Heaven forbid, don’t be new to London and miss that huge sign that says the left lane on the escalator is for people in a hurry.
London is a cuntish town, unless you’re filthy rich or living in social housing. I see them laughing in Primrose Hill, head back mouth open, gulping in the pure blended air of Hampstead Heath and Regent’s Park. I see them laughing in Brixton hanging outside the brutalist Somerleyton Estate in Brixton. The poor and the rich belong in London. But don’t be slightly richer than poor or slightly poorer than rich. At some point you will tumble into unmanageable debt and have to live off lettuce. Iceberg, not rocket. Because you’re rich enough to qualify for a bank loan but too poor to pay off the monthly installments. You’re a Londoner now. Mind the gap.
The amount of buses that sail right by because your arm is not outstretched to full capacity, I’ve lost count. The tube that guarantees an authentic buried alive experience, complete with intense heat, no air and screeching rusty rails. Feel free to kick someone down the escalator if they stray into the express lane. They will realise as they tumble head first they deserve it and will never do it again. Heaven forbid, don’t be new to London and miss that huge sign that says the left lane on the escalator is for people in a hurry.
London, the city of villages is really just a city of village idiots on mobility scooters having a fag outside of Wetherspoons. That’s a pub chain with carpet, where you can still get a beer for under 5 quid.
London is a pigsty. Fly tipping is otherwise known as ‘moving house’ in London. And no one uses a bin when they’re drunk which is most of London most of the time.
The overpriced dinners complete with a slice of meat and a broccoli stalk and a waiter one bread roll away from quitting. Still or sparkling water for the table, almost the same price as the wine. And the London Sunday Roast, a shambles of food groups with a puff pastry in the middle for no apparent reason.
Oh and the shows, the glittering West End. The most awarded show in the West End is Phantom of the Opera, some drivel about a disfigured obsessive who hides in a basement, much like a London one night stand. The West End was dying until Phantom of the Opera creator Andrew Lloyd Webber used methods like reality TV to cast a musical in order to get suburban bums back on seats. Where are the high kicks here? Sounds terribly pedestrian. And don’t sit outside a bar or a cafe on Old Crompton St in Soho and wait for a parade of colorful gays to make you smile because London gays now look like everyone else, fading into a backdrop of mediocrity and equality.
Perhaps I’m just yearning for the countryside like all white middle-class people over a certain age.
The quality of life in London compared to the Cotswolds’ for instance is like comparing the first world to the third. And yet it’s a mere 5 hour drive away, 4 hours 50 minutes getting out of London…and 10 minutes (roughly) to say Bourton-on-the-Water, aka the “Venice of the Cotswolds”. Everything changes dramatically. Your heart lifts, your spirit elevates. I get it, I’m simply idealising what I can’t have, but it’s worth pointing out that the difference between the city and the country in England is gobsmacking. Not because the country is that beautiful, it’s just that London is that difficult, if you’re average and middlesome. The man who tires of London is of course tired of life, but guess what? That’s ok. Everything that once was taut now slacks. Being tired of life…in the country….sounds dreamy.
London shan’t even blink in my hissy fit wake. The trillions that have blamed you for their failures cancel out the trillions that thank you for their success. Mind the gap.