Day 243: I Stop Whining About London (Which Is Rubbish), And Suggest Something Less Boring Instead

Chewing my lip on the way back from Oxford Street to Barnes, I started composing a post in my head. It was mainly about how rubbish London is (yet again), and was going to include the following exchange with a waitress in the cafe in Heal's:

Me: Could I have a menu?

She looks at me as if I have asked her for a cockring made of gold pulled in a tiny cart by a unicorn.

Her: A .... MENU?
Me: Yes. A menu.
Her: (Long silence.) A... menu. Yes.

And the one with the lady in M&S.

Me: Do you have this coat in a size (x - surprisingly small, mind!)
Her: No.
Me: None at all?
Her: No. And don't ask me to order it. No point.
Me: OK.

And the cab driver.

Me: Hello. Could you take me to Barnes?
Him: I suppose so.

And then I thought, no! There is no point cocking on about how awful London is anymore. Most people know all the reasons it's rubbish, if they think it's rubbish. If they like it they either live in Chelsea or were born in Lincoln and still think it's glamourous; that, or they really DO make use of London's "vibrant cultural life". (My tally of experiences of London's "vibrant cultural life" last year: Theatre: 2; Cinema: 10; Gigs: 4; Restaurants: c. 15, total visits 50; Clubs: 0; Pubs: 4, total visits 4,321; weekends out of London: 20; weeks out of London: c. 8; Art things: 20).

But enough! There is something nice and useful to think about, so I shall turn my mind to that instead.

Dear Mike, everyone's favourite Troubled Diva, is doing a jolly good thing. I am utterly delighted by his idea (send in a post that's funny; it turns into a book which is published by Lulu; book gets sold for Comic Relief). You must go and read all about it IMMEDIATELY to find out more. You may want to have a go at it yourself, for heaven's sake! But if you do it yourself or don't do it yourself, one fact remains clear: when the book comes out, you must buy it in many copies.

I am going to send in a post. But I am worried, for the things I think are funny make most other people throw up in their mouths a bit. If you can remember ever laughing at anything on this blog, even in a kind of passive way whilst re-adjusting yourself down your trousers and smoking a pipe, please let me know what it was. That way, not only will I have a post to submit, but I will be able to absolve myself of all responsibility when people read it and go: "that's not funny. That's cock."

Pip pip!

Day 241: I Am Back In Blighty

A scuffle at Schipol airport involving a tin of Roka Cheese Crispies is resolved with an explanation, a ruffle to the hair and a squeeze; it is not really about the crispies, but about Montreal being 3,300 miles away from where I live. A BMI flight to London is boarded; separate rows are taken; I sit next to a woman with enormous teeth who does not speak, but grins widely and looks at my ears. I read The Daily Mail, having encouraged a pathologist to do the same. "Read it", I bark. "It is fucking awful. It is one of the many things I hate about my country. It is the newspaper equivalent of Touched by an angel, but with politics in it." I do an impersonation of an Irish angel for a bit. "I'd forgotten about the hats", says the pathologist, looking at the stewardess.

We land. I tell the pathologist that BMI is better than SleazyJet or RyanAir. He is not familiar with the work of either, so cannot agree or disagree. Suddenly the ribbon on sticks parts and there is a sign that says TRANSFERS. We stop. "Bye then", he says, scientifically. I am not scientific, so I go a bit hot. "I'm going now", I say, and go. The pathologist goes left to Canada and I go straight on to London. My nose stings and my left eye runs quite a lot. Something feels not right any more.

I get on the Heathrow Express and pay £29 return for the privilege of travelling their much-trumpeted 15 minutes into Paddington. (Equivalent train journey in Amsterdam: under 4 Euro.) London is full of idiots, as usual. It is dirty and full of noise and advertising and confusion and stuff. Five tube lines are broken, and three people ask me for money. At Brixton everyone stands still in the middle of the street looking at bits of paper and driving their baby buggies up my legs; Iceland smells of wee. It is impossible to think or breathe or be. I get the bus up the hill; mainly there is shouting and shopping bags. My flat is exactly the same as it was six weeks ago. I pick up four books, two photographs, three dresses, two pairs of shoes and a bear, get in my car and drive from Brixton to Barnes, which takes an hour.

London's rubbish. If people disagree, I usually discover that they're not from here originally. Whatever they say, they think it's a bit good, in the same way that people suspect smoking is a bit good. I am from here, but I think it's rubbish and I don't want to live here anymore. And it doesn't really matter why I don't want to be here, even though there are probably many excellent reasons: I just don't like it and never really have.

But it is not that simple! There are Ramifications! It is all very well not wanting to be somewhere, but that means one must be somewhere else! It is head-hurty and so instead, I shall think of yesterday morning, when I cycled about the place, went to the Botanical Gardens in Amsterdam, looked a pigeon (called Fat Pigeon), drank pretty coffee and ate splendid cake. (And a biscuit.) I shall worry another day.

Day 240: I Have Been Otherwise Engaged

It has been touch and go of late, what with clients (perfidious wretches!), a Dinner (at which Monkeymother and Monkeyfather met a French Canadian self-haircutting pathologist and conducted themselves reasonably well, despite asking if he really DID cut his own hair), and the wretched disappointment of going to see Queen Beatrix for tea and finding her absent "due to circumstances" (as demonstrated in this astonishingly bad photograph):















I am returning briefly to Blighty this weekend, for I am staying in the Amsterdam until the end of April and must collect my Barbara Cartland novels and bathing suits. Happily, as there is nothing to do in Britain apart from eat toast, read tabloid newspapers and watch re-runs of the X-Factor on ITV3, I will be writing the posts until my tiny monkey hands explode. But in the meantime, I have had an Idea.

