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.



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.



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.



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.