Dear Bubble Tea Shop Down The Road
We love you. I mean, we really, really, really love you. My best friend and I live together and your Bubble teas are always our favourite little treat. We celebrate with a bubble tea, we cheer ourselves up with a bubble tea, we get a bubble tea for strength and courage before a tough week. Bubble tea is therapy.
So we have both had a very tough week due to crappy work dramas and hideous bosses, and we were so miserable we made a deal, I would go and get us a bubble tea and she would go and get ingredients for a wintery comforting mash-and-stuff dinner. I looked on your website, saw you were open until 6:30, and argued hard with my difficult boss to let me go at 5:30 to make sure I'd make it. After I promised to WORK CHRISTMAS, he let me go. CHRISTMAS.
I negotiated about a billion people on the tube, ran to change lines at Morgate, negotiated about another billion people, this time all sneezing on me, and then literally VAULTED over the ticket barricades (while placing my Oyster on the reader briefly, like an Jason-Bourne-esque free-runner) and ran as fast as I could with work bags and tourists and shopping and signs and buildings and cars all conspiring to occupy the very space I needed to be free in order to get to YOU, Bubble Tea Shop Down The Road.
Breathless, I ran up the little stone steps and at exactly 6:11PM, I smiled and put my hands up against your bright, warm glass doors, beyond which lay the little counter full of lovely lovely bubbles, and our bubble teas, our bubble teas that were going to make it all okay.
And you were CLOSED, Bubble Tea Shop, CLOSED. the girl at the counter looked at my confused face and shook her head. I tried to tell her through the glass, 'But it's not 6:30 yet! but.. But it's not 6:30 yet!!!' she shook her face again, (this time with an apology face it must be said). I stood there, I think I may even have started to crinkle my chin into an almost-cry, 'but... but.. but... ' I was CRUSHED. I nearly did cry to be honest, which makes me feel very, very silly as it is just Bubble tea, but deep down inside we all know some days, no Bubble tea when you really want, nay NEED, a Bubble tea, is the MOST devastating thing that can happen to a person.
Bubble Tea Shop Down The Road, please don't say you're open until 6:30 if you aren't. You are crushing people's spirits, diminishing lives, devastating our days.
All we wanted in the world yesterday, was a Bubble tea. :(
- FirstworldproblemsHQ, North London chapter
NB. I may have had my foot on the exaggerator and some or all of the information in this email may or may not be in there for the lols, but we really were quite disappointed, disproportionally so as we have access to unlimited clean running water, food, and the regular absence of torture, war and disease, but anyhoo.
Wednesday 14 November 2012
Friday 17 August 2012
Hungover like a bastard
To this day it is still eye-wateringly shocking how completely wrecked i feel when I've gotten drunk the night before. I feel like someone has stretched my skin over a drum kit and is trying to play a techno track with spanners and a wet dog.
Nothing feels this bad, nothing. I am covered in a fine film of condensation, I have the shakes, I can't seem to put my spine into any shape other than a question mark and my teeth have been replaced with uneven squares of velour.
Unlike everyone else on this planet, I'm also cursed with the ability to remember everything about the night before. Others get to blackout and be blissfully oblivious to every single obnoxious and inappropriate thing they did, while I have to grapple with a perfect memory of the various and colourful examples of why nobody should ever be my friend.
Loud unholy glass-shattering screeches, inappropriate (and uninvited) divulging of very personal information, sharing of gossip and secrets that frankly I'm not entirely sure I haven't fabricated on the spot for the lols, brutally honest opinions better given over a long table opposite a therapist, and boring rants about the state of public transport in London. Urghhh. It's mortifying enough to remember with terrible clarity how hateful I can be, but to remember how boring as well?
I just want to DIE. Please, someone take pity, bullet, brain, stat. At the minimum throw some mash and gravy my way. Hopefully I'll choke to death.
After I send off my seven-part apology thesis to absolutely everyone who was at the pub last night, and possibly those who weren't, I am going to see if I can give myself type-2 diabetes by necking the highest GI foods I can get my clammy hands on. I might get a double whopper with cheese and replace the buns with Crispy Cremes.
