Don't look down

I thought the above image would end up being a photo of my car as it was towed away to the scrapheap. After the guy quoted me for the repairs to get it through the MOT I was ready to give up on it. I'm glad I didn't though - she looks great doesn't she? (If your initial answer to this question is no, then there's probably something wrong with your monitor).

So why did I change my mind? The initial spark was when I drove to work from Bounds Green one morning and it took 30 minutes. Half the time it takes on the tube and a lot more fun too. The moment the idea crystallised was when we drove through central London to Pimlico on Saturday night. We drove down Baker Street and into the heady rush of Oxford Street all viewed from behind glass to a soundtrack of Madness songs. The traffic was flowing on Park Lane. If I hadn't been concentrating on the road I could have sworn I saw the doorman at the Dorchester look over at my car in pure envy.

Another reason to keep the car is scraping it just felt like giving up. I didn't want to give something up, only to find everything tumbling down after it. It's coming to the end of the decade and I'm trying not to repeat the domino effect that happened at the start of the decade. In early 2000 I was completing a course in web design. A month before I finished I lost my part-time job at the sandwich shop. Then they stopped the extra money they gave me for the course. And finally the course itself ended with no job at the end of it. So there I was back where I started, penniless in Liverpool. And things were about to get a whole lot worse. (Things never got much better until around September 2002). But that's another story.

This morning at the garage, the mechanic had all the old parts on the floor. It seemed like half the car was on that floor, while alongside them my car stood proud, all replaced with shiny new parts. Last year my car sat outside rusting away, this year I'm going to go places in my car. See you soon.

The Servants' Quarters

Tuesday morning on the packed tube the free papers are mounting up behind the seats, goggle-eyed headlines about swine flu make me feel queasy. Someone sneezes on the train and you start to worry. You can't even get a common cold right now without a feeling that it may be fatal. I'm going to avoid the panic feeding headlines of the papers. It's no way to start the day.

Wednesday morning at the retirement home in Leamington where my Grandad lives, we spend our time drinking tea. He doesn't say a lot but he smiles and he looks better than the last time we saw him. An old woman we knew from years ago demands the biscuits and takes the last remaining chocolate one. She then demands to know when dinner is. As they prepare to wheel her to the dining room she refuses to bend her knee so they can get her foot onto the foot rest of her wheelchair, claiming she's been bending her knee one too many times this lifetime. A nice lady who smiles a lot asks when her husband is coming downstairs and she has to be reminded that he died eight months ago. Her face looks sad for a while but there's something telling her she's been through these emotions before and she acknowledges it.

Later a new recruit to the home comes and sits in the room we're in looking for company. At the moment he looks quite sprightly, fresh faced even, for such a place. He asks what time the prayer meeting is. He's waiting for something to happen. For some reason, throughout the week, my mind keeps returning to his slightly awkward expression as he sits there waiting.

Sunday morning, the traffic is busy on the Embankment. I see the sign pictured above by the entrance to the mews houses off Cheyne Walk, round the corner from where Keith Richards used to live. I'd like to live in a mews house with an instruction for drivers of vehicles, to walk their horses under my archway. Mews houses are great. They used to be for the servants. Now you need a million quid to live in one. Incidentally, if anyone has a mews house I can live in, please let me know.If you can pick me up in a horse driven carriage so much the better. Ta.

MOT blues and the blue shirt that can't be ironed

I don't use my car much but when I do I love it. Driving across London is a great way to travel. I don't really head into the centre but I can recommend the drive from Belsize Park, through Hampstead, up through Highgate, Muswell Hill and on to Bounds Green to feed Tracy's cats. It's all on the hill overlooking London and every now and then you get panoramic views across the city (very hard to photograph while driving though, so I've resorted to this one of a street in Hampstead). My MOT is looming so I'm making the most of the car before they tell me it's unfit for the road. Last Sunday night I drove that way with Radio 2 playing Benny Goodman and all that big band stuff. It was a warm Summer's evening and the music was helping chase away the Monday morning blues.

This morning I was playing Jeffrey Lewis, who is fantastic. The thing I like about cars is it's just about the only place you can sing really loudly. With no traffic near you, you can really lose your inhibitions. You can almost forget that everyone is away this weekend and it might be Monday morning before I have another conversation with someone.

Back home I try to iron my blue shirts but they refuse to be ironed. In the end I give up and put the shirt on a hanger with more creases than it started with. Some tasks seem nigh on impossible. For instance, putting duvet covers on. Women find it easy but it sure don't make no sense to me. Monday morning is looming again. Better put on the Benny Goodman songs.

Jackie O Shades

So, Tuesday, and the rain has been tumbling down. But don't worry, summer will be back, the rain is merely a blip in Summer's long reign. Are you liking my optimism? Well, if they can have good weather at Glastonbury then anything can happen.

I'm liking the summer so far, enjoying walking around in it, watching it all around me. The girls in their Jackie O shades, painted toe nails in flip flops on the tube. Bicycles resting against trees on Primrose Hill. The hot weather brings out certain eccentricities. Last week a man came past on these kind of skis on wheels and he propelled himself using those sticks skiers use, along Belsize Avenue.

I took my bicycle out of the garage at work the other evening, dusted it off and rode around Regent's Park. It was warm and still light at 9.30. I was overtaken by men on racers, wearing the goggles and all the gear but I didn't mind. I was cruising along enjoying a summer evening in London.

Outside the rain has stopped, getting ready for plenty more summer evenings.

