Personal ad

I'm taking a page out of the amazing and inspirational Havi, and writing a personal ad for something that I really want in my life: a bike.

Tired of the Tube

Outgoing, energetic woman looking for a bicycle to form a lasting mutually beneficial partnership with.

Me? I'll take care of you, make sure you have regular check-ups with someone who knows way more than me about the way you work, I'll keep you in a safe indoor place at night and while I'm at work, take you out at least three days a week, and I'll continue to take you out in all weathers and year-round. You won't languish through the winter with me!

You: High enough for me (I'm quite tall), in perfect or near perfect working order. Not too expensive, hopefully under £100 - but I'm willing to spend a bit more to find the perfect match.

Ideally you'll be located near my flat or my office, so that I don't have to go to far to meet you for the first time. And hopefully you're already on the radar of someone that I know, who just hasn't told me about you yet. I'd love if you were the old-fashioned kind that lets me sit more upright, but I know that whatever you look like, being the right one for me is the most important thing.

No drama please - this includes chains that for some reason don't want to stay in place, wonky pedals or seats, and brakes that are, at best, iffy. Also, it would be helpful if your frame was quite sturdy or of very good quality. I'd like to have you around for a while, and this will really help.

If this is you, please have someone get in touch! I can't wait to meet you.

8am assult course

I woke up late this morning, which is fairly unusual. Normally, I'm awake the second my alarm goes off, if not before. I think my new-found ability to sleep through the incessant beeping might just have something to do with sleeping in a bed for more than one consecutive night for the first time in two months.

However, I woke up late. I'd done a load of washing last night and took full advantage of the balcony with the clothesline at my new flat (rarely do you have a tumble dryer over here, for those of you State-side). I happily hung up my clothes and went to bed with the expectation of being able to wear some of them to work this morning.

So at about 7.07 (I usually leave around 7.20), I bolted out of bed, threw myself into the shower and furiously did everything necessary. I ran around, dropping things, managed to get moisturiser everywhere, and ran to the door to the balcony.

Which was locked.

Spotting a key in the bowl that holds the clothespins, I put in into the keyhole. It fits! Awesome!

I turn the key. Nothing happens.

Jiggle the handle. Nothing happens. Try turning while lifting the handle. Nothing. I then proceed to, for the next several minutes try everything I can think of to get the door open.

Nothing.

I'm swearing under by breath in despair - I wore the only thing that I didn't wash that I can wear to work yesterday, and there's no way that I can wear it two days in a row. I glance around.

There's a window. A window that might open enough despite the shelf on the wall outside that might allow me to get out.

So this morning, I started my day by climbing out a window in my flat in my fuzzy maroon bathrobe to get my clothes.

How do these things happen to me?!

Summer? Yes?

Dear London,

Hey, you know this lovely warm weather you’ve been having? Where there is the possibility of it being over 20’C for more than a day, and I can take my jumper off on the way to the station in the morning? I think that you’ve found a groove that could be fun for the summer, babe, and you should stick with it.

People are smiling, occasionally at each other, even, and someone even moved out of my way on the Tube this morning without me asking. I’ve been wearing my sunglasses (you know, the ones I bought in Brighton in the hope that I’d actually be able to use them) and frankly it’s been wonderful.

It’s just…well. Last year you did this for three weeks in April and then sort of…stopped. The rest of the summer wasn’t even summer – most people refer to it as the not-summer. I’ll be really disappointed if you pull this on me again, and honestly I’m not sure if our relationship can survive another disappointment of that magnitude. Especially as I don’t even get to have that little fling with Greece this year that we discussed. So keep things together, London. I don’t want to have to find another city to love!

Hopeful kisses,
B

Mov'ed

I recently moved house, both to in order to save money (I had ignored that what I was paying at my old flat was ludicrous for entirely too long) and because, frankly, my old flatmate, as lovely as she was, was sending me down the line of poking a pencil in my eye to escape.

So, a new place. I’m living with friends, which is great – it’s been a very long time since I actively looked forward to going home in addition to hoping that people would be there instead of out for the evening – but it’s also a very interesting situation as there are, essentially, four people currently living in a two-bedroom flat. (The story behind this is long and arduous, and not entirely bloggable.)

