I praised London in another blog post a few days ago. Now I’m going a full 180 in this post because not everything in Old Blighty is strawberries and cream. I’m also going a full 180 from the numbered list I did in the other post. For this one, only a stream-of-consciousness rant will get the message across….
London you’re great, you really are, and don’t take this the wrong way but honestly sometimes you drive me truly bats**t, because, ok ok, “drive” is a key word here because you all drive like psychos, the whole bloody lot of ya, always speeding up when you should be slowing down even on our quiet little residential streets while kids are walking and cats are flitting about, and I’m on my bike and I slow down as you approach and expect YOU to slow down too but do you slow down do you do you???? — no, you do not, you speed up and give me about 3 inches to pass and by the time I flip you the finger and tell you to sod off whoosh! you’re already in the wind, and speaking of walking you can’t walk anywhere here without having to dodge doggie droppings because you let your dogs crap everywhere here, like all over the sidewalks and in front of front stoops, and I love dogs and I’m sure you love dogs, but would you mind showing a little by-God consideration and cleaning up after them, and your weather is chilly and damp for months and months and months on end from October right on through to mid-April or so, and then it’s nice outside, quite pleasant indeed, simply lovely, and then the summer comes and there are some warm and sunny days outside but inside it’s hot and stuffy because YOU GEEZERS DO NOT BELIEVE IN AIR CONDITIONING AND IT’S 2019 – LET ME REPEAT TWENTY BLOODY NINETEEN – AND AIR CONDITIONING IS STILL LIKE SOME KIND OF RICHARD BRANSON LUXURY HERE WHEN EVERY CHEAP APARTMENT IN THE STATES AND LOTS OF OTHER PLACES HAVE A/C AS A STANDARD PART OF THE DEAL, and sometimes it’s hot enough to hard boil an egg outside but even if you do it’s nearly impossible to peel the damn things because there’s this skin on the eggs here that sticks to the shell and so you end up ripping half the egg off in the process of peeling it, and I don’t know if you serve eggs at your late-night restaurants because you don’t HAVE any late-night restaurants because unless you’re in Chinatown or something they all seem to close at 10 pm or so, and some neighborhoods (like ours) don’t even have a full-service restaurant that opens for dinner anymore since the only one we DID have decided to go takeout only (I’m sorry “takeaway” only), and there are thousands and thousands of people who live (and eat) right here in our neighborhood but no sit-down full service restaurant, but the good news is some of your nightclubs do stay up late, like the Ronnie Scott’s Upstairs jazz club I like to haunt, and I’d love it even more if I could grab a seat at the bar but I can’t grab a seat at the bar there because there ARE no seats at the bars in London, so you have to hunt a table down but since there are only about 10 tables good luck with that, so you end up standing and getting squeezed in and the person beside you is chatting in her loudest voice to her friend even as the band is playing so you’re hearing all this chatter but not the music you came to hear because these doofuses beside you just want to hang out and chitchat instead of actually listen to these amazing musicians swing and blow, and hey mail delivery folks DON’T LEAVE OUR PACKAGES WITH NEIGHBORS and and and…….serenity now, serenity now, serenity now.
Vance Cariaga 