so this is london
The plane lands at 11.30pm, Sunday evening, on schedule. Thousands of people are trying to get out of the airport. The fruits of prosperity. Weekend breaks everywhere from Krakow to Rabat. You wait ten minutes for the board to flash up where your luggage will arrive. You wait just ten minutes more for the luggage to arrive. You leave the airport concourse at 11.57. At 11.58 you make it to the train station. You prepare to hurtle down the escalator to catch the midnight train. The escalator isn’t working. Neither are the trains. Weekend engineering.
You run to the bus station. A bus pulls out. You ask which of the twelve queues you should join. A helpful man in a yellow safety bib points you to one. Six buses leave from the other queues in the next half hour. At 00.30 your bus arrives. It goes via Stratford to Liverpool Street. People sleep. You realise this is where being an insomniac comes in handy. Easier to deal with midnight chaos. Like Bonaparte.
The bus weaves through back streets past pubs called Wheelers or Frankies with plasterboard frontage over the windows, long since shut. It slips into London via Bow, Stepney Green, Whitechapel. At the station, minicab drivers ply their wares. You know your city and walk round the corner to Moorgate.
There a blond German stock insurer waiting for the 43. Her bag is ticking, menacingly. She tells you a story about driving through the forest near Bremen the night before and hallucinating a man running out in front of the car. Then, ten minutes later, a man does run out in front of the car. This is a psychological thriller. The ticking bag is the Macguffin. She says that all you do in insurance is drink. It’s so much better than in Germany, where all they do is work. It’s also better paid.
Your bus comes. A man who is about to emigrate is sitting on the floor watching Broadcast News. He says that Time Out is covering his rearrangement of letters on the Screen on the Green neon board. The event is being filmed from fifteen angles. It’s a public street. How can he stop them?
You have a sofa each. Your legs stick out the end. You sleep intermittently. Dawn comes coldly. The long night is over.
You run to the bus station. A bus pulls out. You ask which of the twelve queues you should join. A helpful man in a yellow safety bib points you to one. Six buses leave from the other queues in the next half hour. At 00.30 your bus arrives. It goes via Stratford to Liverpool Street. People sleep. You realise this is where being an insomniac comes in handy. Easier to deal with midnight chaos. Like Bonaparte.
The bus weaves through back streets past pubs called Wheelers or Frankies with plasterboard frontage over the windows, long since shut. It slips into London via Bow, Stepney Green, Whitechapel. At the station, minicab drivers ply their wares. You know your city and walk round the corner to Moorgate.
There a blond German stock insurer waiting for the 43. Her bag is ticking, menacingly. She tells you a story about driving through the forest near Bremen the night before and hallucinating a man running out in front of the car. Then, ten minutes later, a man does run out in front of the car. This is a psychological thriller. The ticking bag is the Macguffin. She says that all you do in insurance is drink. It’s so much better than in Germany, where all they do is work. It’s also better paid.
Your bus comes. A man who is about to emigrate is sitting on the floor watching Broadcast News. He says that Time Out is covering his rearrangement of letters on the Screen on the Green neon board. The event is being filmed from fifteen angles. It’s a public street. How can he stop them?
You have a sofa each. Your legs stick out the end. You sleep intermittently. Dawn comes coldly. The long night is over.
posted by maldoror at 2:16 p. m.
1 Comments:
welcome home daddio.
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