Which brings me to my next point; how to survive the rest of the day. I am under no illusion that I will not be able to carry out any kind of blagging, I am too hungover to even pretend to pretend to work. Nobody will be fooled. People will just shake their head at me and say, pathetic, why are you insulting us with your feeble attempts to suggest that you have a modicum of give-a-fuck today, stop it, immediately. We can see straight through you. Seriously. Your skin is actually translucent you're so dehydrated, we can see all your veins and flesh and blood vessels and lies.
I should probably face this with some dignity if I can. Try to fall with grace. If I am upfront and honest maybe I can be forgiven and allowed to wallow in my hangover, I'm aiming for a 'there's nothing we can do to her that she's not done to herself' sort of vibe. I fess up. Nobody has mercy, instead they retaliate by booking me into back to back meetings from 4:30.
At lunch my colleague takes pity on me and takes me to the burrito place, possibly the only thing that can break down the lipids of shame and regret inside my soul. On the way back I bite into my burrito and as sour cream and re fried beans squirt out and into my ears and hair, we run into my ex boss, who did not like me and actually made my leaving card herself, with the word 'Finally' in bold and font 72 letters embossed on the front. Seeing that I am defenceless, my colleague proceeds to introduce himself as my carer. I fake-smile through the indignation and guacamole and carry on, there's absolutely nothing worse that can happen today.
Back at my desk and the cool laminate is irresistible, so I rest my face upon it. The last thing I see is my computer clock ticking over to 3pm. Some time later, I hear the sound of Styrofoam squeaking and I pry open my eyes to find white is all around me, like a blizzard. I shoot upright and the violence of the motion topples hundreds of light white angles and squares - the tower of packaging that's been carefully built on me while I was sleeping falls to the carpet like a derelict building being felled.
after cleaning it all up (while crying), 4:30 finally comes around and I go to the meetings. When I say go, I mean drag my carcass along the carpet slowly, using nothing but my eyebrows. Nobody is there, it was a practical joke. Thank Fuck.
To end this pointless story (you think you were bored? think of me!) I will leave you with this: alcohol, no matter how nice and fun it is at the time, is not your friend. It is a backstabbing prick of a thing that wants nothing more than your total and complete demise, for no reason other than sport and its own entertainment. Limit spending time with this absolute bastard to three, four times a week, max.
Disclaimer: I may or may not have had my foot on the exaggerator with some or all of the details in this blog entry.
Nothing feels this bad, nothing. I am covered in a fine film of condensation, I have the shakes, I can't seem to put my spine into any shape other than a question mark and my teeth have been replaced with uneven squares of velour.
Unlike everyone else on this planet, I'm also cursed with the ability to remember everything about the night before. Others get to blackout and be blissfully oblivious to every single obnoxious and inappropriate thing they did, while I have to grapple with a perfect memory of the various and colourful examples of why nobody should ever be my friend.
Loud unholy glass-shattering screeches, inappropriate (and uninvited) divulging of very personal information, sharing of gossip and secrets that frankly I'm not entirely sure I haven't fabricated on the spot for the lols, brutally honest opinions better given over a long table opposite a therapist, and boring rants about the state of public transport in London. Urghhh. It's mortifying enough to remember with terrible clarity how hateful I can be, but to remember how boring as well?
I just want to DIE. Please, someone take pity, bullet, brain, stat. At the minimum throw some mash and gravy my way. Hopefully I'll choke to death.
After I send off my seven-part apology thesis to absolutely everyone who was at the pub last night, and possibly those who weren't, I am going to see if I can give myself type-2 diabetes by necking the highest GI foods I can get my clammy hands on. I might get a double whopper with cheese and replace the buns with Crispy Cremes.
Which brings me to my next point; how to survive the rest of the day. I am under no illusion that I will not be able to carry out any kind of blagging, I am too hungover to even pretend to pretend to work. Nobody will be fooled. People will just shake their head at me and say, pathetic, why are you insulting us with your feeble attempts to suggest that you have a modicum of give-a-fuck today, stop it, immediately. We can see straight through you. Seriously. Your skin is actually translucent you're so dehydrated, we can see all your veins and flesh and blood vessels and lies.
