Punk rock old lady

She looks German - short blond hair, streaked to disguise the grey. With her son, who sort of looks my age, perhaps a decade younger (I'm 46 unbelievably when I think of it - don't know how I got that old). She is wearing lemon Bermuda shorts and a teeshirt of multicolours with pineapples all over it and necklaces with beads. What I'm really looking at is her makeup. Her eyes are a multi-coloured extravagance - blue nearest her eye, then orange and finally yellow up to the eyebrow. Matched with orange lipstick. It's bold. It reminds me of my punkish days in the early 90s. I miss being that bold. I used to channel a look I had seen on Siouxsie and the Banchees. I had bright pink hair at the time and had to paint my eyes so that they didn't disappear under the colourful mop. I did a blend of bright pink at the outer edge and red into the eyeline, with a long and thick black eyeline and a lot of black mascara. I thought I rocked. I was on the tube one day with my mum, crowded we were hanging onto those dangly things (remember those?) in the centre of the carriage. A Rasta man leaned over my shoulder and said to me, I don't normally like women with a lot of makeup on but if anyone challenges you, tell them you are emulating the beauty of the birds, much to his girlfriend's displeasure. I thought, yeah! That's it! My mum was just concerned about the girlfriend but we were getting off the next stop. I feel like it's time to rock the beauty of the birds again. 

West London Oddities

The flamboyance of a Worker dressed in blue pinstriped suit, colourful shirt and tie, with a handkerchief in the breast pocket. Styling this with a moustache with curled ends and a smile. 

Wealthy older man standing outside his flat, dressed for the warm weather in a black jellaba with embroidery round the neck and down the front, long stripped trousers, Birkenstocks and a shawl. His white hair and beard died coppertone orange. Couldn't decide if he might have had ginger hair originally or just likes red hair (like I do - which is why I dye mine red). 

Customers eating outside Bill's restaurant on the way to the tube. One pairing includes a woman who has brought her cat with her - it's on a harness leash, is sitting on her lap, and is one of those hairless breeds that looks sort of Siamese. 

The taste of 1978

Today at Pop's we have mostly been channelling 1978. He came down wearing his white jeans that I remember from the 70s - he sewed patches on them. And then he opened a bottle of wine he had laid down in 1978. Mostly it tasted thick and winey (not my favourite but I'm not a connoisseur).

He was cooking chicken fried steaks - comfort food from his youth. 

Morning smiles

Getting onto the westbound circle/district line platform at Victoria for the inevitable wait for a circle line train, was greeted by a strong Jamaican accent welcoming all the lovely people, telling us to make like Bolt because the train was ready to leave. Moments later a change of staff came down including a fierce looking steely grey haired man who dragged Carl off to give him a telling off - I've told you so many times, Carl, calm your messages down. 

What the managers of TFL don't seem to realise is that the comedians and unique announcers bring a much needed lifted spirit to those of us trapped on the underground. 

Big up to Carl.

And at my destination there was a number 9 bus (new style route master) with the conductor riding the platform with the door open. I remember the joys of old, waiting to disembark from the old buses, hanging onto the pole in the middle of the platform, hair blowing in the wind, face like a dog with its head out the car window. Small things...

Telephone box

It's been decades since I frequented a telephone box (I was a fairly early adopter of the mobile phone) - we used to use the one in my granny's hamlet (only facility it had, other than dilapidated stone buildings without rooves that the sheep sheltered in). 

They seem only to exist now for tourists to selfie in and for hookers to ply their wares (asses, tits, poom-pooms all decorated with stars).

Views from the escalator

Red patent leather brogues with a white sole, worn with rolled up black jeans and no socks. 

The rabbit and the bear

On a commuter tube in the morning. Victoria line to.... A woman sits tucked into the arm of a huge man, shorts and sneakers, big beard, tufty fringe standing up, puffy eyes from sleep. She is reading a book, mouth slightly ajar. She turns towards him, her teeth protrude slightly, she leans over his massive shoulder, craning to kiss his cheek, and nuzzles him with her nose. 

A rabbit and a bear. 

