This story is part of the November 3 edition of Sunday Life. See all 12 stories . At Waterloo station, under the Portland stone and bronze Victory Arch, the Roman goddesses flank Britannia, holding her liberty torch aloft.
London in July: skies grey, streets flecked with rain. Summer, apparently. Suddenly, in my mind, I hear the driving electric, bass and acoustic guitars.
The hairs on my arms stand up. Ter ry meets Julie / Waterloo station / Every Friday night . Ray Davies wrote Waterloo Sunset and the Kinks released the single in 1967, the year I was born.
Theatre-lovers are spoilt for choice in London. Credit: Getty Images Is it possible to feel a past you never experienced? Even on an everyday Monday afternoon in 2024? I was never part of Cool Britannia, a phrase also coined then, for I entered the world via Melbourne, and live in Sydney. But London is eerily familiar in its joyful sorrow: the voyeuristic narrator in Waterloo Sunset is too lazy to leave his room, wondering why dirty old River Thames must keep rolling.
I come to this city for culture, for theatre, for worlds within worlds, within walking distance. I turn amid the grey and see a parked double-decker red bus advertising ABBA Voyage , the Swedish foursome digitally recreated here for an ongoing concert, looking as if the 1970s and disco never died. I fell in love with ABBA’s bright harmonies, melodic hooks and melancholic undercurrents at age seven.
Burgeoning gay boys with something to hide often do. The f.