I should probably face this with some dignity if I can. Try to fall with grace. If I am upfront and honest maybe I can be forgiven and allowed to wallow in my hangover, I'm aiming for a 'there's nothing we can do to her that she's not done to herself' sort of vibe. I fess up. Nobody has mercy, instead they retaliate by booking me into back to back meetings from 4:30.
At lunch my colleague takes pity on me and takes me to the burrito place, possibly the only thing that can break down the lipids of shame and regret inside my soul. On the way back I bite into my burrito and as sour cream and re fried beans squirt out and into my ears and hair, we run into my ex boss, who did not like me and actually made my leaving card herself, with the word 'Finally' in bold and font 72 letters embossed on the front. Seeing that I am defenceless, my colleague proceeds to introduce himself as my carer. I fake-smile through the indignation and guacamole and carry on, there's absolutely nothing worse that can happen today.
Back at my desk and the cool laminate is irresistible, so I rest my face upon it. The last thing I see is my computer clock ticking over to 3pm. Some time later, I hear the sound of Styrofoam squeaking and I pry open my eyes to find white is all around me, like a blizzard. I shoot upright and the violence of the motion topples hundreds of light white angles and squares - the tower of packaging that's been carefully built on me while I was sleeping falls to the carpet like a derelict building being felled.
after cleaning it all up (while crying), 4:30 finally comes around and I go to the meetings. When I say go, I mean drag my carcass along the carpet slowly, using nothing but my eyebrows. Nobody is there, it was a practical joke. Thank Fuck.
To end this pointless story (you think you were bored? think of me!) I will leave you with this: alcohol, no matter how nice and fun it is at the time, is not your friend. It is a backstabbing prick of a thing that wants nothing more than your total and complete demise, for no reason other than sport and its own entertainment. Limit spending time with this absolute bastard to three, four times a week, max.
Disclaimer: I may or may not have had my foot on the exaggerator with some or all of the details in this blog entry.
Thursday 16 August 2012
"I couldn't love you any less": Ode to the South East Londoner
I have gone to the considerable effort and determination to secure myself a South East Londoner.
Everyone should have one. Tough but fair, loving but not afraid to tell you when you're being an absolute wanker. Also unable to sugarcoat, or indeed keep to themselves, any opinion whatsoever they have on any topic, regardless of their personal knowledge levels on the matter. It is a graceful and rich dance of blagging, beautiful to watch. Apart from the drop in the quality of my enunciation (that got an actual lol from my friends when i moaned about it - apparently my Australian accent disqualifies me from criticising dropped tees and silent aitches), most days, i am so irritatingly content that i want to punch myself in the throat.
He does have some odd habits - he loves cunty shoes, and has quite the collection. The shoe equivalent of a kick to the face, one pair looks like someone took a crocodile head, emptied it, stitched it up and cut a hole in the tops for feet. He also likes to keep bags. All sorts of bags. I think he convinced himself long ago that he would just let them build up until they reached a can-be-bothered number, when he would eventually take them to the charity shop/recycling, but that day is yet to come. Maybe before the nuclear winter. Also loves (when i say loves, i mean hoards) trousers in primary colours, lairy shirts, dubious plaid jackets, cable-knit jumpers, sloppy hoodies, and gym gear. (Gym gear without a gym membership is actually chav gear, i keep telling him)(not that i can throw doughnuts at battered savs.)
So with all this stuff, when he moved in, we had to upgrade the wardrobe. A paltry two-door pine affair that simply wasn't going to cut it - the lairy shoes alone need a room to themselves, if not for their number, but for their offensiveness. The poor pine wardrobe would never have survived; once filled with such hideousness, it would have trembled and yawed, both doors bursting open in a soundless scream, before splintering into millions of wood chips down a materialising wormhole straight to hell.
