1)
Wheelie
suitcases are not applicable for all English cities, not even carry-on, light-weight
four-wheel wheelies. Cobblestones and
uphill roads (and often a mix of both) will make your arms hurt and your sides
feel stuck and possibly even your knees creak when you’re trying to maneuver a
suitcase along such said streets. On the other hand, I seem to make a nice spectacle
of it, judging by the amount of people looking at me and smiling. Could be because I talk to myself (either giving
directions or letting myself know that the measurements taken are being unsuccessful;
could also be because I skip and even dance a bit, often walking backwards at street
crossings or deep bends, because it’s much easier to pull the wheelie up
instead of dragging it behind me). (Er,
no, I’m not a madwoman, I do not go prancing along the street; I skip on the curve
or do a little dance around something because sometimes it’s much easier to do
the pulling in one quick movement rather than take more seconds to get the
suitcase over to the sidewalk or around an obstacle. That being said, I will readjust my original
sentence on this paragraph: I do not go prancing along the street when I’m carrying a loaded suitcase of any
size, but I am known to sing a bit or do a dance move here and there
whether there’s real or imagined music).
(Still, not a madwoman, just the everyday creative person walking along…) (Ok, moving on). Yeah, some cities in this country are just
not wheelie-friendly. Liverpool laughs
at the face of wheelies.
2)
When you’re tired of
London, you’re tired of life, Samuel Johnson said… How can that ever be, I asked (not Samuel
Johnson; I asked generally), how can anybody ever be tired of London? For anybody who loves London, this might be a very mind-boggling question,
indeed; for anybody who dislikes London, their follow-up will be “How can
anybody not?”. My take on this is:
Samuel Johnson did not live in this world we live in, and perhaps the man (or
woman) who is tired of London is not tired of life per se, but of life-style…
Let’s analyze this; the original quote goes thus: “Why, Sir, you find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave
London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there
is in London all that
life can afford.” Ah, that last sentence
is the operative one, can you not see? But the thing is that today, even if there
is all of what life can affod and more in this great city of ours, there is no
time left in this lifestyle of ours to enjoy all of that life-affordable
London! Argh, I was told time and time
again, and wished, desired (forced!) myself not to believe it… Words that said: “London gives you so much,
but takes even more from you…”, how could I come to trust those words? And I saw the crowds around me, and thought
that since my craft was otherwise I would never become like a part of them: a
sea of legs and shoes recalibrating every minute of their commute to make it
count, even those that leant back on their tube seats (eyes closed or not, same
diff) who would make me ask myself why would anybody not want to use that given
time to read or make a bit of progress in whatever project they had in minds… And never would I have believed that my craft
was just the same as any other person’s when I board any of those trains…! The thing is, the Gap does not discriminate,
It is there for all to mind! And also,
there is the minor detail that life is just not that affordable in this city
anymore… So I’ve become a commuter, one
of the many who’ve come to dread the (in)famous “Check ___ for times and
services” board or screen at the stations; who’d better daydream for a bit (ten
minutes till I have to get off the train, anyway) instead of reading or making
any kind of notes, cos her brain’s been fried by the many projects that occupy
it; who’s had to say to friends “I’d better leave at 8 cos it’s about an hour
and half for me to get home”, and who’s had to bit her tongue after sayin’ “Freakin’
rain!” when she’s got off the train at 12:30 AM after returning from class in
Newcastle and still has to walk five blocks home (cos, let’s face it, it’s not
the rain’s fault, and she still loves it dearly, just like the city, but there
are times when the two should not go hand in hand…). In short, I’ve become a
Londoner. Granted, a lot (about 99%) of
the day-dreaming has been boyfriend-induced over the past month or so, but about
99% of that time has been done in a semi-waking-slouched-down-on-the-train kind
of way anyhow… Add to that that my throat
keeps closing at the most annoying of times, such as when I’m talking to friends
or actually laughing, bringing out a cough or two, which has made more than one
person tell me that I should get checked out…
Oh, but we do remember what closed throats mean, right? All of that which we are not saying! Self-criticism added with the cough there, gee,
I wonder what about? Maybe it’s because
of the lack of time I have for finishing my projects as well as keeping my mind
sane? Hence I have learned this week
that I have to come out with it, what some of you already know, maybe even told
me so at different times; that which I might have inadvertently written in a
previous post, cos we all know that my written and spoken speech is full of
Freudian slips anyway (even though I am more of a Jung kind of woman)… that which will make some of you gasp, others
raise an eyebrow, others remind me that you’ve told me so, and others yet say “Meh,
so what?”: the truth of the matter is that I have decided that after my two
years in the North East to comply with visa requirements, I will not be coming
back to live in London. The full
sentence is: I don’t want to live in London anymore. (Releases a lot of air, a happy sigh, might
even be said by those present…) (er, I mean my characters, of course). Yes, it’s like a load off my back. I will come down and visit and film and go to
the theatre and museums and stuff, just like it should be when someone loves a
city and wishes to make the most of it; but living here is not making the most
of it, and I realized that ages ago when I found myself forcing me to come out
of my thoughts and look up at St Pancras…
I’d already felt it last January when I’d had the same experience at
Picadilly Circus (not that it compares, because St Pancras is so much more awe-inspiring,
evidently), but the fact that it kept happening week after week just meant that
I was not enjoying things in this city in a natural way… so, sniff and lo, I
see my life in a smaller city, I’ll just have to look for which new one ;)
3)
Oh,
I have learned that when you’re trying to open a web page/blog kind of site
that will draw in the right kind of readers, you have to be very careful with
the name… I mean, it’s not only that it has to sound good, but also that you
really look into any site with a similar name, lest you wish to end-up with a
site with the same name of a Chinese mob from a video game, a youth Christian
on-line forum, a web-program for business suppliers, a Mental Health advise centre,
a funeral agency, a travel agency, or, funnily enough, all of the above. Fine, this is not something that I “had to
learn”, it’s something I was doing and I noticed that it might be a good idea
to add it here, cos, seriously, the name combinations brought in too many creative
results not to have shared here, especially when you combine words with “gleaming”,
“shining” and “luminous”. Oh, and you
have no idea how much vampire-related stuff is there out there as well to match
them with…! Eeek, argh… (er… grr, argh…) (better??).
