the new situation

We've got the flat.  Everything went smoothly.  A week after applying, we got the yes.  I'm still not convinced it's the right flat for us, but it's ok, we're going to survive, and the school's really close to it, a short walk away.

Getting rid of the old flat was painless.  In Switzerland, leases are taken seriously.  You rent because you want to live somewhere.  You can make long-term plans based on this, as can the landlord.  When I lived in London, one month's notice sufficed.  Here you can move out only twice a year.  Choose any date beside the end of March and the end of September, and you're liable to pay for the remaining months.

We didn't want to wait until September.  Kindergarten starts in August, and it would be good to get the move done before we fly off on vacation in July.  We gave notice for the end of June, leaving us with three months' rent to be paid for nothing.

The way around wasting all this money is finding someone to take over the lease.  Given the tight rental market, which we experienced ourselves over the last year or two, this should be easy.  I had mostly been searching on homegate.ch, and I figured I'd advertise there as well.  This idea seemed less sensible when I found about the listing fees.  At around 180 Francs, I didn't even bother to find out how many photos were included.  There had to be a better way.

tutti.ch offers online classifieds that let you find anything but not search very specifically.  Size of the apartment, price tag and number of rooms, that's for you to glean from a long list of hits matching your town of interest.  The large majority of ads are probably obsolete, as are the two I put on (one in English, another in German), but after I'd listed them I got a call the same night and a viewing the next evening.  There was only ever this one call.  It was enough for a family very similar to ours to secure a flat for July.

We have since registered the girl for kindergarten and identified daycare options for the boy.  An after-school program for the girl is a bit more of a challenge.  Baden doesn't combine this with kindergarten, for whatever bizarre reason.  There's a central daycare for all children with working parents, in the old town, close to but not right next to some of the kindergartens.  Children will be walked between daycare and kindergarten, at least at the beginning.  But how much will they be taken care of?  When we visited the place today, it looked slightly abandoned, with most children out and about, out on their own, it seemed.

The apartment situation might be sorted out, but daycare is a bit unsettling.  I'm far from freaking out, though.  Other parents are facing similar challenges, and many more will have gone through and survived this situation over the years.  There will be an obvious way, and we will find out.

big decision

Moving house is a pain.  There must be very good reasons to do it, to uproot one's life and start again.  There's so much effort and time involved, before, during and after the move.

We have been looking for a new flat for about a year now.  Finding one isn't easy in Switzerland.  The real estate market is rather tight.  Not being Swiss probably doesn't help.  And my standards are high, one of the perks of living here.  I've seen a few nice flats but not a single one where I was devastated when I didn't get it.

I like our current flat a lot.  There's not much wrong with it.  It's large enough for the four of us, relatively new and in good shape, close to the train station and the childcare right next to it, and halfway between my and Flucha's places of work.  It has a large garden that the children love.  It doesn't get much direct sun but is very bright nevertheless because it has more windows than surface area.

The things I don't like about the flat are the relatively small and impractical kitchen with insufficient counter space, the lack of a separate freezer compartment, the sad balcony that has never invited us to spend much time there and the single curtain rails.  If this sounds like nit-picking, it's because it is.  Were it for the flat only, I would not seriously consider moving.

A bigger problem is that the flat is in Dietikon.  Dietikon is a town without attractions, at least in my eyes.  Besides a lovely little library, there's nothing that makes me want to spend time there.  The neighborhood where we live, north of the train station, is even worse.

It's a new development that has grown over the past ten years to cover a former industrial site with rectangular buildings of concrete and glass, in the style of international tedium, with no obvious flaws but no charm either, disconnected from the place, entirely without identity.  There's no decent café, the bakery is closed on weekends, and the few restaurants are pathetic.  With two thousand people living here, our neighborhood should be thriving but it just doesn't take off.  The main square epitomizes all that's wrong.  A gravelly expanse of nothing, it seems abandoned, though it's more likely that no town planner was involved in the design of the neighborhood in the first place.  None of this matters much to us.  We're a happy family and we'd happily stay.

The real problem, the issue that will drive us from this place in the end, is the lack of a school.  How you can build an entirely new neighborhood and not think of a school is beyond me.  (There's word of one for 2026, but don't hold your breath.)  School children as young as six currently have to walk to and then through the train station and then a fair bit on the other side, across the busiest street in town to reach the city center schoolhouse.  It's not something I'd like my children to do every morning.  A kindergarten – more relevant for the next two years - is only a few steps from our flat, but it's a depressing, sterile place in a lifeless courtyard, surrounded by concrete, artificial.