Not wanting to spend a lot of money, we chose to buy one from Littlewoods. It looked so nice and solid in the picture, heroically standing up, storing clothes and whatnot, behind three fake mahogany doors. It looked like a safe and loving haven for a shared life, like someone's kindly dad. We bought it. It was discounted, 260 licks.
It got delivered in the first week he moved in. We unpacked it with gusto, both of us determined and patient, an unsaid echo of our attitude to our new commitment. It came in two packages, together weighing a hundred kilos.
The first night, the night we had been duped into thinking we might be able to put this together by midnight, we only got as far as labelling all the parts with the numbers itemised in the instructions. There were 107 parts. It was only on the very last part (this is, unfortunately, not a lie for the sake of a good story, it really happened) that we discovered they were already all labelled with tiny little white stickers. When I say little, I mean look at the crescent moon on your thumb nail, write something really important on it like your pin code, then try to get someone else to read it back to you.
After crying for a bit (me crying, and him trembling with rage-induced giggles) we went to bed, determined that tomorrow night would be better.
Night two: we reviewed the instructions before starting, we conscientiously re-reviewed. Finally, we were ready to assemble. You had to put it together on the floor, and then raise it up like an Amish barn, triumphantly and satisfactorily, ready to start your life together, with your barn, your happiness, some sunshine and clothes and stuff.
No. Just.. No. A whole world of no. The frame wouldn't stop flexing every time we put the bottom bit into the top bit. it was one or the other, one would go on and the other would pop out. It was an hour later, after yelling at it, yelling at each other, yelling at ourselves, crying, sighing, starting again, that we finally coordinated our slotting with CERN precision, and finally the top and bottom went on at the same time - and stayed on. The frame was together! We heaved the hundred kilo back-less and door-less frame to about 30 degrees off the floor before we heard the sound of the last oak tree on earth being ripped out from the Amazon rainforest - the bottom physically splintered out of it's joins, the rest of the wardrobe falling back to the carpet with an almighty 'Whoooommmph' which woke up every flatmate we ever had in the history of our lives. We stood there speechless.
The whole thing was a cruel joke, some utter bastard in an ironic industrial design firm somewhere, laughing his/her fucking head off, sold us an impossible dream: the structure physically unable to exist on this planet with physics the way it is. The joins do not, have never, and will never, support the weight of the materials, the entire thing some crazy proposal, like a kid with an umbrella on a carport roof.
We looked at the felled monster and both of us were struck with trepidation. This had somehow become a symbol for our relationship, moving in together, and all that would come of it. If the wardrobe didn't work, what chance did we have? We had to get this wardrobe together and make it work.
Night three: We came home with an electric drill. We came home with nails, brackets, screws, glue. We came home with a glue gun. We bracketed, screwed and power stapled the shit out of that wardrobe. We robustesized that shit. In the end it was more machine than wood. We looked at the abomination. It wasn't going to lean anywhere now motherfucker, not only that, due to the extra hundred or so kilos in reinforcements, it also wasn't going to be moved anywhere either, that fucking thing is staying put for good. When they knock the building down to make way for a sky road in 2075 they'll have to blast this unscathed box sticking out of the rubble with a galactic missile. Nervously, we enrolled the rest of our housemates and we heaved that barn onto its steeled feet, it weighed a ton. But there it stood, triumphantly vertically, unmoving, solid. We'd done it, we'd saved our relationship, we'd raised our barn, we faced a bright future.
My South East Londoner took my hand into both of his, he looked at me, and he said: "I love you so much. I couldn't love you any less."
Wow, the romance. I was sold, I'll keep my South East Londoner.
Post note:
Last Tuesday the main rung collapsed inside the wardrobe. To date we've left it that way and currently keep our clothes folded on a bookshelf.
Everyone should have one. Tough but fair, loving but not afraid to tell you when you're being an absolute wanker. Also unable to sugarcoat, or indeed keep to themselves, any opinion whatsoever they have on any topic, regardless of their personal knowledge levels on the matter. It is a graceful and rich dance of blagging, beautiful to watch. Apart from the drop in the quality of my enunciation (that got an actual lol from my friends when i moaned about it - apparently my Australian accent disqualifies me from criticising dropped tees and silent aitches), most days, i am so irritatingly content that i want to punch myself in the throat.
