ENGLAND AT THIS REMOVE.

Beachy HeadAt this distance from the UK, steeped in the clear air of separation from all the received notions and behaviours of one’s homeland that you put on like an old coat as soon as you return, I can’t help feeling that the secret to living in England has to lie in not succumbing to the pessimistic viewpoint propagated by the media and the people who believe the media. You have to find a bit of clear space and look after it and not worry about the rest. Of course, I know now that I always feel this way whenever I’ve been out of the UK for a spell. The only difference from the way I was when I came back from India aged 19 full of unshakeable conviction is that now I know I will lose this certainty just like all the others.

Back in the UK.

I'm going to be back in the UK next week for the first time in a year and a half. I don't mind if all the usual things happen once I get there, if all the frustrations are the same. I am not romanticising the place. It can have been changed (changed utterly) into a Daily Mail post-apocalyptic fantasy of Poundlands and hoodies and fear. But there are some things I definitely, inalienably can do there that simply aren't possible here in the megalopolis, that I am really looking forward to.

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A London Evening.

OK, so we skipped an entry yesterday because I was laid up with a particularly vile and antisocial stomach bug, the kind that got bullied by all the other stomach bugs at Gastric High, and is now taking its belated but nonetheless sweet revenge on my intestinal tract. I'm still pretty much doubled over with it, but I can kind of wedge a keyboard into the pathetic gap between my legs and churning stomach. Witness the lengths I go to in order to fulfil my ridiculous, self-imposed writing regime. Anyway, this is No 9/12 in the 12 Blogs of Christmas, and it's a series of vignettes about London, set over the course of one evening. Hope you enjoy it or that at least, unlike me, you don't shit yourself.

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