Glance

New windows, removed scaffolding. Bright. Clear view. On the pavement outside the cafe opposite the foreman of our building works and the surveyor from the Council have a meeting while drinking infinitely superior coffee than they might get from our building and bask in the morning sunshine. Miss Tapas next door is having food delivered from an organic supplier. The woman with the roof terrace over the cafe comes out of her French doors potters around for a minute holding down the front of her peach coloured tee shirt. Steps back inside, revealing a naked white bottom, and props the door open for ventilation. Next to the chimney stacks and across from the tree line the Shard has a facia of sheer silver - a silver sliver - where the sun hits it on one plane only. 

Afternoon Blues

Across the street from my office the row of once Little Lagos inspired shops are being taken over by the arty gentrifying sprawl from Bellenden Road. We now overlook a suitably expensive cafe, a male grooming parlour which does hair and beards and a tapas restaurant. 

The tapas restaurant has started the formalisation of the outside areas with a raised outdoor seating area claded in decking. Great spot for catching the mid afternoon sun. 

A couple were seated drinking coffee and waiting for their nibbles. A normal couple in all ways - tee shirts (navy and marl), shorts and trainers, mousy crew cut slightly balding, blond ponytail. While waiting she breastfed the baby under a floral sack, and he smoked a cigarette while shading himself with a navy blue parasol. 

And then a car pulls up blaring out blues music sung in a deep baritone and a sensual loosely strung electric guitar. John Lee Hooker. A peep out the window reveals a black hard top MG. After three loose gangly tunes that really started getting me going the driver returned, got in, slammed the door with a solidly satisfying thud, turned the engine over (causing a pause in the music), and roared away. Leaving behind the street chatter and the disappointingly  tinkly notes from the barbers.

Overground

Extraordinarily controlling African dad - tall and imposing - barking orders at his extremely well behaved children - sit there, don't open that now, eat the melon, use the fork your hands are filthy, hurry up and finish it we are getting off next stop, son are you hearing my words?, close it now, put your fork in there, you are not wearing this headband tomorrow, carry it outside.... Not a moment of silence and not a flicker of a smile the whole way. 

When they got off their seats were taken by a girlcat wearing black furry ears with a gold bell inside and her boyfriend. 

Weapon collection

There's this red wheelie bin outside Tottenham police station that says "deposit weapons here". I understand they may be running an amnesty or something but what's to stop someone collecting rather than depositing? Or running off with the bin itself and collecting all of them? Seems slightly flawed system to me. 

Quiet

Quietly sitting contemplating the trajectory of two flies caught in the skylight. Earlier sleeping in a chair dappled sunlight played across my eyelids. Now I have an itch to be on the move again. Too long in one place lets the brain get busy in a negative way. 

Overground travel

There's a baby on this mid-day overground train that is doing a fantastic impression of a Wookiee exerting a throaty rolling sound most like Chubaka. 

I'm off home before the tube strike kicks in. 

Tramp

Now I know we are supposed to call tramps homeless people or street drinkers or other more politically correct but less evocative things, but there was this tramp. In Stockwell. Grey skin, thick with ashy dirt, long matted grey beard, long matted grey hair, grey track pants, dirty shirt not done up, huge belly. He came out of a telephone box (one of the new kinds with clear glass doors and an advertisement on one window) and poured a bottle of very yellow frothy liquid down the drain outside, leaving his filthy belongings on their trolley in the phone box. Living in the box I guessed. Life. But not as we know it. 

Birthday

In the beginning of the relationship of Hurricane the Tempest (that's me) and the Panther (that's him), way back in October, I put a note in my calendar that said Panthers bday. He added a little bit into that entry that I saw at some point one day that said I hope we are still together then. 

This weekend we had a big party hosting everyone he knows for his birthday. BBQ on a hot afternoon with music provided by a couple of DJs. Bothered some of the neighbours a bit, council noise team came round. We said goodbye to the last guest at 3am. Jolly good time had by all. Including the Panther, which is pretty difficult as a host. 

People love a revolving door

From a small half hour study I have concluded that faced with a revolving door, a wide open door and and automatically opening door the vast majority of people will still opt to exit or enter through the revolving door even though it is one of those sorts that fits more than one person in each segment and stops if people get too near the edges. People must love the revolving door still! 

Commuting woes

I find myself at Canada Water overground station in a state of total upset, unable to stop tears coming because of the stress of trying to get to work. It's completely ridiculous. I have been travelling for an hour and a half now. I have been in crowded buses and walked faster than it at the end. I have missed the more straightforward connection that would get me there on time and taken an alternative route through the abject chaos that is Londonbridge at the moment. At London Bridge at 8.56 there wasn't a train to Peckham until 9.16. There used to be a train every 10 minutes. The unhelpful guard disagreed but I have been using that service for 10 years. So I went back to the overground from London Bridge to Canada Water only to find the next train was over 10minutes away and not due until 9.23. 