He does have some odd habits - he loves cunty shoes, and has quite the collection. The shoe equivalent of a kick to the face, one pair looks like someone took a crocodile head, emptied it, stitched it up and cut a hole in the tops for feet. He also likes to keep bags. All sorts of bags. I think he convinced himself long ago that he would just let them build up until they reached a can-be-bothered number, when he would eventually take them to the charity shop/recycling, but that day is yet to come. Maybe before the nuclear winter. Also loves (when i say loves, i mean hoards) trousers in primary colours, lairy shirts, dubious plaid jackets, cable-knit jumpers, sloppy hoodies, and gym gear. (Gym gear without a gym membership is actually chav gear, i keep telling him)(not that i can throw doughnuts at battered savs.)
So with all this stuff, when he moved in, we had to upgrade the wardrobe. A paltry two-door pine affair that simply wasn't going to cut it - the lairy shoes alone need a room to themselves, if not for their number, but for their offensiveness. The poor pine wardrobe would never have survived; once filled with such hideousness, it would have trembled and yawed, both doors bursting open in a soundless scream, before splintering into millions of wood chips down a materialising wormhole straight to hell.
Not wanting to spend a lot of money, we chose to buy one from Littlewoods. It looked so nice and solid in the picture, heroically standing up, storing clothes and whatnot, behind three fake mahogany doors. It looked like a safe and loving haven for a shared life, like someone's kindly dad. We bought it. It was discounted, 260 licks.
It got delivered in the first week he moved in. We unpacked it with gusto, both of us determined and patient, an unsaid echo of our attitude to our new commitment. It came in two packages, together weighing a hundred kilos.
The first night, the night we had been duped into thinking we might be able to put this together by midnight, we only got as far as labelling all the parts with the numbers itemised in the instructions. There were 107 parts. It was only on the very last part (this is, unfortunately, not a lie for the sake of a good story, it really happened) that we discovered they were already all labelled with tiny little white stickers. When I say little, I mean look at the crescent moon on your thumb nail, write something really important on it like your pin code, then try to get someone else to read it back to you.
After crying for a bit (me crying, and him trembling with rage-induced giggles) we went to bed, determined that tomorrow night would be better.
Night two: we reviewed the instructions before starting, we conscientiously re-reviewed. Finally, we were ready to assemble. You had to put it together on the floor, and then raise it up like an Amish barn, triumphantly and satisfactorily, ready to start your life together, with your barn, your happiness, some sunshine and clothes and stuff.
No. Just.. No. A whole world of no. The frame wouldn't stop flexing every time we put the bottom bit into the top bit. it was one or the other, one would go on and the other would pop out. It was an hour later, after yelling at it, yelling at each other, yelling at ourselves, crying, sighing, starting again, that we finally coordinated our slotting with CERN precision, and finally the top and bottom went on at the same time - and stayed on. The frame was together! We heaved the hundred kilo back-less and door-less frame to about 30 degrees off the floor before we heard the sound of the last oak tree on earth being ripped out from the Amazon rainforest - the bottom physically splintered out of it's joins, the rest of the wardrobe falling back to the carpet with an almighty 'Whoooommmph' which woke up every flatmate we ever had in the history of our lives. We stood there speechless.
The whole thing was a cruel joke, some utter bastard in an ironic industrial design firm somewhere, laughing his/her fucking head off, sold us an impossible dream: the structure physically unable to exist on this planet with physics the way it is. The joins do not, have never, and will never, support the weight of the materials, the entire thing some crazy proposal, like a kid with an umbrella on a carport roof.
We looked at the felled monster and both of us were struck with trepidation. This had somehow become a symbol for our relationship, moving in together, and all that would come of it. If the wardrobe didn't work, what chance did we have? We had to get this wardrobe together and make it work.
