Saturday 31st March 2007
I moved to London almost 6 years ago. Back then, as I rode up and down in the estate's coffin-like lift, transporting my most precious possessions into Charlie's Swiss Cottage flat, I never thought I'd become one of those shuffling, cursing figures that could be seen wandering the Finchley Road, frequenting the tube, pubs in the afternoon and the vegetable section of Camden's supermarkets.
But today, I did. I stumbled out of the flat, light-headed and weak, from 6 straight days of a disgustingly messy stomach bug combined with lung-displacing cough, guaranteed to irritate the fuck out of work colleagues/flat mate/fellow public-transportees and girlfriend. After an ill-advised sojourn 100 yards along Oxford Street, my anger was suitably stoked, so when I headed into a Starbucks and ordered a coffee, my first coffee for two weeks ordered as a special treat to myself, and then had to wait for two minutes before having to decipher the following sentence:
"I am sorry, the machine is, because we have to close in 3 minutes"
it was maybe inevitable that my cursing and shuffling suffered a sudden and extreme increase. After berating those baristas I went to a second coffee shop, and there was angered by the barista's inability to listen to me or tell me how much I was meant to pay. By the time I sat grumbling on the tube I felt like Michael Douglas, but without the suitcase and shotgun.
I've said that my shuffling/cursing suffered an extreme increase. I should point out that I've been shuffling and cursing quite a bit anyway, for days, if not weeks, now. Maybe its the winter, maybe its the combination of my claustrophobia with a rush hour commute to Canary Wharf, or maybe it's just my general misanthropy, but I'm finding it increasingly hard to be a non-shuffler and a non-swearer in London. Is it time to leave? Is 6 years too much? Where to? Hong Kong? Another city?
I don't know. I want a dog. I want to be healthy and my shit to be solid again. I want a Glastonbury ticket. I want summer. But at the moment, I mainly want a blog to post before the end of March, so here's a few paragraphs of bollocks.
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