There are some things I’ve noticed though:

1. My roommate’s alarm clock goes off sometime after 6am and sometime before 6.15am. I’m not sure when, exactly, because the clock is running on time of its own imagining. The alarm clock has the intended effect…on me. Being terrified out of sleep by the radio coming on halfway through ACDC’s Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock and Roll) actually turns out to be a fantastic way to start your day. Although I could do with less terror. It’s also nice to have a radio station playing music I like, instead of music I want to throttle to make cease, playing in the morning. It has, however, had the effect of making songs stick in my head all day. All day.

2. I’ve never properly lived with people who smokes in their house. I’ve dated smokers, but they always smoked outside. I’ve been at parties where people smoked inside, and I used to go to nightclubs where the air was full of smoke. I even smoked for a while (although never in the house/flat/room I was living in).

I do not like it. I think that I can handle it for a while – hopefully it won’t be long until we move to a house like we’d planned, and at that point the smoking inside will cease. If we’re where we are for more than a month though, I’m going to have to say something. I am the minority, as out of the four of us I am the only one who doesn’t smoke, but don’t know how long I can live in perpetual smog. And smelling of said smog.

All together though, I’m much happier sleeping on an air mattress on the floor in a room I’m sharing with someone than I was before – which is always a good thing.

A single moment

I'm standing at the edge of the Victoria line (northbound) platform at Kings Cross, precisely aligned so that when the second-to-last set of doors open I will be just enough to the left of the doors that I shouldn't have to step back to let people off the train but obviously in the way enough to be the first on. (This is a journey that I have taken quite possibly over a thousand times, and I know where to stand on each platform on this particular journey to minimise the time it takes to get between lines.) People are queuing up either side of me - I walked on to the platform just as the previous train was pulling away, so I got the good spot - and they, too, know where to stand.

Shortly before the train arrives in the station, you can feel the wind blowing down the tunnel. Turning my head towards the direction the wind is blowing from, I narrow my eyes slightly. There is an astounding amount of dust on the Tube system. Right before the train rounds the bend to the platform, you can see the headlights reflected against the wall.

The train rounds the bend, and I close my eyes as my hair flies back from my face and the sound hits me.

For just a moment, I want to turn around and walk away. Get on to any other train, go in any other direction, and to disappear into this city and these millions of people and see where I end up. Go to the airport and get on the first plane going to any destination, anywhere in the world. Leave everything I know, and simply...disappear.

The train stops, the doors open, and I open my eyes.

I'll be home in about 20 minutes. I think pick up a bottle of wine at that Oddbins across the road to go with dinner.

We apologise for any inconvenience

Sign in Kings Cross Station:

"Due to the footie, you may be asked to exit up the stairs opposite. This is a vain attempt to keep the station open."

When this city's transport isn't driving me insane, it really makes me laugh.

Not a snow day

As I walked out my front door this morning, it was snowing. Hard. Really, properly snowing. As my bus inched down Crouch Hill towards Finsbury Park station, I contemplated - admittedly with a fair amount of excitement - that if the snow continued for more than an hour or so I'd really have to go home from work because who knew if my bus would continue to run.

Go home after an hour's work on a Friday. That would really have sucked.

Alas, it didn't happen. The snow turned to rain, then nothing, and then as I was making my way home from the office to snow once more.

So instead of having a day at home surfing the net, I spent a day at work surfing the net. Home is more comfortable, with better clothes and tea.

----------------------------------

In honour of the seasonal insanity next weekend in the shapes of little red hearts, I present you with the following:

Nihilist Love Poem
Alamir

You looked pleasing like girls often do,
Does it matter why I approached you?
It could have been the weather
or just the way I grew up.
But if our personalities can be tolerated
...And you're on the pill
We should both have sex
Before we both end up dead,
and regret not doing so.

An unexpected extension to the weekend

Well now.




This is what it looks like outside my bedroom window at the moment.


This is outside the kitchen.


