London Letter: After a summer of spending, the dark clouds of winter loom on the horizon

Antonio was looking terrible as usual, his face an angry radish of broken veins and three of his shirt buttons threatening to pop like a row of champagne corks every time he took a breath. He told me he hadn’t had a drink for seven months and that he felt like a changed man.

“Before, I woke every morning with pain,” he said, patting his liver as he looked up in sorrow.

I told him he looked great and asked how business was going. Like everywhere in central London, the little restaurant where he works was booming for much of the summer but things have suddenly gone quiet and it has been empty all week.

It was the same story last week at a place near the Royal Albert Hall that had been packed every night after the Proms but was now semi-deserted. And a stroll down Lamb’s Conduit Street in Holborn, where every restaurant has been teeming throughout the summer, saw vacant tables everywhere.

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After months releasing pent-up exuberance after the pandemic and spending like crazy, London seems to have come to an abrupt halt. The long waiting times for taxis that have been standard since last summer have evaporated as processions of black cabs float past with their orange lights blazing.

Around the City of London, salad and sandwich joints that opened when workers started coming back to the office have closed again. And restaurants nearby report that even when business was booming during the past few months, it only reached 70 per cent of pre-pandemic levels.

The return to the office has stalled and a commercial property manager told me they had to decommission one of two cold water storage tanks in one building last week because with so few workers using the place it was in danger of becoming stagnant. Some businesses have taken a tough line by insisting on minimum attendance levels but many have found that in Britain’s tight labour market after Brexit and the pandemic, it is the employer who needs to be flexible.

Across the capital, the joy of life returning to normal has given way to fear of what’s coming next as energy prices are set to rise by 80 per cent, deepening the cost of living crisis that threatens to push millions into poverty. Antonio said he didn’t expect anything to get better for a long time.

“Look at the world,” he said.

Down the road, the tailor and his son were sitting outside the cafe next to their shop and I watched them exchange a few suspicious words as they saw me coming. We have been in a silent standoff for over a year after a succession of delays in making a suit, each one accompanied by a more elaborate excuse.

When they finally called to say it was ready, I no longer felt an urgent need of it and decided that if I could wait months for them to make the suit, they could wait a little while for me to collect it and pay the balance owing on it. Now I was tired of being spiteful and I needed the suit in any case for an upcoming wedding, so it was time to make peace.

The son leapt up with a big grin as if I was the brightest ray of sunshine ever to smile upon his life and gripped my hand firmly for a vigorous shake.

“You’re looking very well, Sir,” he said.

I told him that was obviously untrue but said that he and his father on the other hand had grown younger since I had seen them. His father, who looked as if he had the worst hangover in England, showed his teeth in a sour smile.

Inside the shop, the son and I handled the delicacy of our situation by means of him pretending that I had been out of the country for the past year and me behaving as if nothing had happened at all. After we had fully disarmed, I asked him what he thought about the Conservative leadership contest and he said they were mad to get rid of Boris Johnson.

“He made mistakes but he got Brexit done and he won that election. And people like him,” he said.

His father had come into the shop and he listened in as we talked about the merits of Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss, agreeing that there were hard times just around the corner.

“If Boris had just said, alright I made some mistakes and I apologise, he’d still be there,” he said.

“But he couldn’t come clean and tell the truth.”

Look who’s talking, I thought. But I said nothing and handed over my card, walking out with a very nice suit after easing the tailor’s cost of living crisis a little and making my own a bit worse.