Second day in a row. Several weeks in to a absolute hatred of our transportation system. I'm over an hour earlier today and the journey is worse than when I leave later. More crowded, no seats, more grumpy. I feel lack of control. Perhaps I should cycle (it's a damn long way is the main issue and I'm not that good at it at the moment). 

Soho Stories

The Observer had an article this Sunday celebrating Soho as they knew it. Its an area that while I don't feel I 'lived' in I certainly had an affinity for. An art student in London has to frequent the areas that seem to be on the seedy, arty, trendy, hidden and naughty side of life. Reading the article I was reminded persistently of time spent there.

My Pops tells stories of meeting my mother, invited to make up a party of 6, at dinner while he was on a business trip from America. They were dining at a restraurant on Rupert Street with  Irma Kurtz (who is writing about her search for bohemia in the 1960s in soho). I'm not doing his story any justice but the crux of it is that they met in May at this dinner and four weeks later got married and she went to join him in Chicago. Without this meeting there would be no me, so I guess I am indebted.

My mother always went back there on and off but I didn't realise its significance until very recently (new man asking questions about the love at first sight thing elicited much information from my father - very interesting how we don't question our parents enough when we have the opportunity).  She used to take me to Maison Bertaux when we went shopping in Oxford Street. Very good french patisserie. Looks like it hasn't been renovated since the 1950s - still cream shiny satin paint on the walls, uplighters, glass shelves in the windows and marble tops to keep the cream cakes cool. We would have a coffee and a chocolate eclair (long been my favourite) and squeeze in somewhere upstairs ususally. My sister hated it - feeling it was too pretentious for its own good (bah humbug her). Michele Wade writing about her cafe in the observer is always there, and always was as I remember. Posh but not rich seeming, eccentric, hairdo from a bygone era. It's quiet, cramped and slightly uncomfortable but worth it for the eclair. When I was at college I used to go there with Georgia. Lately I haven't been.

Georgia and I used to spend an in ordinate amount of time in the Spice of Life pub (Cambridge Circus). Having recently met at Middlesex Poly's art foundation I bumped into her properly in the Spice of Life one Saturday (can't remember who brought me there). She was wearing tortoise shell glasses with no glass and was with a friend called Tracey. We hit it off from then. Drawn to its fantastic punk juke box downstairs. Liked the fact that it was in the Sex Pistol's film. We played Pretty Vacant, White Riot and I've got a silver machine (forgotten the name) and sang along at the tops of our lungs (always thought they were singing we're so pretty, oh so pretty, vain cunts until I realised one day it was pretty vacant). I only drank coke but seemed to be drunk on sugar. Georgia drank as much beer as she could get. There was a barman who served in the basement who gave me free drinks. He was a film student and gave me his number on the same day as I met my first boyfriend, sadly I never rang him.  We also used to go to the Dive Bar under the The King's Head on Gerrard Street until it shut down. And when they renovated the Spice of Life, sucking all its great old history out of it we moved on to the Intrepid Fox where we fitted in just fine because we had started dying our hair pink and orange and felt an affinity with the old punks that hung out there. Once Georgia went to Brighton to a degree and I stayed on at Middlesex Uni I brought my next great buddy Bails there and we continued hanging and revelling in the dark music.

Bails and I also came to Berrick Street a lot - I liked buying cloth - the Cloth House being one of the greatest for unusual and exciting fabric - a shop on Royal College Street in Camden (that my mother first took me to) and on Berrick Street. We would get a box of food at Beetroot - vegetarian, wholesome, cheap, stuffed! And then go do whatever it was Saturday held for us (watching arthouse dirty movies often - In the Realm of the Senses in a cinema near the Trocodero - sitting next to a businessman who couldn't quite get over the film all the way through, "she's not going to do that, oh my god she is", watching through his fingers). Eating supper at Garlic and Shot (roasted garlic - yum, breath - deadly).

There was the great Going Out Fridays of Lewisham College (staff reliving our youths) where more than once I ended up after a long night of alcohol and dancing in dodgy underground nightclubs drinking coffee outside all night cafes on Old Compton Street with Martin watching the gays and the drag queens waiting for the tube to open so we could go our separate ways. Wet Saturday mornings 6am.

More recently I do less of that but do like to go to the Algerian Coffee Company for ground beans in a mild roast, and buy violet tea. Sometimes join the drunk and disorderlies for a Sunday drink in Rupert Street, visit Fopp on the way to Seven Dials. Its an area like no other and a criminal shame to shape it into something like everywhere else, with chains and all the uniqueness kicked out of it.

