This entry features 100% more headings and 100% fewer coherent segues than normal because I am hung over the way circles are round – that is to say, perfectly and absolutely; one might even say inherently – and linear thought is simply not on the menu today. What is on the menu today? Macaroni and cheese, I think. Mmm. Sorry, what? Oh, right. Here we go.
MY PREFERRED MODES OF TRANSPORT, IN ASCENDING ORDER OF AWESOMENESS
1. Canal boat
2. Motorcycle sidecar (goggles please!)
3. Camel caravan
4. Trans-Siberian railway (whoa, watch out for Anna Karenina!)
5. Flying monkey
KILBURN IS FUCKING EXHAUSTING I TELL YOU
London is a city of immigrants (such as myself), and Kilburn is one of those neighbourhoods where they all seem to congregate. Within five minutes of stepping out my front door, I see Iranian women in black chadors, serious-looking Nigerians in cheap business suits, moustachioed Bengalis, old Irish men drinking cans of Guinness on park benches (sometimes stereotypes exist for a reason), young Polish men (who dress virtually identically to English football louts but are somehow unmistakably Slavic), Ugandan women in blindingly garish floral dresses, second-generation London Caribbean teenagers talking in lightning-fast Brixton slang, Lebanese lotharios with half-buttoned shirts and gold chains, Turkish matriarchs with stiff elaborate hairdos and too much jewellery, Pakistani women in ridiculously beautiful saris, Chinese girls in jeans skinnier than drinking straws, and probably about fifty other nationalities I can’t identify. And this is great: London’s relatively peaceful multiculturalism is part of the reason I love living here. But sometimes I have a secret guilty wish for everyone to just be the same for like five seconds. All the variety on Kilburn High Road can be a bit overwhelming. It’s like the UN but with more fried chicken shops.
BEST NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION EVER (SLIGHTLY UNSEASONAL I KNOW)
One of my crazy Kilburn party mates actually resolved last New Year’s that henceforth she would only snort cocaine through clean drinking straws, because using rolled-up notes was too unsanitary. Way to turn your life around!
PONY PONY
I might be going to the New Forest this weekend, which makes me happy because in New Forest towns there are always wild ponies! Roaming the streets! PONIES!
See you next week.