Great Expectations

I think I am now at a point where I start to feel that I’m living in London. I have been sexually assaulted on a bus, said hello to my neighbours and tried out every supermarket nearby. My everyday life has a routine now. This is good. And bad. I’m feeling stuck. If I don’t change something, this routine of going to lectures, studying at home, reading in libraries and occasional nights out will be equal to the routine of my life in Berlin. Although, I’m usually not studying so much and working more (or at least trying to).

So it’s time to get a job and get to know some more people. More money, friends and drinks. I think if I would be asked during a job interview what I expect from the new job, I would answer: “friends and money”. And to make that sentence more British and not oh-so-German brisk: “friends and money, please”

No, I would probably give a predictable human-resource-management-friendly answer, because I really want the job. For money and friends. But then I need to find a company where I can assume that the people working there are good candidates for my next BFFs and BMFs. That means that Downing Street No. 10 is currently off the list. That’s a shame, honestly, I want to do the Hugh Grant-dance. Maybe after the next elections my Downing-disco-dance will have a chance, or else I become a Tory. I have to think about that properly. Maybe I will start with a Burberry scarf, just to get a feeling of being elitist and get comfortable with it (it’s getting cold anyway). But therefore I need money. And for money - a job. God, what a vicious circle.

There are actually three things that my new job has to offer me: money, friends and relevance for my “career” (please). What I want to do, you’re asking? Guess what: something in the media. I have worked in so many companies for such short periods that I have a very large repertoire of superficial qualifications in writing, editing, organising, selling, casting and putting an intelligent face on. That face is very useful. I use it all the time. Especially at university. “Who is that young woman who looks so bright?” “I think that must be Laura, she doesn't say much, but what she says sums every discussion up and brings it in context”. “Oh yes, you can see from her face that she’s following the lecture”.

Yes, because I’m waiting to drop a stolen sentence in that I read on Wikipedia. It’s just an intelligent face. Behind my forehead everything’s about money and friends. And the crucial question: who is responsible for the Jimmy Savile case?

Think twice, where you enrol your child

Catholic Schools: Give children a rest!

Set my anger free

I have to come back to the link about the London tube that I told you about a few weeks ago. The London public transport system is seriously annoying me and stressing my patience towards other passengers. They don’t move. They just don’t. In a crowded overground, underground or bus, they don’t move when someone wants to get out. Even the people waiting at the platform and wanting to get in are not moving (but still minding the gap) and let people out. Even though this would give them space in the train to get inside. But if you, for example, want to get through a crowded pub, there is no problem. Sentences between the communicators A and B, A and C, A and D, D and C, and A and A look like this:

A: Sorry, I need to get to the other side. Sorry.

B: Sorry, yes sure, sorry.

A: Sorry, can I get to the bar? Sorry. Thanks.

C: Sorry. Yeah, Sorry, sorry.

A: Sorry, sorry.

D: Sorry, crowded, eh? Sorry.

D: Oh sorry, excuse me, sorry.

C: Sorry that I’m in your way and you had to trample on my foot and spilt your drink on it. Sorry.

A: Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.

A: Sorry. Sorry. (This was a soliloquy)

It can be more aggressive the later the evening gets (I think that’s one reason for the early closing of pubs).

But when it comes to being a club (a dance club I mean, not the snobby old men clubs): no conversations (heard of posh silent clubs though). People in your way are enemies. Not worth saying anything. Just dance them off the stage. With your long hair. Twirl it right in the face of others. Or your shoes. Oh, that’s what high-heels are for. Hurt them all. Slop your Red Bull over me. You know I don’t like that.

I think this phenomenon lies deep in the cultural behaviour and expectations of the nation. Behave well at work, at Sunday Roasts and the first years of marriage. But when you party, tell a joke and use the public transport, use these occasions as an outlet for all your suppressed emotions.

For myself, wife beater doesn’t make me angry. I just like the name. (But I don’t like domestic abuse)

What have people done to you, Royal Mail?

post office in Hackney

People are not paying, children left behind. Everytime I'm entering a british post office, it feels like this is how the last days of the world will look like. Crowded, stinky, empty shelves and the bitter feeling that the past was a better time.

I am the Lord of the Brick Lane

Yes, I gained recognition from a Bangladeshi waiter while eating my lamb vindaloo without any desire for water. I feel very proud now and ready for a „real“ vindaloo in Bangladesh or India or anywhere else in Asia. Brick Lane made me.

I am so into this blog, that I make notes for it. So I have a drunkenly written reminder in my mobile phone that says “low-sodium salt”. Whatever I wanted to tell you, my dearest friends, I considered that as so important to take a note. So low-sodium salt it is. I think I even seasoned my vindaloo with more salt. But I don’t know if that salt was low-sodium.

On that day, when I conquered Brick Lane, which was last Saturday, I went to an electro concert in super-über-trendy Dalston. The only band that I didn’t miss was a Swedish one-woman-band. But she is living in hip Berlin. London, I mean. (Getting so confused with all electro artists on dark stages with five people in the audience). She said that she felt a bit lost in urban London. Because she is a young girl from Sweden. Then she said that the next song is about living in a small village and that she feels that right now in London. This was the moment when I couldn’t follow her and her music anymore. I had to think about her contradictive argumentation and still didn’t get her. Maybe she was referring to Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses? The metropolitan novel about a globalised world? Her own heroic voyage? A young girl from little Sweden to not-as-great-as-it-used-to-be Britain? Maybe she was just drunk. Or crazy (she’s from Sweden, don’t forget that).

My course has started and I have three three-hour sessions with 5, 6 and 7 people. Yes. No mobile phones, no nothing. Just plain higher education. But not naked like in good old Greece. We read Adorno and watched a piece of Pina Bausch. Germany, country of poets and thinkers (this is a common self-description made by Germans, usually referring to Goethe and Schiller, but I would extend the circle to Adorno, maybe not Bausch)

Thank you for reading!

Laura

Tea for two, including a bottle of wine

Liverpool, city of alcoholic 2 for 1 bargains

Evidence that tea goes with everything. Or wine goes with everything. I'm wondering what goes with ale?