that I've heard in a long time, and it was a wonderful way to ring in the new year.
I fell asleep to my book on Tudor history while Jay amused himself with videos called "美国白人" - "American white person" - which show Midwestern moms cooking "casserole" abominations that I am convinced are just engagement bait (these kinds of videos are super popular on Chinese social media right now).
None of them looked much worse than typical British pub fare, for the record.
Cambridgeshire: Punting, not Punter!
Jay lives and works right outside London in the vicinity of Cambridge, so, for the second part of the trip, we left the city and headed to his apartment.
These cute, cozy little villages are, in my opinion, one of the jewels of the United Kingdom. I walked for miles and miles through the countryside surrounding the small town that Jay lives in; it took me a while to pinpoint what felt off: There was no drug paraphernalia!
I walked for hours without coming upon a needle cap or a Suboxone wrapper or some other evidence of drug abuse and addiction. I hardly even saw any litter!
As much as I enjoyed our days in London, it was the second half of the trip that really gave me and Jay some much-needed time to be normal together.
We cooked dinner together every night after Jay got back from work, and we caught up on American Horror Story, Vicious, Family Guy, and some other shows. Slipping back into our couple's dynamic felt like putting on your oldest, most comfortable lounging-around-the-house clothes.
I felt real guilt that I "had" to bring my methadone with me. Jay deserves a partner in full health - like I was when I met him - not someone struggling with sedation, cognitive fog, and paradoxical insomnia.
I was already disappointed in myself for not having finished my taper by the start of 2026, and - long story short - I took a few days off from methadone just to see how it would go (I knew from past experience in China and Hawaii that a novel environment can make a huge difference in how your body interprets withdrawal).
I went days without a single milligram of methadone. I did resort to Over-the-Counter codeine at one point (don't even get me started on what an absolute shart of an opiate codeine is, please), which was too weak to have any impact.
After the first three or four days, methadone withdrawal felt less like opioid withdrawal and more like how I imagine AIDS or metastatic cancer would feel.
The severity of the withdrawal made me reconsider going cold turkey, but this gap in dosing did help me to jumpstart my speedrun of the last part of my taper - more info on that to come.
The Trip Back: God Still Hates Me
After Jay left for Shenzhen on the 9th, I spent the last two nights of the trip in London, in a hotel in Notting Hill.
If I ever "make it" as an author / YouTuber, I will buy a townhouse in Kensington or Notting Hill - sort of the epitome of an established writer's neighborhood, in my opinion.
I had lunch and dinner with a couple of friends / YouTube acquaintances, and I spent an unexpected amount of time just walking around and reflecting.
One tip: If you want to take the tube to Heathrow, don't ever plan on leaving London early on a Sunday morning. There are buses that run all night, but they are slow and can be a little tough to navigate if you're not familiar with the public transit system. Depending on where you are, an early-morning taxi ride to Heathrow can easily run you seventy or eighty pounds, so it's not an insignificant added travel expense, either.
My flight out of London left on time, but we ate up that advantage when we had to circle the airport in Atlanta waiting for safer wind conditions to land in.
Thankfully, the second leg of my trip was also delayed (you can always count on Delta in that respect!). So, after nearly two weeks of intense travel, I arrived home early Sunday evening - and got ready to return to work on Monday morning!
In Conclusion
England is a country with terrible food populated by posh women whose money cannot save them from looking like Mrs. Doubtfire. Because they can't go to the bathroom properly, its people are unruly and often intoxicated; they are deeply classist, their junk is uncut, and one of Earth's most beautiful and hospitable natural landscapes is largely wasted on them.
In short, I loved it. 10/10 will visit again.