Since all the buses in London have been shut down, the second of the two Underground lines that I take to work is completely not running, I think that this:


Pretty much sums up what I'm going to be doing with my day today.

Reading in public

On London’s transport network, you read over people’s shoulders. Everyone does it, you’re packed too closely together not to read the interesting-looking story about the two criminals who were escaping while hand-cuffed together, went either side of a pole and then slammed face-first into eachother (not the smartest tools in the shed). Or you’re trying to figure out name and author of the book you’ve now read four pages of between Kings Cross and Edgeware Road because you now care what happens to one of the characters. Or there are the other things. Reports, someone’s email about dinner off their Blackberry (because you don’t really want to read it, but can’t look away because there is no where else to look unless you’re staring at someone, and that’s not allowed).

And then, then there are mornings like this one, where you casually sweep your eyes across what the guy in front of you is reading, and realise that it’s a letter.

It’s at least several pages long, as the woman (and you know it’s a woman, the handwriting has loops and just looks feminine) has considerately numbered the pages, at the top, with each number in a small circle so it is clearly visible and so that the reader can easily keep them in order. Because this isn’t just any letter, it’s one of those letters.

The letter where you’re saying all the things that you can’t say in person, that hurt too much, or you simply can’t get out, or you think that saying it in writing will somehow make what you’re saying easier to bear for the person reading it. Or maybe you’ve just written it in a letter because you can’t watch the face of the person you wrote the letter for crumble or morph into fury or remain indifferent one more time.

It’s like a train wreck. I know that it’s intensely personal, as he turns the pages his hand is visibly beginning to shake (or maybe that’s because I’ve been watching him for a while now), but I’m now caught up and can’t look away. There are phrases like ‘I’ve tried to explain’, ‘I’m sorry, but’, and ‘I just can’t do this anymore’.

He’s reading this on the Tube. Surrounded by hundreds of people. He’s got to know that someone is reading it as well as him, he can’t have lived in this city and taken the Tube every day and not know that someone around him is reading this letter along with him. Maybe he’s doing it because if he reads it in public he won’t allow himself to fall apart, and he has a whole work day to get through before he can do that. Or maybe he just needs to not feel completely alone at the end, where she says that she’s not going to be there any more. I keep glancing from the letter to the sliver I can see of his face, straining to see his reflection in the window of the carriage.

He reaches the end, carefully reorders the pages, and painstakingly folds it and gently puts it back into the envelope it came in before tucking it into his bag. Then he leans his head against the window, for just a second, and it’s like in that one second he’s trying to shove it all down inside him, because when you get a letter like that you simply can’t leave it until later – and that’s really why he was reading it on the Tube. His entire body is tense. Then his shoulders slump, his head comes back up, he’s blinking furiously, and he disappears into the crowds at Kings Cross.

Random Wednesday, a day late.

Random things, following a theme. Except the last one.

1. I always read the ‘missing connections’ bit in the London Paper, when I get one (they don’t hand them out by my Tube stop, so it’s a hit-and-miss thing), just on the chance that one will be about me. I also write them, but never send them in. I don’t know what I’d do if one actually was about me, but I read them just in case.

2. This is currently my favourite comic. Right now, this particular strip has been giving me food for thought, and now I have the urge to go up to random people and ask if they like flying kites. Alternatively, and much more in keeping with the taboo of talking to strangers in public, I was thinking of making two buttons to stick on my bag. One that says ‘xkcd’ and the second saying ‘Do you like kites?’

3. One minute, three seconds.

This week that I am having

Well, I have to say.

When the universe wants to screw with you, it certain excels at making everything happen at the same time.

After my fun-filled journey home on Tuesday, King's Cross Station was helpfully closed again yesterday night. Apparently, I am not allowed to get home before approximately 19.30. This is enjoyable for me, especially on days like today when my boss called in sick and I'm on deadline. Meaning that there are four different people who think that I should be concentration exclusively on their publication.

The lowest point of the day was when I was standing in front of the photocopier, after having pressed the 'print' button for the fifth time, and a small voice at the back of my head started screaming 'I will CUT you!' I thought that it might be an idea to go home and just start drinking.

