03 August 09 AM/PM (technically lunchtime)

For once, I got out of the office this lunchtime. And almost instantly remembered why I don't usually bother. London is teeming with people who wander with neither direction nor speed, it's impossible to get anything to eat without having to queue, and I am evidently invisible.

I stopped at a crossing so as not to get run over by a bus bearing the slogan "Have you thanked Jesus yet today?" Have I? Should I? For the crappy weather? And the crappy recession which has forced me into a crappy job that makes me want to throw myself out of a window on a regular basis? No, not yet. But thanks for the reminder. Well, he can't only be responsible for all the good things - you have to take the rough with the smooth. But whilst we're talking of fictional characters, have you finished writing your thank you letters to Santa for all those years of full stockings? No? I thought as much.

As I carried on walking a girl was meanly heckling her friend who was lagging behind. In the fury of her gesticulations, her jumper had fallen from around her waist to around her ankles. She was very unaware of this, whilst I was not. Only I couldn't find any way to delay my progress on towards and then past her, to witness her falling on her leery mouth. And thus the hoped for solution has been playing its way out in my head on loop for most of the afternoon in absence of me witnessing it, or it actually happening. Loud girl fall over. Funny.

Whilst I was still tittering to myself, a man came up to me asking for directions. This happens to me a lot. Evidently I have the face of a true Londoner, which is probably an insult and also belies my utter lack of inner compass or TomTom at any time.
"Is this the way to Covent Garden?" He asked, heading toward Tottenham Court Road.
"Er, no. It's more over that way" I gesticulated in the vague direction of Covent Garden, for a change. "You need to go down Kingsway and take a right on Great Queen Street. That will take you straight to Covent Garden" This made me feel like I was some kind of directions ninja. A complete orientation back of the net. Whoop!
"And if I carry on this way?" He said
"Er, you get to some places which are not Covent Garden"
And so he carried on.

Pfscht. People.

02 Jul 09 AM

To me, the smell of summer is not that of freshly cut grass, it's chlorine, chemical toilets and the musty tang of a melamine cup which has languished at the back of a caravan cupboard for the last 11 and a half months. It's the smell of a freshly creosoted fence baking in the sun. It sounds like the gentle ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta of a hose sprinkler, and it tastes like Gini.

23 June AM

Scene: Drysdale Street, early-ish morning. The air is still cool, like the updraft from an open cornershop freezer compartment. The light promises a plesant evening for drinking in the street outside after work.

A lone woman walks West, passed on the opposite site of the street by a silent young boy (7) in non-descript uniform, eating non-descript convenience breakfast food. Behind a younger girl (5) with long blonde hair, a stride and a half - approximately longer than an adult's arm length - behind a slightly bedraggles middle-aged man, holding her hand.

Girl: [incomprehensible]
Father: "Oh Alice you're talking about nothing. It's total rubbish"

What did he expect? A pith summation of commentary on the current prescient political topics? She is a CHILD, she is SPEAKING, conveying thoughts to you using abstract audio symbols. This to me is miracle enough.

22 June 09 PM

Like Aristotle, I look to the earth as I walk. Yet my aspirations are more Platonic, as I hope for the gods to bestow great wealth upon me. Or at least a dropped fiver. How barren my soul has become.

18 June 09 AM

Today is a quintessentially beautiful day. The threat of oppressive heat filters the air I suck into my lungs, and my eyes - for once not dulled by hangover or lack of sleep - look up at this rose-tinted world as if it was new, fresh from the cellophane wrapper it had come in. I'm transported back in my mind to another street, in LA where we walked, foolishly, between districts, the sun lighting our path in a unfamiliar way to our British eyes, everything looked so culturally alien and charged with exciting possibilities. And just so today. It is beautiful. I feel beautiful.

Buoyed by this new found optimism, I find myself smiling - at children, at fellow commuters, at the window cleaner I pass on the street.

"Cheer up luv, it might never happen" he mutters, even though I am smiling.

"But it does, it will" I say, as fragments of his teeth tinkle across the pavement.
"You don't even fucking know anything about me, what I know, what I feel." I shake my wrist as my knuckles still reel from the crunch of fragile bone under flesh and sinew.
"And it's hardly as if your wit and charm are going to make me change my perspective anyhow, is it?" That last kick threw me slightly off balance. I won't be able to take these shoes back either any more, I think.

Only I don't. I just walk on. And the clouds gather and my gaze drops once more. As I have been reminded of the reasons I shouldn't be happy in the first place.

15 June 09 AM

Some bastard - some UTTER bastard - has got my bike. I don't know what happened, it was there one minute and gone the next, and I'd never even considered it going, not without my say so. I guess I just took it for granted, that I'd be able to walk past the scooter place past Farringdon station, and each morning see my little cream Vespa sat bathing in the morning sun. I'd figured out how I was going to scuttle aside the required £850, daydreamed about taking my CBT and joining the wheeled ranks which passed me in swarms to my right hand side every morning. I'd built a whole life around that bike; figured out how I was going to manage in the rain, the way I'd have to balance my haul from Sainsbury's between my legs as I pootled on back to my flat to cook. I''d even considered what to do if I ended up going for after-work drinks, where I'd lock my beautiful bike, how I'd wake up hungover and terrified that anything should have happened to it in my careless absence. I'd thought of having you on the back, the weight of your helmeted head on my shoulder, weaving through the city to some play or gallery with your fingers tight against my hips, the sunshine peeking under the rim of my helmet's visor. I'd dreamt of long trips out to the South Downs, to Whitstable, even back to the Cotswolds, just the two of us, negating the terrible taint that contact with other people from outside our little world would have on a decadent weekend. I'd thought of how I could escape; from work, from the madding crowds, from an argument with you. How my gallant charger would whisk me away through the sleet as the tears streaked my face until I could reach the warm sanctuary of home and warmth and a phonecall relaying kind words of reconciliation.

But it was not to be.

Maybe this is for the best – for an alternative scenario plays itself out in my head; that I love my bike so much that I go everywhere on it. I become on of those waddling species, unable to walk due to lack of exercise. That because of my unerring diligence towards my beloved charger, I stop frequenting the pub and become one of those dreadful bores who thinks too much and relaxes too little, that my wits – unchallenged – become dulled and wither, and my social life wanes. That essentially I become a fat, dull, bore, until one day I wobble my way in front of a speeding cement mixer. I wonder which fate shall befall the new owner. And yet, the bastard has my bike, but not my dreams.

10 June 09 AM

No RMT, we haven't had a pay rise either. But thanks for holding us to ransom and making us pay for our release in increased fares.

The streets are swollen this morning with hordes of subterranean commuters, set free of the Rotastack of the Central Line, dazzled by their freedom. The Blitz spirit of cab sharing and holding buses has been shown up as the perilously thin veneer of civilisation we suspected it to be all along, as pedestrians shout at cars, cars honk impotently on their creep along Old Street, and cyclists pit themselves against, well, everyone (including other cyclists). Men nearing retirement are riding frames evidently sized to their fruits of their loins, sporting pinstripe suits and no helmets, wobbling precariously amongst the vehicles which have been dusted down and hauled out from city centre storage for the day. And rollerblades! I ask you. "We can manage this! We're British!" Only we can't, and we're making a spectacular hash of it.

Please, RMT, take the deal. Before people start dying.