See See Tee Vee

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

Privacy is public.

The Other London

You all know one London already: the London of Big Ben and Hyde Park, of Fuckingham and Piccadilly, of the British and the Tate; the touristy, fashionable London of arts, entertainment and culture, of proper Britishness binding together an astounding multicoloured amalgam of ethnicities, languages and cultures. But there is another London, of which I have not yet spoken.

It's the London of foxes rummaging in trash bins, of rats scurrying away over the railway tracks. It's the London of drunken blokes meandering in the fog, while others sleep in a puddle of their own puke in a bus stop. It's the London of old people arguing with themselves while they drag their feet down the road, carrying their own boring tragedies.

It's the London of brown-bricked suburban slums, of chavs in patchy outfits and loud voices picking up fights, of broken homes and fractured families, of street gangs and overdose, of knives and guns, of black kids stabbed to death in front of an off-licence.

It's the London of urban tribes, of the destitute homeless with their feet sticking out of cardboard homes in the subways, and bruvva can you shpare some change. It's the London of sects and cults, of street preachers, of creationism in Christian schools and jihad in mosques.

It's the London of theft and murder, of beatings and rape, of deaths by stray bullets. It's The Other London, unseen to a passer-by, hidden to all but those who want to see it - it's London Below.

Over all of this and much more, Big Brother keeps watch with his composite bug eyes of a billion CCTV cameras. He doesn't give a flying fuck as long as the money keeps flowing.

The things we have

On the 21st day of January of 2009 I became another happy inmate of the Goldsmiths student halls. I now live in Batavia Mews, right next door to the hostel I spent over a month in, and just opposite Goldsmiths. I fall off bed into class. I share a 3-story, quite uphill "flat" with 6 other guys of exquisite awesomeness. We each have a room. This is mine:



I have the best views of the London skyline from my window. By day

and night.


We have a dodgy backalley. From there, it looks like a prison.

I call it Ratavia Meows. We don't have many rats. We have mice. They're nice. We have a kitchen, which is almost always in a post-Katrina state. We also have a balcony with nice views, and a roof you can climb on. Sometimes we go out there for a laugh.



We have more broadband internet than we can give use to. We have 3 toilets, one bathtub and one shower, 2 ovens and 2 fridges, one microwave, a few fastidious kettles and 2 vacuum cleaners we seldom use. We have the cheapest rent and the most complaining cleaner ever. We have clanking metal stairs on the outside and a security fence to keep us in, we have springy mattresses and endless creaking stairs inside to keep us in shape. We have heaps of fun.

And we have many parties. The other day, I had my own.


We have all I could ask for, and then some. Isn't it good, Batavia Mews.

Winter Wonderland

I arrive in Madrid. It snows. They close Barajas airport, trains stop working, buses stop circulating, all traffic is jammed; shops, schools and universities close, everybody blames the government. And I think bloody hell, this would never happen in London. I go out and enjoy the snow:


I arrive in London. It snows. They close Heathrow airport, trains stop working, buses stop circulating, all traffic is jammed; shops, schools and universities close, everybody blames the government. And I think bloody hell, this would never happen in Norway. But then I think again. I go out and enjoy the snow:

Hello again

Moving from my ex-flat to the hostel, birthday parties, non-birthday parties, spontaneous late-night beers, interesting new acquaintances, moving from the hostel into the student halls, the Asian Week, Obama's inauguration, a screening at BAFTA, a lecture at the Instituto Cervantes, comedy in Greenwich, the National Gallery, Hello Again the musical, snowball fights, gym evenings, beers, meeting new people to have beers with, meeting old people to have beers with, walks through Central, pub quizzes and 1-pound-pints, clubbing all I could bear and then some, parties in halls, pub encounters, plus of course lectures and seminars and creative writing workshops, translations to do, books to read (about), library times, essays to start thinking about, and all the eating, sleeping, shopping, showering and washing-up inherent to (a healthy) life.

These are some of the activities that have prevented me from posting anything here for such a long long time. And now for something completely different.

Akzident

On the road again, destination Madrid. I pack up at Pomeroy Street, say my goodbyes and jump on a bendy bus to Victoria Station. Two punks get fined for not having a ticket. At the easybus stop on Fuckingham Falace Road, I meet the thickest brick, bluntest tool in the shed of a Polish bus driver you could imagine, and after some procrastinating, we're off. It's 16:20.

Very soon we're up to our necks in a traffic jam. We move by jolts. Everywhere there is chaos and red lights in the darkness. Then in an astounding show of prowess, our driver slams us into another van. “Currrrvaa!” (bitch) is his war cry. He starts in pursuit of the other van. “Currvaaa!”, he repeats and repeats, while hitting the horn in free verse. Finally he catches up with the other guy, points and shakes his hands above his head while hitting the horn. Both vehicles stop on a side lane. It's 16:35.

The drivers step out, start discussing whose fault it is. Then they start discussing whether it is anyone's fault. Then they start discussing whether there is anything to discuss at all. It's 16:45. I watch the minutes trickle away while they keep going back and forth expertly assessing damage and our driver keeps flailing his hands around, pointing and shrugging and sweating. “Contact! Telefon!”, he demands of the other driver. It's 16:50.

I decide I've had enough, jump over the driver's seat, get off the bus and point out to him that we should be going.