Night three: We came home with an electric drill. We came home with nails, brackets, screws, glue. We came home with a glue gun. We bracketed, screwed and power stapled the shit out of that wardrobe. We robustesized that shit. In the end it was more machine than wood. We looked at the abomination. It wasn't going to lean anywhere now motherfucker, not only that, due to the extra hundred or so kilos in reinforcements, it also wasn't going to be moved anywhere either, that fucking thing is staying put for good. When they knock the building down to make way for a sky road in 2075 they'll have to blast this unscathed box sticking out of the rubble with a galactic missile. Nervously, we enrolled the rest of our housemates and we heaved that barn onto its steeled feet, it weighed a ton. But there it stood, triumphantly vertically, unmoving, solid. We'd done it, we'd saved our relationship, we'd raised our barn, we faced a bright future.
My South East Londoner took my hand into both of his, he looked at me, and he said: "I love you so much. I couldn't love you any less."
Wow, the romance. I was sold, I'll keep my South East Londoner.
Post note:
Last Tuesday the main rung collapsed inside the wardrobe. To date we've left it that way and currently keep our clothes folded on a bookshelf.
Sunday 5 August 2012
Happylimpics
Can someone open an adult training center where you take useless beanbags of couchfail like me and slowly train to like, do gymnastics? We could have a failympics, it would be totally hilarious.
We could have the women's 10 meter headplant - you run and you run and you run until you clip the ground with the wrong part of your shoe and then it's a matter of staying on your collapsing legs as long as possible. Or the men's 400 meter 'bouncing bollocks', a downhill track not unlike the ski moguls; which they all throw themselves down like they're chasing a wheel of cheese. (Look it up, that one's real, the maniac English.) Slow motion capture of the winner replayed at every opportunity.
All races would be competed drunk or high off one's ass. It would be awesome.
To be perfectly honest, these were the sorts of olympic events i always thought i would rather watch, but having the olympics in london has been pretty special. It's very buzzy out there. I sincerely hope and wish the optimism at least lasts until November - maybe we can make it stretch even until December if we encourage comfort eating and meaningless sex. The approaching winter always makes Londoners so fucking cranky and depressed, it would be grand if, after such an awe-inspiring and national pride-filled summer of elation, we could please just remember that when the sun sets earlier and the wind turns colder and the commute starts to become a bit more of a ball leg. I don't want to see any depressed or aggravated faces until january, at the earliest. Obviously that will preclude me from looking into any reflective surfaces for six months but hey, I'm willing to make that sacrifice.
Stay in a good mood and carry on grinning London.
Friday 27 July 2012
Meh
I know i'm depressed when i start buying lotto tickets. What's money going to do? Give me even more opportunity to buy porchini mushrooms that i will waste in complicated recipes that all turn out a bit like feet on toast.
No, really, this malaise lies in myself. I go through stages of losing appetite for everything, EVEN self destruction loses its appeal. I mean, meh, why bother. Roll the note, snort the drugs. Even alcohol AND prostitutes - what a ball leg. I just feel like sitting in an armchair and rubbing the texture of my jeans for the whole day in a passive manner not unlike a sectioned person. I think it's mild depression, but i'm not sure. It lifts eventually to a more low-grade but persistent level, which i am much more comfortable living with. Chronic yet somehow enjoyable depression.
I don't know if it's me or if it's London, but i suspect the latter. I don't remember being this way in sunny, energetic Sydney. Maybe i was one of those wildly happy australians in denial about how shit things actually do get. London forces authenticity on you.
Tubes clunk around london's underground network with us crumpled into them, silently and politely being tense at each other's breathing, especially if it's through the nose. At least now we have the thousands upon thousands of tourists that are pouring into london by the second for distraction and entertainment. The old fumble to the right side of the escalator chestnut, faces creased from hard-core confusion while reading tube maps, the sheer comedy value of a tourist in everyone's way at Liverpool street on a monday morning. All of us heaping maximum pure hatred and pissed-off tsk sounds on some poor unsuspecting italian person. And all these tourists are duped into thinking this is a summer they can trust. Poor lambs. When the opening ceremony is optimistically promised on outdoor screens on friday (LOCOG again irresponsibly failing to manage expectations) they will be unprepared for the let down, as it will rain, guaranteed.
