Some months back, I was on the top deck of a night bus, rolling through the more esoteric parts of Hackney, when it was suddenly invaded. The doors burst open and the marauders bounded upstairs, claiming every seat, throwing their feet up, cracking open windows and bottles, and cackling. 

However, this gang did not come from the feverish nightmares of people who spend too much time mainlining public transport attack videos on X. Instead of ballies, zipper hoods, and reappropriated COVID masks, they wore a uniform of mullets, mustaches, tote bags, five-panel caps, and oversized T-shirts with pictures of anthropomorphic peanuts, pickles, and pizzas on them. The mob spoke a strange dialect: part Stoke Newington, part New South Wales, it was loaded with references to dirty margaritas, “home-style deep-dish joints,” Amyl & the Sniffers tickets, and the ins and outs of working holiday visas.

In the weeks that followed, I noticed more and more of their sort; sharing roll-ups outside coffee shops that had their own resident DJs, stuffing themselves with gut-busting ‘sandos’ and ‘sarnies’ on Reels, posing in chef aprons outside the old boozers they had swamped, boasting of bringing “a slice of Melbourne cafe culture to Deptford.” 

As someone who is rattling through their mid-thirties, these people were subtly yet significantly different to tribes I’d encountered in London before. They appeared astoundingly confident in the face of this absurd, cutthroat city. They had not just accepted the gentrification that I spent my twenties half-heartedly kicking against, they seemed utterly liberated by it.

In short, they looked like they didn’t have a care in the world—because this city was theirs now. 

“The Norman is what the yuppie was to 1985 or metrosexuals were to Blairite Britain.”

I quickly realized they needed a name. After much deliberation, some friends and I landed on calling them “Normans”—a reference to a recently departed North London cafe-restaurant that had been