He shrugs and shows me his scratched bumper in a gesture of quiet despair mixed with hopeless acceptance of inevitability – one would think he's pointing to his lost youth, to his third divorce or to his incurable haemorrhoids. “Akzident!”, he offers as explanation. “Akzident!”, he insists, his vocabulary limited, but his tone rich in inflection, denoting “This, as you see, is fate. Fighting fate is pointless.” I steal a glance at the quite inconspicuous and irrelevant scratches on the bumper, and quickly summon the words that might well be my best shot at getting back on my way to the airport. “Akzident! But I have plane! Now quick-quick, taxi airport chop-chop, yeah?” I offer while I present him with a flurry of urging hand gestures and speed-encouraging facial expressions. “No problem!”, he dismisses twice. “Contact! Telefon!” It's 17:00.

We start again by snake-racing our way out of a labyrinth of narrow backstreets, climbing on sidewalks and zigzagging among taxis. Two policemen on a pedestrian crossing ahead. I pray to all deities, from Allah to Zeus, please don't let him run them over. It's 17:05 and we're back in Marble Arch.

What follows is an agonizing 95 minutes of feeling the merciless methodical ticking of a fluorescent digital clock while looking ahead in despair at never-ending winding lines of red lights in the dark rain. London never seems to end. My flight leaves at 19:00, the boarding gate is supposed to close at 18:30, and easybus was supposed to drop me in Stansted at 18:05. We get there at 18:40.

By this time I need to urinate very badly, but instead I just jump off the minivan and run like the wind. I use my most desperate, most pathetic voice to jump several queues, I bark and spit at several square-headed members of staff at “airport security” to fuck off and to hurry it up for fucks sake, my plane's about to leave. The idiocy of the concentration-camp treatment still makes me lose a few minutes, but I jump into my untied shoes, pull up my belt-less pants, grab my stuff and start running like mad down the halls of the very well designed labyrinth of duty-free traps that await the naïve passenger before the departure gates.

When I get there, tomato-red, panting and wheezing and sweating like an old horse, I find that the flight is delayed and thus the boarding is just about to begin. “Currrrrva!!”, I offer to no one in particular while I bang and lock the toilet door.

The Ghost of Christmas Past

I am not one for tradition. I am not one to run with the herd, to buzz with the swarm. I am not one for religion, thus I am personally unlikely to find the anniversary of the birth of a prophet a worthy cause for celebration*. I am not one for conventionalism, and the idea of a socially-dictated date for family bonding makes my blood boil. I am not one for presents, and find present-giving on fixed dates to be a pure celebration of consumerist debauchery -- Saint Marks&Spencer.

All this goes to explain why last xmas, while pretty much everybody ran away to their homes and families, or with their loved ones, or with their friends, I stood like a tree, firmly rooted in London.

I had great plans at first. I though I would study. Then I learned all the libraries would be closed for 12 days. Ok, I thought, the gym then, work hard on those muscles. Then I learned that the gym would also be closed. Ok then, I thought, let's do some tourism. This I finally did, and enjoyed the atmosphere of the city dressed in light with her lips painted neon, but let me tell you it was damn fucking cold.

So I spent xmas & New Year's Eve in London. It was nothing much, but it was all right. I had my time, time to walk and think and lose myself down the streets among the crowds, which I cherished. I also enjoyed some really good moments, and have some really cool people to thank for that.

And so now, after the whole xmas jazz, when others are returning to London, I go away, inverting the J&B commercial. I've come to Madrid for a week: the Ghost of Christmas Past is visiting.

* Nor am I particularly inclined to celebrate Saturnalia, Sol Invictus or the winter solstice.

2009

May you all have a joyful, abundant, prosperous and unforgettable 2009! May it be full of riches and solid in health, ecstatic its every moment, epiphanic its every memory! Happy 2009!

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.

Go Central

When the never-ending sprawling labyrinths of silent streets lined with crumbling brown-faced victorian houses by the railway bridges of Lewisham get my spirits too low for the fried chicken/kebab shops and off-licence Kwik-e-Marts of New Cross to raise, I jump on board a wheeled red cocktail-shaker and go on a pilgrimage to London Central.

I walk the shushed back streets of Westminster and the chilly banks of the Thames, then I hop on the first bus to anywhere. I climb the hills of Hampstead Heath, where foxes howl at night. I tread on the crackling rustling of dry leaves in Green and St James' parks, then get a free UV session by standing outlined against the squall of colour and light in Piccadilly Circus. I take a tour of spicy SoHo, watching dealers and strip clubs, among the ringing and squeaking of rickshaws and the calls of alcohol-marinated chavs.

In the day, I plunge into the avalanche of shoppers in Oxford Street and raging hordes of tourists elsewhere, having my body bumped against a thousand bodies, and my ears caressed by a thousand different languages, both familiar and exotic.



In the night, I walk alone through soulless streets, the sleeping city my good company. I watch the orangey silhouette of Big Ben ghostly rising from the silent mist, propped up by a ray of orange light. Dancing on the dark Thames I find the surprised O of the London Eye, the moon its written accent. I lose myself in the labyrinth of glass and light of the Docklands, my sights on the tip of One Canada Square, hypnotized by its rhythmic lightning bolt electrocuting the speeding clouds.



Hammersmith to Islington, Camden to Victoria, I zigzag through London in the night. I make my way back in the ambiguous hours when early risers go jogging and hordes of hooker-dressed clubbers dizzystep their giggly way back wherever they call home, wearing their high heels in their hands. Refreshed and uplifted, I go back to my current residence in London's Bronx, knowing that Central is the place to be, dreaming of the day I can finally Go Central for real.