Man in the Mirror

Do you recall the woman on the bike with the basket full of kids I told you about? I was walking up to Primrose Hill the other lunchtime and I saw her bike tied to a parking sign outside this house. I felt like Jimmy finding Sting's scooter outside the Grand Hotel. It's generally been decided in the office that this woman is an eco-friendly rich woman who refuses to drive. The evidence being that she takes her kids to school in St John's Wood. Could this be her house? Is the four wheel drive hers? Who knows - maybe she's the cleaner. Unlikely though, I looked in the basket and it was full of rubbish.

Closer to home, I've decided I wear too much black. I only wear black shirts to work and I have loads of black t-shirts, yet I can't remember buying one of them. I have pale blue t-shirts, a bright red and a few stripey t-shirts, but I keep going back to black. I need more colour in my life. On Sunday I went shopping and bought a green t-shirt and new dark denim jeans. They had their first wear today. It felt good wearing something new and in colour. I need to sort my shoes out - I've been wearing very dull shoes of late. I also need to lose weight, I'm 12 stone. I'm not sure how all of this happened.

The whole new clothes thing though had something to do with Saturday. Every year my Mum's side of the family has a beach day and we all meet in Goring, Worthing. I turned up in - yes - a black un-ironed t-shirt and my slightly dilapidated walking shoes. Everyone else looked like they'd bought their clothes especially the day before. Not a crease in sight.

I've just hung up my clean laundry; colourful t-shirts hanging on the rack. They look so good there, so fresh and clean; it's going to be hard not to reach for the black shirts again tomorrow.

Small acts of kindness

This sign stands outside a church in East London not far from Liverpool Street station. What are Oranges and Lemons letters? Can someone send me some, please? We thought maybe it was a business name, but there were no businesses in sight with that name. Which is good, because Oranges and Lemons letters should never be corporate, never be official - they should be friendly, like the letter I got off my Mum the other week. It's so rare anyone sends a hand written letter anymore - yet they're the only letters worth receiving. My Nan used to send loads of letters and they'd tell you what everyone was up to and if I look back at them now they're great because they capture moments in time that you forget about. 'Life moves pretty fast, if you don't stop and take a look around once in a while you might miss it', as Ferris Bueller once said.

Small acts of kindness are unexpected in London because it has a reputation for being so unfriendly and harsh. But take a look around and they do happen. Last Wednesday I was waiting for a friend at Victoria station and an old woman was trying to get help with her baggage from the station staff. Due to some health and safety/ red tape/ corporate nonsense issue, the staff explained that he couldn't carry her bags anywhere until she was actually in the station. A gruff fellow clearly sick of this, lit a cigarette and strutted up to the woman and asked her in a belligerent tone, that may have slightly scared her, where she needed her bags taking to. She told him and he picked them up and marched them to the station for her. I liked the way he was being nice in a surly manner.

I recall the winter of 2007 when I was flat hunting and I rang a woman called Doreen Collar who had a room in a flat for rent. She sounded really nice, and quite old - she was from a gentler and nobler age - and she told me which bus to get and said 'I should ask the driver to let me off at a certain junction'. I love that line because my experience of bus drivers is of angry irate men who think you're out of order if you dare ask them a question. I like the idea though, that old people can still live in this world, with the drivers dutifully dropping them off at their stop.

I didn't end up going to see Doreen Collar's flat. A shame really, she sounded really nice. And I bet she knows what Oranges and Lemons letters are.

A Sopranos shaped hole

There is a Buddhist maxim that states ( and I'm paraphrasing) that you should live in the now. I'm so stuck in the past and the ideal imagined future it's untrue. I'm stuck in the past with TV too. I rarely watch it, I just play catch up on classic series. Matt lent me the Sopranos, and I've just finished 6 series and the final episodes. If you're wondering where your blog was last week I was watching the final episodes of the Sopranos. (Oh you weren't. Oh well. As a character says in another gangster film, 'do you listen or wait to speak?'. I'd have to confess to the latter).

I was worried someone was going to tell me the end of the Sopranos, but they never did. Now I can see why. What happened at the end? What did the black silent screen signify? Did Tony die or was it just saying life carries on, the loose ends stay loose and this is where we're ducking out of his life?

Whatever, it's a brilliant series, pretty addictive. It got me through some long winter weekends. In January I took a walk through Regent's Park on a freezing ice-blue Saturday. It was silent and eerie. I was going to take a photo and start my blog that way but I never took the picture. I wish I did. I wish... (Have a picture of Corrado and T instead. I love that scene:

     'This thing of ours. You used to run New Jersey.'

     'Oh, that's nice.'

That day there was nobody about in Regent's Park I went home and sat in bed watching the Sopranos. 

Now there's a Sopranos shaped hole in my life. Or maybe it's something else. On Friday I sat drinking coffee in a cafe with a good window to the Liverpool street below. I was writing out a card for Adrian, as he and Sam have just had their first daughter. It took me ages to work out what to write. I was looking out trying to recognise faces. I lived in that city for years. I only recognised one person: Gary Rigby. He's on the sick and saves up money to go abroad: India, Australia. He's possibly saving now. He just sits out the months until he can go away. Well I guess that's what he still does.

In the cafe in Belsize Park on Monday, where I was ushered in to shelter from the hailstones, I sat drinking coffee knowing I wouldn't recognise anyone who walked past. Now I've finished the Sopranos I'm not going to take on any more big tv series. I've got a million things to do, all those things hanging around waiting to be finished. Waiting to be started. I'm sure going to miss my Sopranos fix though.