Monday 29 December 2008

The weekend

Tourists take over London on a weekend. Every Saturday, a new Armada of Spaniards, Italians and Frenchmen invades Central London, turning every street into a queue, every corner a waiting room. Camera in hand, Ryanair or Easyjet tag on their luggage, bewildered look on their faces, they patiently queue up to take the same picture as everybody else, with everybody else in it, to buy the same t-shirt and key chain, walk the same streets, eat the same glazed nuts, get into the same cafeteria.

London iswarming tourists

The London Eye is a wheel of glittering sparkles out of a fairy tale, with a thousand flashes from inside the cabins. I stand in awe and amazement; I wonder at how widespread technology is among the masses, yet how scarce are those savvy enough to extract any value out of it. Flashing the Houses of Parliament, in full daylight, 1km away, from behind a glass?

The city grows out of the swarming biomass like a termite mound. Westminster, Victoria, Oxford Street, Piccadilly, Trafalgar, Tower Bridge, Hyde Park, Fuckingham Falace, all teeming with the unsynchronized swinging of tens of thousands of limbs, the dissonant chatter of thousands of voices, the glitter of thousands of flashes.

Winter Wonderland in Hyde ParkWinter Wonderland in Hyde Park

Many would hate this. I love it. I love being in it, moving in it, smelling it, tasting it, swimming my way through the conglomeration of bodies and shouts and sweat and excitement and surprise and joy.

Camden Town MarketCamden Town Market

Most of all, I love the Sunday market in Camden Town. Memories of Thailand keep rolling in. The market is not that big and the prices are 6 to 7 times higher, yet the sellers are very frequently Indians or Arabs, which means prices are, also here, "flexible". You don't even need to haggle, just stare at something for 3 minutes while insisting you're just looking, thanks, and the price plummets like the British Pound.

The weekend in London is sparkling, spectacular, magic, a numbing kaleidoscope of colour and sound, a ride on a roller-coaster. I can't wait for the weekend to begin.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

How nice it is to walk the streets of London with you! You've managed to take me there, feel the atmosphere, remember the pleasant days back there in 2007...

Yes.I do want to repeat the experience of being the walker of a pair of limbs queuing to cross at Fuckingham Phallus, wondering at the rest of the crowd, embezzled by the power of the Establishment over the lives of its subjects, feeling at home under the vault of centuries of Anglo-Saxon Ethic - the signature of a way of being which is far from perfection, yet it tells you that it came out this way, and you know that it is good.

Yeah, spring is not so far away, so WHY NOT? ;)

Yiyi said...

WHAT IS ALL THIS FUCKING THING ABOUT "FUCKINGHAM FALLACE" ??

In order of the QUEEN you are all under arrest!

No more post! No more reading! No more no more...

Until Next Year!

Have fun all of you, best wishes, lot of health and work and adventures and friendships and food, mmm, food,
m'Going to eat!!

xDD

MakurA said...

Yo iba a decir lo mismo, pero Yiyi se me adelantó. Debería daros vergüenza, tsk, tsk... You make the baby Jesus (and the Queen) cry! Bad boys... xDDD

Feliz 2009! =P

Scholarly said...

Ma: ^_^!!

Yiyi: God shave the Queen!

Maku: eso de hacer llorar al niño ezú me da que por aquí no se dice xDD Por otra parte, la realeza está por todas partes. Están que no cagan con su reina. Muy pocos "republicanos" por aquí, pero que muy pocos.