4)
In
this city, people tend not to look at each other, that’s already been
established, but I have also said that people tend to look at me a lot. A lot.
And smile, and chat and even laugh when I’m laughing by myself in a
corner. Oh, made myself look like a
madwoman again. You know when you see a
text or a funny picture on Facebook or read something really good on a book you’re
commuting with? Or even when you
remember something amusing about your day or a friend or just something you
saw? Yeah, that kind of laughter. Well, I am a magnet for people smiling/laughing
back… Even the other day, when I went
food-shopping and realized I didn’t have a pound for a cart so I had to take a
basket, and of course it got heavy so I carried it up with both hands holding
the sides, and I must have looked very happy doing that, cos an elderly lady in
a wheelchair beamed at me as if I had been skipping and laughing instead of
holding a heavy basket full of food down an aisle at Sainsbury’s… Yes, this in my daily basis, two, three,
sometimes four times a day… Train,
street, museums, shops, you name it. Oh,
but I have learned to put into words why we should not judge when we think someone
is looking at us funny! To begin with,
ever since the word “boyfriend” came back into my usable vocabulary (huzza!),
my smile has become a bit of a permanent accessory, and of course that means
that I have to be very careful of who I direct it to, because there is no
telling how many people would be willing to believe that it is an invitation
for a chat-up, cos, seriously, I was already being stopped in the street for
compliment-giving, now can you imagine what the new-found pheromones do to
that? And note that I said “people”, not “men”.
Yeah, well, I use my book more than ever now, though I hardly read it,
cos I’m usually thinking of the subject that my pheromones are directed to
rather than the book (oh, skidding here!
No, I’m still very professional, if I am reading a book for a review I
still give it my full attention, I just make sure I turn to it when my mind is
relaxed and I can actually dive into it without ordeal… Phew, salvaged that!). Where was I?
Yes, I try to hide into my book and that usually helps (is anybody
noting that a few weeks ago I stated that I was sad that people here “read” so
as not to have to look at each other?).
Like I said, I’ve become a Londoner, and there are so many sides to that
that I never noticed! I was only looking
at the pretty ones: the cultural, achieving, power-enhanced, quick-paced ones! Wait, I’m not talking about bankers and stuff
(though I am sure that many of them are quite cultural, just like any other
sector of society can be), I’m talking about that part that say to people “Hey,
look, I’m a writer, and I am living in London; I’m driven!”… so I never noticed
that it included the commuter-way of life…
in any case and event, being in a small town can be just as rewarding,
inspiring, and even more achieving, because of the more relaxed way of life and
the opportunity to find inspiration in the sense of community and quietness… Will not say nature cos London has many areas
that people can reach to be at one with nature, and everyone who uses them
accordingly tend to be quite satisfied with them… Okay, off track here… I was saying, yes, sometimes I can’t stare at
the book for too long (especially when I realize that I should have turned the
page two stops before), so I’d rather just let my eyes wander (and often do a
bit of character search, I must admit, though I have not been very alert as of
late, but still works)… and so it
happens that people mostly smile back at me anyway, and hey, if there’s a bit
of sunshine in their day let’s just let it be, right? (as long as they don’t
talk to me). Well, and as long as they realize that when you’re above ground
there is such a thing as inspiring buildings and leafy roads to look at, so it’s
a shame not to daydream looking at those things, right? Cos cities here inspire me a lot and I want
to keep looking out the window… Funny as
it is, sometimes they don’t realize that, and they might start giving you funny
looks (cos, yeah, even I get those too, never said I was immune, did I? And I mean when I’m smiling, not when I say
the awkward things that will most likely award me funny looks anyways). The most recent one of those came from a girl
as I realized that because I was looking through *her* window (that is, across
the aisle from me, cos that’s the side you can catch glimpses of the River
Thames from), she was giving fleeting looks back at me; I never thought she was
flirting, but really, I wasn’t even thinking of her or even of the *then and
there*, but the reflex normally is to look back, right? Ok, just to make it more awkward, I saw her
telling her friend about me and mouthing something similar to “What the hell?” as
he looked at me as well. That was the
moment it dawned on me that I might have been looking in her direction pretty
much as if I was in love… Duh, yeah, I am,
but decidedly not with her! So, no judgment,
people! However you think the person on the other seat might be looking at you,
it might not even be directed at you!
