Flowerful Perverts

2005-02-08 at 9:33 p.m.

I'm currently sitting in an internet cafe near Trafalgar Square, typing on an inefficient and unpleasant keyboard which feels like sponge. You may ask yourself why I have just spent £1 for half an hour of internet access when I have unlimited free internet at home. The answer would be that I really don't know. I was standing outside waiting for my bus when I decided to go and get a drink, and this place was open. Then I realised that its still early and I didn't want to go home. I'd walked down through Soho and Chinatown through Leicester Square without finding anywhere that looked cheap or pleasant to enter so I wound up here. Which is neither cheap nor pleasant. I used to love these places - every evening where I used to live I would walk down to the internet cafe on Oxford Street and buy an hour or so. I liked the coffee they sold you see. Beats me now why I did it. I even paid to go online on Christmas day a few times. This makes me sound like a sad internet groupie so I'd best stop I suppose.

I've always liked London at night. Its not so busy - or at least mostly busy with drunks, who I identify with really, having spent so much time stumbling drunkenly round Edinburgh. There aren't so many clueless tourists gazing at landmarks and getting in my way. And there are only streetlights which help to hide the extreme ugliness of some of the buildings. Plus the streets smell like Chinese food and alcohol, and there is quite a bit of neon which looks almost romantic, in a seedy sort of way.

Though I have to say, as I'm still reading Poppy Z Brite's Exquisite Corpse, and I am puzzled by one of her descriptions. Her Nilsen-a-like mentioned the children in Leicester Square - what children? Was this in the Seventies or something? I have never seen ethereal children in there, just drunks, tramps and tourists begging for a pickpocket. Only children I've seen are 16-and-up year olds, coming out for an illicit drink (this I know because I was one, once) but we hardly had the glamour she describes.

Maybe she's been to a more exciting London than I have. Or maybe the act of writing makes a city seem more interesting, I hope not as I fancy visiting New Orleans and I would be quite disappointed if it was like any other city instead of the place of dark magic how I imagine it.

Ow, my back hurts. I am sitting with my rather heavy bag round my shoulders you see, which is most awkward and leaves me twisted. I once had my bag stolen from me in one of these places you see. The one and only time I have been stolen from.

Maybe tomorrow when I'm coming back from Physics I will go to The Pub That Time Forgot. This is in Soho, I found it once when my friend Neil was here. We called it that because the beer was amazingly, astoundingly cheap, even though Soho is a terribly tourist/flash git area and most places are very expensive. It was like it was stuck in the 70s when things were cheaper. Just an old man bar, opposite a gay pub, but everything in it was provided by the same tiny brewery in Yorkshire, and the prices still make me amazed. They were cheaper than Edinburgh, city of drunks, in London, the city where you get ripped off. Weird. But nice. Neil says that it is more busy now, we practically had the place to ourselves the last time I went. Maybe I'll go looking for it, I tried to find it the last time Shirley was down here, because I thought she would like Soho and also would like the idea of cheap beer (she's Scottish). Alas I couldn't find it and was beginning to think it was a time-travelling pub which only appeared sometimes, but apparently it is still there.

If you ever go to London though, don't go down the Strand at night. Yes it might have posh hotels (ie the Savoy) in it but for some reason (probably to do with the Salvation Army) it is entirely full of old tramps at night and no taxi will pick you up along its length.

Biology today was a little strange, we spent the time dissecting flowers (a primrose and a tulip) and looking at their male and female parts. Which has left me feeling like a bit of a pervert really. Can just imagine people going around fingering the private parts of flowers.

Actually I think I would rather not imagine that.

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