Save Soho

Happy birthday to me

And to Harvey Keitel, Stevie Wonder, Zoe Wannamaker, Yaya Toure, Dennis Rodman and Ravi Shanker. 

It's been lovely. 

Kite

Having constructed kites (with instruction from my dad's Brazilian lodgers - long tradition of fighting kites on the beaches of Brazil) out of bamboo, tissue paper, sellotape and plastic bags we flew them over Finsbury Park as we recovered from partying over the weekend. 

Part of the joy is that an object made from household materials can fly as high and for as long as they did (baring some snapping of line when one of them was so high you could barely see it - twice ending up across the canal down the hill and in the softball game in the old cricket field). 

These are simple joyous kites - none of the seriousness that my last kite-flying experience had - all professional store bought fancy flexifoils with double strings and too much fancy-pantsing around. These went up with a slight gust and went as high as the line would let it. 

Into Opposition

So the fun of Election Day at seven sisters station is over. Damp, dreary and swarming with Socialist Workers in overdrive warning of cuts and fightback. I've not been aware of the Socialist Workers Party since the long long slog through the Thatcher Tory years and beyond. Back in opposition proper.

Tube

There's a woman on the tube wearing a pair of socks with multilayered hamburgers on them and a vampire-teeth necklace. Short hair. Slashed knee jeans. Sunglasses on her head on a rainy day. This would be contemporary vampire. If they existed. 

Aftermath

And now it's all gone a bit blue. Swaths of faces wiped off the political landscape. I never really remember I care that much until the blues get in and then I really remember that it matters a lot. Tired of all these old Etonians. How about more women, more working-backgrounds, more people of colour. 

Vote

All the hoopla of the vote all over Facebook. Colleagues gearing up for The Count (morning work, afternoon off, counting expecting to complete at 4.30am-ish). David Lammy is pressing palms with the undecided outside Seven Sisters station surrounded by a typical gaggle of leftie electioneers. We wait in an-tici-pation (to quote an old unrelated movie). 

Medical emergency

A man suddenly fell from the seat and started having a fit on the concrete platform of Tottenham Hale station. Waiting passengers rushed to help - put him in recovery position and covering him with a jacket. A train pulled in and I'm guessing they kept space around the man - I was seeing this from the platform opposite. When the train left he seemed to be fitting less. One of the passengers was still on the phone to the emergency services and station staff sauntered up. Two things - fantastic support of strangers and the hopelessness of the staffing at the station - despite being told at the gate immediately nobody rushed to assist. 

Election

So on Tooley Street (very touristy at this time of day) this dark blue old Rolls Royce passed me at the lights. I thought it must be advertising a new "loony" party to vote for in our upcoming elections. Vote National Bird emblazened on its old (looked original) paintwork, with little round pictures all over it with birds in them. Sitting here in Borough with a coffe, chill out music playing and the sun shining I decided to look them up. 

It transpires that Vote National Bird is a campaign to elect a new national bird (potentially). Coinciding with that other big election taking place. In the mid-60s the robin was voted Britian's favourite bird. This campaign is giving you the opportunity to vote again. So if you think another bird ought to be our national bird you should place your vote. 

There are a few to choose from. Barn owl, blackbird, blue tit, hen harrier, kingfisher, mute swan, puffin, red kite, robin and wren. 

I don't know why but I'm drawn to the common ones we see all the time as the ones that ought to be our national bird. So none of these sleek birds of prey, nor the flashy (gorgeous though) fisher or puffin, nor the aristocrats that belong to the queen. So it's between the blackbird, blue tit, robin and the wren. I see them all in our Tottenham garden. Wrens being the shyest. Blue tits are cute. And between the blackbird and the robin I'd still probably pick the robin for its nosiness and neighbourly behaviour. 

Journey

Early. Day is bright. Sky blue. Coat open. Bus was in good time. Down into the underground. Big crowd being held in the ticket hall. Somebody was taken ill further down the line and the platforms are now over crowded. Eventually we are let through. Our escalator is being refurbished so we have to use the stairs. A kid in front of me isn't slow but does keep stopping and starting. The flow of walking is interrupted. Somehow in the bottom on flat ground I suddenly find myself flung flat on the floor. I have no idea what happened and feel a bit of shock. A man leans down, "are you ok?" I think I am. But I don't think I said anything. He asks again. I say yes and look at him. He offers a hand and picks me up. Passes me my paper and bag. Checks one more time I'm ok and rushes off down the corridor in a blur of beige. An older black woman smiles sympathetically and says she hopes my day improves. I would be embarrassed except that it all happened so fast I'm not sure it was real.