London is all about learning to be good with a let down. It galvanises you. It makes you embrace it. This is something i swore i'd never do as a new arrival four short years ago; give in to the cynisism. But it lures and it pulls and it gives you comfort in some strange way; for to have low expectations really does make for a better life here. It sounds like a horrific way to live your life and I remember thinking it didn't sound like any kind of life at all, but a veritable litany of let-downs later, i too can take refuge in the fact that nothing ever works out, and that's ok. You settle into it, like a plush armchair made of old black velour.
It is comforting to surrender into the meh, i mean i've totally lost my appetite, i never looked so good in my life. Go on, shrug, expect drab, be indifferent. You'll get a laugh out of how bad things can get and it's very good for the figure. Actually, I think I might go have a drink or two.
Post Note:
I am a total miser misery guts and don't deserve to stand on this soil, the opening ceremony was actually totally amazing.
No, really, this malaise lies in myself. I go through stages of losing appetite for everything, EVEN self destruction loses its appeal. I mean, meh, why bother. Roll the note, snort the drugs. Even alcohol AND prostitutes - what a ball leg. I just feel like sitting in an armchair and rubbing the texture of my jeans for the whole day in a passive manner not unlike a sectioned person. I think it's mild depression, but i'm not sure. It lifts eventually to a more low-grade but persistent level, which i am much more comfortable living with. Chronic yet somehow enjoyable depression.
I don't know if it's me or if it's London, but i suspect the latter. I don't remember being this way in sunny, energetic Sydney. Maybe i was one of those wildly happy australians in denial about how shit things actually do get. London forces authenticity on you.
Tubes clunk around london's underground network with us crumpled into them, silently and politely being tense at each other's breathing, especially if it's through the nose. At least now we have the thousands upon thousands of tourists that are pouring into london by the second for distraction and entertainment. The old fumble to the right side of the escalator chestnut, faces creased from hard-core confusion while reading tube maps, the sheer comedy value of a tourist in everyone's way at Liverpool street on a monday morning. All of us heaping maximum pure hatred and pissed-off tsk sounds on some poor unsuspecting italian person. And all these tourists are duped into thinking this is a summer they can trust. Poor lambs. When the opening ceremony is optimistically promised on outdoor screens on friday (LOCOG again irresponsibly failing to manage expectations) they will be unprepared for the let down, as it will rain, guaranteed.
London is all about learning to be good with a let down. It galvanises you. It makes you embrace it. This is something i swore i'd never do as a new arrival four short years ago; give in to the cynisism. But it lures and it pulls and it gives you comfort in some strange way; for to have low expectations really does make for a better life here. It sounds like a horrific way to live your life and I remember thinking it didn't sound like any kind of life at all, but a veritable litany of let-downs later, i too can take refuge in the fact that nothing ever works out, and that's ok. You settle into it, like a plush armchair made of old black velour.
It is comforting to surrender into the meh, i mean i've totally lost my appetite, i never looked so good in my life. Go on, shrug, expect drab, be indifferent. You'll get a laugh out of how bad things can get and it's very good for the figure. Actually, I think I might go have a drink or two.
Post Note:
I am a total miser misery guts and don't deserve to stand on this soil, the opening ceremony was actually totally amazing.
Monday 2 July 2012
Dear Monday morning
You absolutely suck. You always come too early, you're never nice when you get here except for a precious few times a year, and you bring all your stupid friends with you who just get in the way of me and my weekend.
I wouldn't mind so much if you were nice on the inside, but you're just filled to the brim with preparations for meetings and shit I don't give a fuck about. Long, boring conversations, which nobody wants to have. Everyone hates you. You should know that. There is not one person who looks forward to you. All your stupid friends can fuck off but some of them are ok. Like your hot friend Friday. Friday is everybody's favourite. People are grateful to their dieties when Friday shows up. Thursday's the wingman, Friday's Goose, but he's pretty hot too. Wednesday is their intellectual yet quirky entertaining friend who's done quite a bit of the work. Tuesday is your stupid friend, nearly as much of an asshole as you are, but has better sleep going for it.