So, on the Thursday of this week I am having, that is what I have done. Assisted by the purchase (by someone else, because as per usual I have approximately 23p to my name until payday) of pizza and an excellent bottle of Beaujolie, I am well and truly on my way to starting the weekend.

Thank god.

That was a record, even for you

Dear TfL,

Very rarely while living in this hugely crowded city do I have the urge to just start screaming ‘FUCK!’ over again over again at the top of my lungs in a public place, but you’ve managed it again. Really, you’ve got a rare talent.

Somehow, the two hours it took me to get home today just seem to be getting to me a bit.

I was fine with the severe delays on the Hammersmith and City line, even though yesterday there had been severe delays on the Victoria line (Because nothing is as fun for me as standing at an awkward angle for ten minutes while being told that we’re being held on the platform and you think the guy sat in front of you is imagining what you look like without your clothes on). I was fine, standing out on the platform in the freezing cold for 20 minutes, waiting. I was even okay for the first two stops, until that guy stood behind me started grabbing my ass in as casual a way as he could manage.

And then, Tfl, we arrived at King’s Cross. Now usually this is a clusterfuck of epic proportions anyway, but today, oh, today was special. Today, we got routed out of the station back up to the main entrance, and had to go around for some reason that, as per the usual, was not told to us. Then, bouncing off each other like thousands of balls trying to fit through a space that only allows five balls through at a time, I shuffled towards the barriers in an attempt to have my ass grabbed on the Victoria line.

However, it was at this point that the lights started flashing and the lovely automated voice came on the speaker telling everyone to leave the station immediately due to a state of emergency. So, the thousands of balls turned around and tried to quickly fit through an opening that let out 20 balls at a time instead of five. I have full confidence that if there really was an emergency, I’d be blown to bits in the time that it took me to traverse the approximately 100 feet to get out of the station.

From there, Tfl, it was a hop, skip and a jump home – if you count the four buses I couldn’t get on, because everyone who usually takes the Tube was trying to take a bus, and then the one I had to claw my way on to that was actually going to the right place, the 30 minutes bus ride, fighting my way through the Arsenal supporters because I needed to get to the other side of Finsbury Park station and there was a match on, and then standing in the longest queue I have ever seen in the last 11 months for the W7 as a hop, skip and a jump.

I am going to go and drink my gin and tonic, which is at least half gin, now, because if I don’t I might just walk straight up to you in the less than 12 hours I have before I have to use your insane services again and set you on fire.

Sincere Regards,
B

Two things

Two things, people.

1. It is snowing. Not just a little bit, but it's been snowing for at least the last 2 hours in London.
2. This doesn't happen. IT DOESN'T HAPPEN!!!!

It's that time of year again

This morning, I woke up and it was gray and dark. I went out of my flat to wait for the bus, and it was gray and dark. I got to Finsbury Park, and it was still gray and dark. Got off at Royal Oak: gray and dark. I've written about the British winter before, but I don't ever thing I'll stop being surprised by just quite how dark and how gray it gets in a city that is normally depressingly gray and dark.

Now I've got six months of this crap to look forward to. Joy.

Hmm.

Dear Victoria Line,

What the fuck was up with you last night? Seriously, we’re going to have to begin re-evaluating our relationship if this is the way you continue to behave.

I’ve been understanding since February, when we started seeing each other on a regular basis. I’ve understood your need for upgrades, and have backed off and found other lines to take on those weekends that you just needed time for yourself. I’ve wrapped my head around your early nights from Monday to Thursday, because you’ve been feeling a little bit off lately. I even know that you’ve been seeing other people on those nights and weekends that we’re not together, and I’m not upset. I know that you just need something that I can’t give you.

But yesterday, not only was there a signal failure in the morning but then, then you had a broken rail during the evening rush hour. A signalling failure is no ones fault, it happens to all the other lines too, but a broken rail? What have you been doing all this time, with your evenings and weekends? I thought we agreed to this break so that you could sort out your problems, and come back to me more put together and dependable? I ended up on that tourist-loving Piccadilly Line, man-whore that it is, smashed into the armpit of someone that desperately needed a bath and trying not to gag. Is that really how you want to end things between us?

