On a high from visiting the mood-enhancing Ellsworth Kelly exhibition in The Serpentine Gallery (I love galleries all of a sudden), with time to kill on a sunny day and a vague desire for a bitter row about something I don't know or care about much with a total stranger, I thought I'd see what Speaker's Corner looked like up close, as whenever I've been past on the bus it's looked pretty lively. Unfortunately for me, last Saturday afternoon about half past three there was only one person there standing on or anywhere near an upturned crate: a very cranky-looking man with his mouth shut glaring at some tourists who were taking his photo for some reason (I seem to remember that they were Chinese).
We had the following exchange:
Me (feeling all full of springy cheekiness, having noticed that he is looking very pissed indeed): If you're supposed to be one of those statues that doesn't move, you're not doing very well!
Him (scowling like George Monbiot would if he'd just heard that the Government had announced their decision to allow Tesco's to take over Sainsbury's): Piss Off!
Me (shocked): Whaat?!
Him (turning away with despair and contempt grinding his teeth): You're stupid.
Me (still half-hoping for a proper argument, but fearing a row): How do you know that?
At which point he just stared into the middle distance and presumably dreamt of death, or drink, or both.
I might one day write a really long, boring wander around the keyboard containing my theories about addiction, but I'm not much of an expert in this field, I think. But I am starting to realise that I suffer (and suffer) from theory addiction. I also discovered that I really admire pure theorists, people who devote 99.5% of their time to Thinking About Things, and then Talking To People With Similar Or Opposing Ideas, like, you know, Brian Eno, or Momus, but not Bongo off of U2, the Pope or Noam Chomsky. I think I've met two such people recently (they're easy to spot, they wear glasses, presumably because of nights spent reading absolutely everything on a very very long reading list).
(Sorry, when I said I'd met two such people recently, I was meaning the two intellectual types, I haven't met the Pope or any of those other people at all recently. Although I did have a right old chinwag en portugay with Caetano Veloso on Saturday, so, you know, ¡Toma!).
I myself am not any kind of full-time student, alas, or at least not yet. Too, you know, busy with ... stuff. Like ... the gym! Ho ho ho. But I have developed a newfound fascination with hugely ambitious but clearly very insane Modernist-inspired Architecture (I have a kind of love-hate relationship with the Barbican) and a recent interest in town planning. Some one is responsible for the fact that Britain, uniquely for a a post-industrial society, has medaeival (?!) castles flying the standards of Tesco's and Sainsbury's strategically positioned throughout the land with great tactical military acumen. Ahem. But maybe too much thinking about how I'd redesign the city exposes previously hidden meglamaniacal tendencies reminiscent of Hitler, or maybe just Rick out of The Young Ones.
Imagine a degree course where you weren't allowed to read any books! A bit like living in China, really, maybe.
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I generally leave them lying around on the desk until I'm feeling energetic enough to gather them into a little jar which I then don't ever get round to emptying. Whoever moved into my house in Madrid was in for quite a windfall if they could be bothered to count and then transport several hundred bits of shrapnel to the bank. But Someone Very Close To Me shocked me the other day by leaving a small collection of unused shiny silver coins uncollected on the table, which is not something I'd ever be inclined to do. She can't be the only one with such a cavalier attitude attitude to 5p pieces, though; in the last couple of months I've been finding the things scattered around absolutelyfuckingeverywhere. Generally I pick them up, and I reckon I must have so far raised about £2.35 towards my Holiday Spending Fund (yippee!). £2.35 in euros is about €3.50 of course, and in Chinese yuan (as opposed to Welsh fucking yuan obviously) it makes about 35. In China that's more than enough for a quite tasteful long-sleeved top which will set you back about £10 in the world's official clothes suppliers, H & M (or 'Hennes', as my Slightly Irrational Ex-girlfriend used to insist on calling it in an ongoing attempt to demonstrate to me and the world just exactly how much she used to live in Finland) and which could last you anything up to a week and a half.
When I wander into a clothes shop these days I can't help multiplying all the prices by fifteen, in order to get a more accurate sense of their actual worth in global terms. 5p means next to fuck all to most people here, but it means a fuck of a lot to most people in the country where most of what we wear is (fucking) made.
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...or so I've been told (and experienced from time to time) my whole puff. But it's come to my attention (during a phone conversation with my mum in which it was revealed that my sister and my future brother-in-law is, are getting married), that I haven't heard a single anti-tube rant so far this month, and that luego it must be de facto better than it used to be.
Discuss.
ps. Incidentally, Enduring Love is a good film.
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I'm quite surprised and a little disappointed to see that none of the coverage of Gonzo the Whale's unexpected appearance in the Thames has seen fit to mention my impending return to the country of my birth. My own pet whale...theory is that he or she is part of an advance party of whales, dolphins and owls which will crowd into the centre of London next Saturday evening in order to celebrate my return. I've never been wrong about this kind of thing before.
Mind you, Lauren's theory is that it's packed full of asylum seekers all called Jonah. Maybe I should tell my beloved Daily Mail.
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rwillmsen's journal