Look me in my monkey eyes and tell me that you would not buy (with your own money), a book called "Biscuits I Got Free With My Coffee In Amsterdam". Here is an exclusive sneaky-preview! Enjoy it, my friends; see what you can infer about an establishment from looking at its biscuits! And can YOU guess my favourite biscuit so far? I bet you can! (No gags about numbers of cups of coffee I drink, if you please! I am the daughter of Monkeymother, who drinks a pint of espresso every morning to counteract the effects of the previous night's absinthe.)

Day 230: I Am Speaking A New Kind Of English!

Hello my friends! So, some of you may know about the Esperanto - it was a somewhat awkward language made for the Europeans to speak with each other, if you do not know! But there is no point to the Esperanto, for if you are working in a multi-lingual officebuilding, mainly also with Dutch people in it, you are learning a new kind of English which is like this, and also is like this!

When you are writing documents, always you are putting slightly too many words in it like this. And if you have lost your bicycle or indeed your pencil, you will ask where she is. And then also when you are writing electronic messages, suddenly you will include strange big words that have not been used in England since the early Victorian years, for example the word 'obfuscate' or indeed also 'handpuppet' and 'moreover'. Sometimes you will be using the metaphor in a confident but perhaps wrong way and will be finding that after some of the consideration, you are going to hell in a handbasket, throwing in the trowel and also caught between the devil and a hard place.

Sometimes you will go up to the English people and say "what is this word, pigeonhole? Is this a sexjoke?". They will make you try Marmite and you will say, "oh you English and your Marmite and your tea!", and the Englishperson will then make a tirade for over one and twenty hours about how the foreign people cannot make tea, and how it is disgusting how the Dutch people smoke the cigarettes and eat the cheese all the time all on their bicycles and how the French smell of the garlic and how the Spanish are lazy and also the Italians speak with their hands and the Germans have no sense of humour.

And then the next day the English person will be in the shop in your country, which is not theirs, and they will not know even how to say "hello" in Dutch (or French, or Italian, or any other country in which they are making the visit) and they will just speak a bit more loudly, saying SPEAK ENGLISH?, without even one look of shame, and then you will think, why do you think you have permissions to laugh at the way I say "ginormous", when you do not even know how to say "thank you" in my language?

Day 228: I Hear Something In The Radiator

I have been working. When I have not been working, I have been drinking dark beer in dark bars, telling twenty three-year-olds that they have no business liking the Stone Roses, and arm-wrestling impertinent giants.

When I have not been doing that, I have been constructing elaborate plans that involve buying a pony to keep in our office garden. And when I have not been doing that, I have been escorting my freshly-married friend around the canals of Amsterdam. "Where ARE we?", she has squeaked endlessly all weekend. "IT ALL LOOKS THE SAME". Poor thing!

But mostly I have been working. And tomorrow, as I must go to Parma with a Roman with a broken printer, I have been in the office writing things and printing them out on the printer on the floor above.

I didn't really mind going to work this afternoon. I thought it would be quite pleasant; after all, it is only two minutes' dangerous cycle ride from the IKEA showroom in which I live, and the journey to work involves scenes like this:



Unless it is dark, in which case it looks like this:



Unless it is dark and I have had too much dark beer, in which case it looks like this:



The office was jolly. There were some young people in it listening to music and eating biscuits. I did my work, and then I did some more. Two hours passed, and then three. As I entered the fourth, the last young person left. "Do you know how to lock the building up?", she asked kindly, shaking her head in pity. "Yes!", I yelped, aware that it was DARK and RAINING outside and that I would - if she left - be ALL ALONE in a FOUR STOREY SEVENTEENTH CENTURY MANSION ON A DARK CANAL IN AMSTERDAM.

"Don't forget to lock the doors!". "How?", I squeaked. "Press the button next to the desk in Reception. All the doors will close automatically. Then do the code, leave, and lock the door. Good luck!"

"Good luck?", I muttered to myself as I heard the front door slam twelve miles away. Something rumbled in the wall. I remembered the nice lady telling me about the central heating. I banged on my keyboard with my monkey paws for approximately eight minutes. Then a groan on the floor above! I remembered the nice lady telling me about the loose window. I did some more banging with my monkey paws, this time faster than ever before in my life. A ping in the computer: the things had printed on the floor above.

The stairs in our building are wide, and made for seventeenth century merchant millionaires to impress people with, not for porky ladies to sprint up. I ran up them two at a time. The lift creaked, but did not move. The window banged again. I put the paper in the machine. The things came out. I ran downstairs. A light went off of its own accord!

I snatched up the papers and then dropped them all over the floor. They spread out everywhere, all one hundred of them. By now, I could hardly breathe; the radiators were murmuring on my floor, and shouting on the floor above. Something was creaking; the lift groaned again. My monkey heart stood still. I ran for it.

I fumbled for the button. "Magnetic doors", it said. I pushed it and all over the building, up and down the four floors, doors slammed of their own accord. Could I remember the code? Yes I could. Could I put it in without setting the alarm off? Yes. And No! In and out and in and out I went. I set the alarm off; I stopped it; I re-set it; I left and stepped into the freezing rain.

Glorie the bicycle had fallen over! Her basket was askew. My hands were freezing and Glorie's lock stuck! It kept raining on my head. I dropped my papers; I dropped my bag; I dropped my keys, and then my lights. And then finally, I was astride Glorie, pushing off into the night. I looked briefly back up at the office. There was something there, lurking in a third floor window.

I am not working at the weekend EVER AGAIN.