Screenface

Lunch time Holland Park. Route through the park to Kensington High Street. Me and the builders of the neighbourhood are hanging on the benches. 

I'm noticing how many groups of people walking down there together are just face in screen. An orientalist couple. Side by side but locked in individual screens. 4 young men in shirts and chinos striding back to work (I imagine), four phones outstretched before their faces. Two boys and a girl, three phones out. I'm thinking it's crazy people have really forgotten the art of talking. They are probably texting one another.

Later another builder joins our bench. He's very polite. We start talking about the neighbourhood. I tell him I'm sorry they all have to take their breaks in the side of the street. He says they have to, to be able to smoke. Very strick rules in these fancy houses. No smoking, no swearing, no sitting.

Anyway, he tells me these people are Pokemon hunting. It's a thing apparently. It's in timeout this week and everything. Grown people. All over the place. I don't know how you catch them. Or even what they look like but I can tell you - there is definitely one near the outdoor opera at this moment. 

Snot nose

Cute children clinging to the pole in the centre of the carriage enjoying the roller-coaster-ish effect of the train lurching around on the track at high speed. The girl had a trail of green snot hanging out of each nostril. For the life of me I couldn't understand how her mother didn't notice and then I couldn't look anymore from revulsion. 

Working in Posh Neighbourhoods

OMG they steam clean the pavements in Kensington. Who knew? It takes two men and a double ended machine. Extraordinary.

Ultimate Oxymoron

Camouflage outfit - top and pants, in the colour way of yellow and neon pink - the question in the office was - where are you going to hide in that? Look at me! Don't look at me! Hide in the 1970s maybe. Or against some graffiti... 

Escalator

It's been a while since I had a good escalator story. But I noticed it a couple of weeks ago and checked it today. At Manor House tube station there are two old escalators flanking a middle one that has been recently renovated. At rush hour in the evening two go up (the left hand and the middle one). Previously I was standing on the left one watching people standing in the middle overtake me. The middle one must be faster. So today, and I don't know why this pleases me so much, but in the race of standing passengers on moving staircases, I chose the middle escalator and overtook 5 people spaced with two steps between each. A significant win and worth the choice, I think you'll agree. 

Fifedom of Londonium

So, now Scotland feels it is democratically unfair to make them leave the EU and so will demand another vote on leaving the United Kingdom. Couldn't we do that too - London (led by its Mayor) could also leave the UK and remain in the EU. What do we think?

Guess what? There's a petition for just that!

Because I'm not the only one who thought it. 

Rich neighbourhoods

I don't know why I'm finding it hard working in a rich neighbourhood but I am. 

This isn't just the City - fancy offices full of men and women in suits - this is a place where the wealthy live and relax. I walk around at lunch time looking for local London colour and vibrancy. I find myself annoyed with the stay-at-home mums with their perfect legs and highlights and blond children. The clean and perfect dogs. The fact that workmen on breaks sit neatly on benches in the park not a peep out of them - covered in plaster dust and being sort of outside the regular residents. I watch a cleaner sweep leaves off the front path of a mansion house wearing a bib apron, the lady of the house flittering about the magnificent front hall. The playboy Arabs letching every white girl they pass. Ladies who lunch, but do nothing else. 

It's a strange feeling working in the office and then spilling out into an adult playground. Feels sort of purposeless. 

!!!

A vote for?? We don't know. Not for strength in unity. All the Brexitiers jubilant all over the TV. Everyone on both sides saying the people have spoken. It was close. 52% vs 48%. Poke in the eye (not quite a kick in the stomach) for the caring liberalism that built the country. London (and Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle and Cardiff, and Scotland and Northern Iteland) vs the rest of England. How come those with the least experience of living multicultural lives have the sway? 

It feels a lot less secure this morning. I fear for the decisions that were made on the back of the last world war (welfare system, NHS, joined and stable Europe) - have we grown disillusioned with stability? 

Bus journey

It's wet this evening. Half the tube system was broken this morning so I hopped on a bus from - a 27 bus. It took me up Kensington Church Street towards Notting Hill Gate. Past antique shops, wacky clothing boutiques and children's clothing shops. Yummy mummy Notting Hill rather than Rasta Notting Hill. Then suddenly we are in Queensway, Bayswater and Paddington. It's easy to forget how close these places are to each other.