Well, it might be more probable that it is, but do make sure to ascertain
before you judge, okay? Otherwise you
might make the pretty writer across the aisle miss the curve of the river that
she wanted to see and thus loss the scene she had been perfecting in her mind
(either novel or boyfriend-wise, same diff, it hurts just the same…).
5)
Oh,
yes, a very important one, and I have to make a note on another entry about
this, because it has recently come to my attention that the thing I previously
wrote about Mexican music can be very easily misunderstood by anyone who doesn’t
have a working understanding of the different kinds of folk music there is in
Latin America. I rectify: I don’t like
the *bad* kinds, but I do enjoy all those kinds which are melodic and
uplifting, and even those which can be melancholic, like trova and bohemia, and
even a lot of the most traditional types of folk music, which I did not mention
in the previous post, but which are important in my life… I do not know if it’s even worth it to make a
specific entry to talk about different genres, especially because so many of my
friends love the kind that I call the *bad* kind, and them and I have already
had “the talk” anyway… I’d rather get political at some point, because all
those years of BA did not go wasted and because I keep getting the feeling that
it’s time to come back to the real world, if at least for short bursts of time,
and then we can talk a lot about *some* of the bad kinds!
6)
Never
to take the coach between London and Newcastle again!! Wait, hadn’t I learned that after the whole
Milan ordeal almost two years ago? (The time when I got so ill and the coach
drive was so bad for me, I was bed-ridden for weeks and this close to pneumonia…).
Hm, I guess it’s true what they say, those who don’t learn their history are
doomed to repeat it…
7)
And
a last thing I have learned is that I should probably stop hanging out with
people who are ten years younger than me…
Seriously, it was bad enough last year feeling like an old lady because
I didn’t want to go to any party anymore, but now, most places I go to where I
say “Oh, I could move here” (even Crouch End, possibly the only place in London
I could return to settle into if it were ever the case… Well, and Chiswick, no matter what Donna
Noble says), they go “Well, it’s so cute I could consider moving here, if I was
older, had grayer hair, was ready to
form a family…”. In your faces, all, I
have been called Miss and young lady more times over the past few weeks than in
the whole year and a half that I lived in England last time around! I’m ageing backwards! Lol. Oh, no no no let’s
hope not!! Seriously, though, I am ready
to settle down, and all I wish is I could figure out where… Well, being en-route for the visa is a huge
step! It may come to “settling down” in
Newcastle for a while as I bring my business up, and that’s fine as long as I
have Stephen’s arms to come home to, wherever he is as well, but there comes a
time in a girl’s life, you know, and my time came years ago, hence the feeling
of restlessness… and mind you all, to
have place to settle down in, for me,
will only mean that I’ll have my own place to call base and to go back to from all
my travels! And of course, who am I ever
kidding? All those people who are ten
years younger than me? I would never
part with them just because of a little thing like this! Let them party and live in big cities, and
let them enjoy what makes them happy, as long as the reason we remain friends
is that lovely energy of joy and trust and feeling that we’ll be there for each
other when the party’s over or the trips are done… or is merely a time for rest…!
So, I bid you all farewell, with a thank you
for your time and a sunshiny smile (just to make sure that you understand that it’s
not that I don’t *like* people, right??
I just don’t want anybody to chat me up, is that ever so wrong?). Sigh, have I become one of those girls? “I have a boyfriend and men ask me out all
the time, I don’t know what to do”.
Six-freakin’-years (almost going on seven) people! That’s all I’m saying… I know where my loyalties are and if you all
know me as well as you say you do, you should know that as well! There is only one man that I welcome in to
stay, and the only reason I brought the other stuff up was because of tube
circumstances and such… But this is the
one part of the real world that I have come down from the clouds to: to allow
myself to choose and be chosen, the part that was missing from my puzzle, and
the one that I will want to scream with joy for weeks and months to come, and
even longer if I find a way to make it happen without becoming chick-litty,
lol! For the first time ever I’m in love
and being loved back; that’s a thinker when it happens at thirty-two… but I
will keep on bragging, cos I deserve to shine and I deserve to be happy and
true in my joy… and I just went into a tangent just as I was leaving, didn’t
I? Okay okay, I’ll finish up for now…
Cheers all!!
Bright blessings and many more good things for everyone!
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