You, you're just met with trepidation, or just plain defeat. You should be filled with sleep, and napping, and long lunches, with returns to bed in the afternoon. You should be helping me pay off my sleep debt, not taxing me interest on a sleep mortgage i'm already struggling to pay off. Basically, everytime you come around, i am forced to continue hating you, increasing my desire to destory you once and for all. At this stage i have no firm idea how i will bring about your demise. I'm told it will require large amounts of funds. I also have no firm idea how I will acquire such a pile of cash. I am told the only way to attain this is by having long ones of YOU, and many of them, with no respite!! It is morally reprehensible to me that the way to destroy you is to have to endure you. Right now I can only do the interim right now, small rocket launches at you lasting two weeks here, one week there, long weekend here. But with each attack my power to defeat you is diminished and I end up having to face more of you.
I've been told you're not so bad if your filling is enjoyable, but I can't find any jobs where the chief requirements are naps and eating at gastropubs.
So I will continue hating you, Monday. You suck.
Thursday 28 June 2012
No no... Seriously... What the *actual* fuck is that.
Not many expressions sum up a sentiment like 'what the actual fuck.' It means, fuck me sideways, lookie that. My boss/job/life/best friend/tube compadre\dog\partner has just done something shockingly and permanently alienating to me. They've withdrawn from the endearment bank. And you know what's left? resentment. That's an empty endearment account. It only takes a few credits out each time you make a withdrawal, but eventually it catches up. It's like tube journeys. Let's lump all the other commuters on the tube together as one big Commuter Compadre. Your CC seldom does something cool, like tell you your zip's undone, make way for you, make sure you get the armrest, make sure you get one little inch on the pole to hold on to, makes you feel welcome to put your bag near their feet, lets you read their Metro if you don't have one, yet makes sure they always have their own. But they do all the bad stuff, like getting in your way no matter what you do, making eye contact, breathing on you, breathing on themselves, and then standing close to you, get on while you're trying to get off, get off while you're trying to get on, act like a shower of cunts when all you wanted to do was read over their shoulder... Not let you read your damned paper in peace when they've got nothing to do because they're disorganised little pricks, stop at the turnstiles to look for their pass... All these are withdrawals from the endearment account. Many, many more withdrawals than deposits. The account is in arrears. There is now resentment. That is why you hate your CC. When someone acts like you fed their dog a yorkie bar just because you had the audacity to sit within your allocated seat and a corner of your suit jacket brushed the edge of their paper as you sat down, that's when you say, 'what the actual fuck was that.'
it's a ball, and it's a leg. it doesn't fit.
It's totally hard work to even think of them together. It's a headache trying to make them go. The whole thing is a hassle. It's a ball leg.
That's what I thought people were saying when they were actually saying 'ball ache'. To me, it made a kind of strange sense that these two words together should mean 'a hassle'. And I'm not talking like, when I was ten. I mean until four months ago, when one of my more articulate friends clearly said 'ball ache'. Ache, not leg. I had to say to him, bwahahahaahhahaa don't you mean leg? And as I said it, it dawned on me with terrible clarity; of fucking course it's ball ache. That makes so much more sense, you absolute dumbass. Everyone stopped talking, the deathly silence was a wall of accusation. Accusation I had just failed the lowest IQ test, the one they give to flora. And failed. Miserably.
I had to admit to them all that I thought it was ball leg. People had tears running down their face. Someone said something about me putting on pants in the morning. Someone else compared me to Joey in 'Friends', with his Moo Point. (It's a cow's opinion, it doesn't matter. It's moo.) This means the consensus is that I am essentially as much of an imbecile as Joey. And here I was thinking I was so clever. Do you know what else I've been getting wrong? It's a damp squid. In my defense, what the actual fuck is a squib? Also, it's hear hear, not here here. Thank me later, it's brutal out here, this English.
Anyway, just to taunt me, all my friends now say ball leg instead of ball ache. I mean, they say it even if I'm not there, they've stopped making a point of it to take the piss, it's actually just become part of their vernacular.
I need to get new friends.
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