The honey monster

My life has recently taken a bit of a shunt and I have found myself in London on a more or less full time basis, yearning for home, to see the plants growing and the quick pull of the early summer trout on the line. I always felt like that when I lived in London – 15 years of tugging 15 years ago. London has changed little, but the culture of London has changed a lot. The use of the mobile, smoking, shouting and screaming, all those street life activities have amplified hugley. No other capital in the world suffers from the kind of mobile use that you get in London. I struggle to find a reason for it, obviously it’s massively rude, that could be a reason for it in itself, an outward expression of the ‘f*** you’ mentality so uniquely and warmly embraced in the UK. Maybe UK dwellers feel less inhibited in the apparent confines of phone world, a bit like cars, where it’s easy to think you are in your own private world so its alright to scream moustache curling abuse at the most minor of infractions - like a micro second pause before pulling of at the lights. Anyway there seems to be an idea that using a mobile in public is really a very private act. Outside my bedroom window in superficially charming Bloomsbury a woman engaged is an extremely long and creatively abusive phone call with her – presumably soon not to be - boyfriend, ‘Yo shitf***er, am letting yo f*** wit ma booty, sheeetman yo need to tink bout feelings of udder people’ after about 10 minutes of this unrelenting and rather unfocused Westwood style phyco babble abuse I was forced to open my window and ask her if she could possibly find an alternative venue to continue her martial workout? To which she replied in the sweetest middle class voice, ‘oh I am terribly sorry, I did’nt realise anyone still lived in Bloomsbury 'a classic ‘full English’ put down (‘oh you know well it’s just a pied a Terre, I am usually in Tuscany/Gloucestershire’).
The other street related activity I can enjoy in my 1st floor bedroom is smoking, the fairly continuous stream of office refugees smoking in the street does provide a wreath of smoke that fills the street, and the bedroom, and we are talking a quiet street here. How will it be once the ban kicks in, the streets will become one big smoke filled series of channels. The London smog of yore recreated using the human lung. There does seem to be this lack of thinking things through going on in London/UK. London’s public transport system seems insanely complicated, catching a bus an absolute picnic in a dog pound, buy a ticket at a stop if there is a machine, on the bus if not, get an oyster card, a carnet and all to be achieved with absolutely no information of any kind as to what where and how - just an angry driver jerking his thumb at something and mumbleing. While I am briefly on drivers - the notion of driving a public transport vehicle for comfort of the passenger seems to have completely been lost. The drivers throw their buses into sharp turns, abrupt stops, to lurch and lean with the sole intention of knocking the passengers to the ground, buses excecute boy racer tactics, switching lanes, bunny hopping at the lights and so on. Taxi’s are as bad (for any taxi drivers out there I never tip if it’s an uncomfortable ride – make what you must of that). Anyway enough of this abuse of the wonders of London after all I did walk past David Guest which was great and where else is this going to happen (at first I thought he was Tom Jones or someone wearing comedy Tom Jones head and chest wigs), such special hairs, blinged up to the 9’s, he looked every inch the legendary R&B producer with a rather strong sense that he could be some sort of teddy bear type child’s cuddly toy, maybe it was just the fact that he is pocket sized. All in all the most exciting celebrity moment since a friend of mine sold a 10ft length of hose pipe to Sidney Devine at a car boot sale in Galashields (Sidney Devine is a Scottish MOR superstar for y’all south of the border there).

Posted by Adam Sutherland on 28/06/07 at 08:42 : 0 Comments

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