From Paddington we snake around through Edgware until we pass Marylebone Station and join the traffic going easy on Marylebone Road.

We creep past Baker Street and Madam Tussauds. I looked for him but he wasn't there - in the 70s there was always a man selling huge 4 foot long wiggly balloons to the crowd queuing to get in. I always wanted one in the way pre-teens want things, asking if we could get one every time we passed by. Mum always refused with the excuse that he was a crook and all the ones that weren't blown up would have holes in. It was one of those helpful white lies parents use on their gullible young children - my friend Kate managed to persuade her kids that the ice cream van played its jolly tune when he had run out of ice cream! Only later did I think perhaps it was more about not wanting to find the puff to blow the damn thing up than any truth in the likelihood of everyone having a hole in it. 

Then we passed the loveliness of Regency Regent's Park. Another childhood fantasy that I would live my adult life in one of those fancy cream houses, front doorway draped in columns and friends with whom I'd run along the York stone pavements to the tune of 'old-fashioned millionaire' (there was an advert in TV at the time that played out this desired lifestyle). 

My sister, at the time, predicted that knowing me by the time I was 18 I'd have a boyfriend with an open-air car (y'know, soft top). I was 10 when she predicted this. I'm still waiting for the boyfriend with the open air car to show up (I was 46 last month). 

And then Hampstead Road, turning at the corner of Warren Street, once the windiest place in London when the landscaping didn't exist - only the huge buildings causing their very own wind tunnel which meant at times you had to cling to lampposts while waiting for the lights to change for fear of being blown away. And finally Camden Town where I alighted so that I could continue on a trajectory that at least was heading in the right direction. 

EU Referedum

So the day of reckoning is upon us. Hopefully you have voted and based it on  serious well-researched information and not exclusively media-hyped sensationalism. If not, and you are still humming and ha-ing, get yourself down to the polling station and vote according to your belly-button status. Are you an in-ny or an out-y? 

Minor irritations

The absolute worst part of working in open plan offices is listening to other people crunching on crisps or carrots. Teeth gnashing crunchy food sets me on edge. Not sure why...

Bigger things

There are more important things to say than the anecdotes that I have been putting up. I just am not sure how I am supposed to say them. 

SH and I went to Parliament Square last Friday to pay respects to Jo Cox killed senselessly in the line of duty. An energetic dedicated MP of the mould that we would prefer all our MPs to be (of and for the people they serve rather than the clever-britches career politicians we have become accustomed to recently). The reaction has seemed very genuine - very emotional interview by Neil Kinnock on the news that was very moving. And the desire expressed by some to mix up politically on the benches for today's recall of parliament, following the suspension of campaigning for the referendum (a welcome quiet in the bleating of one side against the other). 

I don't understand why we are having a referendum - called by a Prime Minister who is now in the side of remain (why would you call it if you didn't want to leave?) - I don't think the world is a better place for holding ourselves separate. People are hankering after the times when Britain was Great (great from conquering and pillaging the countries of the empire - so not standing alone then either). I believe we should be joining together more, not splitting up. 

Most of the people I know are descendants of immigrants from one time or other. This debate has become one all about immigration - people from places with an immigrant population of less than 2% being most concerned about migration - which seems ludicrous to me - media-hyped-up fear. Those people here from other places doing jobs that British people prefer not to do for wages they won't work for. Unfounded fear and xenophobia. This country is built on the shoulders of immigrants. It's what I love about living in London - that it's a proper melting pot of people, and flavours, from all over the world where we can express our individuality in whatever way we choose (within reason). 

So I will be voting to remain IN Europe. I think there is greater strength in a union than there can be outside of it. 

Wolfgang Tillmans (photographer) statement about why he got involved in the EU Campaign http://tillmans.co.uk/

Big n Juicy on the referendum.

Hello Israel

And I don't know how come or what caused it but there has been an ENORMOUS spike in visits from Israel this last week - 11,700 visits - the first time Israel has ever made it onto the top 10 audience countries. So hello to you all!