27 November 2007

de nada

Worlds collided and we gave thanks.




soundtrack: Norwegian Wood - The Beatles

13 November 2007

this is england






soundtrack: Fields of Athenry - Dropkick Murphys

05 November 2007

bonfires

It's strange to think this is my second UK-residential Guy Fawkes Night; the England of 2003 and Oxford seems so alien and far away now, another country entirely. Which is all the more ironic given my current beau, and the unexpected recognition of at least three Oxonians at the Battersea pub on Friday night. The weather has not improved, the class consciousness remains palpable, and the sunsets are still guttingly early, but something about this City of London - a little bigger, a little brighter - is making all the difference.

The days pass on the tops of double-decker buses or in the sharp-angled descents of Tube escalators; frowning at tightly printed pages of Conrad in my room or hastily recording a particularly salient point at the wide wooden seminar table; drinking at the Hawley Arms, drinking at the ULU, drinking at the Lord Stanley; markets under railway trestles, misleading slips of paper, wine-fuzzy kitchen gatherings and standing, skunk-stoked and spinning, on a balcony on Camden Road watching fireworks glitter and explode in the heavy evening sky.

And I wonder, what was I so afraid of?

Happy Guy Fawkes y'all.

soundtrack: Unstookie Titled - Babyshambles