I’m sorry to say this to you, but if this behaviour continues… I don’t know what I’m going to do. Please, for the sake of both of us, get your act together.

More than a bit tired of it,
me

Ways to tell it’s June in London

1. The weather wildly fluctuates between around 26’ (I think that’s around 78F) and 10’ (maybe around 50?).

2. It’s inadvisable to leave your house without all of the following:
- Jumper/light coat
- Umbrella
- Water bottle in case tube is warm
- Sunscreen
Should you leave any of these at home, the weather will change depending on which you forgot. No umbrella? It’ll pour down rain. No jumper or coat? The wind will blow as though a hurricane is about to hit.

3. Blindingly white legs at every turn.

4. The second the sun emerges, the parks will instantly be filled by overweight, middle-aged men without shirts and women who have bodies you want to kill them for wearing bikinis.

5. Sunglasses. Regardless of actual sun. It’s summer, and therefore sunglasses must be worn.

6. People beginning to express a confused desire to drink Pimm’s and lemonade.

7. The profound fight my body has with pollen, wherein my body always loses. I think it gives up to easily. We’re not currently talking.

----------------------------------

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a far better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
--the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for eachother: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

- ee cummings

The funniest thing I said all day

How English men hit on you:

"Ummm, ah...I was...um...thinking...ah...perhaps...maybe...would you....um...I HAVE COFFEE!!!!!

THERE IS COFFEE UPSTAIRS!!!! MAYBE YOU WOULD LIKE TO DRINK SOME!!!"

Back with a vengence

Winter has returned.

It came back at around 2 am when the very large tree (usually containing irritatingly chipper bird) slammed against my bedroom window, causing me to sit bolt upright in bed and shriek. Then the heavens opened, and all I heard for the next four hours while attempting desperately to sleep was someone clearly throwing bucket after bucket of water against my window. The tree also felt the need to say hello, to make sure that I knew it was there, always just as I was finally getting back to sleep. Then, right before my alarm was due to go off, irritatingly chipper bird decided that he really, seriously, needed to greet the day. In gale force winds. In the pouring down rain.

Well. At least one of us was excited when it went from blackish-gray to lighter-gray.

Spring

Why, oh why, do people run for the W7 in Finsbury Park? I can understand if it's 2.30 am and it's the last bloody one because the other bus took too damn long from central London and OH MY GOD it's taken you two hours to get from Piccadilly to Finsbury Park, but at 5.45 pm on a Thursday? When there is a queue of four, not just one bus but four buses, why is there a need to shove me out of your way to sprint for the bus? There are FOUR OF THEM! You will make it home before the wolves come out to hunt you!

----------------------------------

who knows if the moon's
a balloon, coming out of a keen city
in the sky--filled with pretty people?
(and if you and i should

get into it, if they
should take me and take you into their balloon,
why then
we'd go up higher with all the pretty people

than houses and steeples and clouds:
go sailing
away and away sailing into a keen
city which nobody's ever visited, where

always
it's
Spring)and everyone's
in love and flowers pick themselves

- e. e. cummings

The next station is!! Russell Square!!

Getting out of work yesterday after an almost entirely horrible day, I mentally prepared myself for the crazy that is the Tube during rush hour. Getting on at Holborn, my iPod was helpfully playing 'How Much Difference' by Pearl Jam. If you ever want to be so depressed by the time you get down the many escalators that you want to commit suicide on the tracks, listen to this song while being on the Tube after a crappy day.

I know it's because London is so large, and there are just so many people crammed into a tiny space (especially on public transport), but no one sees anyone else here. There's a particular etiquette in London that probably only exists in large cities. I can practially be kissing someone on the Tube, making Dirty Dancing look like a church picnic, and absolutely no eye contact will be made. An occasional mumbled 'Sorry' might spontaneously erupt from anyone in this situation (after all, they are British), but everyone just brushes it off. It's crazy.

The entire day was redeemed when, after cramming myself into the six inches of space free, I looked up at the scrolling sign that says what station is next. It was malfunctioning. It made me laugh, for some unknown reason. Yay, London.