Here's the deal.  After months of looking for a flat, we've finally got a yes.  It's in a thriving small town a few miles downriver, so close to work that I could ride my bicycle no matter how poor the weather, and right next to a nice kindergarten and school.  I should be jumping up in the air but I can't.

The flat is by far the worst I've seen in Switzerland.  The kitchen is so old I keep joking it would be like moving back to the UK.  The kitchen is obviously much better than that.  Maybe it's what a Swiss person – ignorant of the true extent of the misery – would imagine a kitchen in an English rental to be.

The flat isn't bigger than ours but 10% more expensive.  No big deal, but it doesn't feel right.  There are fewer windows than we're used to, though there's direct sunlight in the mornings.  We wouldn't be on the ground floor and the children couldn't just run outside when the sun's shining.  No more garden.

The basement is a frightening little dungeon – with washer and drier for our personal use but not inviting to store anything delicate.  I'd have to find some place else for the wine.  Bicycles were scattered all over the parking garage when we viewed the flat.  There was no dedicated space for them.

The floor of the living room is stone tiles, the floor in the bedrooms some sort of worn out plastic.  This might require carpets.  And while I'm traditionally a fan of carpets, I must admit that I've grown rather fond of the hardwood floor in our current flat.

I wouldn't think the flat worth a second look, but here I am considering signing a lease.  The flat is the least of the arguments pushing me in that direction.  School and kindergarten in close proximity, and the center of an enjoyable, happening little town within walking distance weigh much heavier.  Will I say yes tomorrow?

Saying yes would send us down a mad scramble of a few weeks to pack up our possessions, disassemble our furniture – not much, but not much for four people is still a lot – and deep-clean the flat.  We'd need to have the appliances checked, a job that I'd think in the responsibility of the landlord if I didn't know better, and find new childcare places.  Then we'd need to find replacement tenants or risk paying twice the rent for several months.  This is probably easier than it sounds because our flat is nice, but it will take effort.  Lastly, we'd need to organize the move itself, which I can't see as a walk in the park with two small children.

I'd much rather just sit on my sofa and update my blog, but this is not getting the children the education they deserve.  Strange how even big decisions aren't my own anymore.

dusty day

Air quality comes in many guises.  Indians – when they're not busy distracting from domestic problems by stoking tensions with Pakistan – celebrate poor air like a home team's win in Twenty20 cricket.  That's what having the world's dirties cities does to you.

Concluding my trilogy on Indian air.

In Germany, cities close their streets to Diesel cars when particulate matter levels are particularly high.  It's as if tire wear and coal-fired power stations didn't exist.  This morning, I read in the newspaper that the air in underground train stations is even dirtier than in city streets because the dust produced by hundreds of train wheels braking can't go anywhere.  It ends up in people's lungs.

This afternoon, I took the family to Josefwiese in Zürich's Kreis 5 area, a former center of heavy industry now transformed into a wet dream of urban edginess, complete with reclaimed and recycled restaurants, bespoke carpenters of distressed furniture, and latte moms with bicycle trailers.  Josefwiese is a green space for greyed-out city folk, essentially a large lawn with a small café, playgrounds, and a rubbish incinerator for scenery.  The Swiss love of incinerating rubbish could fill a blog post all on its own.

© Peter Hilton at Flickr

While the large white chimney was quietly puffing out what looked like (and possibly was) nothing more than innocent steam, the fourth Urban Cross took place beneath.  This was the reason we were there.  Originally, cross was something for people with not enough pain in their lives.  Muddy and cold, the races tend to be miserable.  The urban version held in Zürich – sunny, dry and within walking distance of the amenities of the city – is something I could almost see myself participating in if I had a regulation cross bike to my name, though I'd probably break a bone and possibly the bike that I don't own.

Cross races are short, aerobic and rather technical.  This one was a loop of just under a mile around Josefwiese that each competitor had to repeat until elimination in a series of knockout battles – a good four hours from the time trial that kicked it all off to the finals, comprising two more laps, that determined the champions.  The racers had to cross a beach volleyball field, ascend the stairs to the railway viaduct and later come back down, and cross a shin-deep pitch of water with submerged steps.  Yeah, I would have definitely broken something.

In the corner of Josefwiese closest to the Hardbrücke train station is a playground with huge swings and a wooden jungle gym where dozens of kids bounce around with nearly as much energy as the racers just a few meters away.  They jump, run and fall, and repeat it tirelessly, all the while grinding the small pebbles that cover the ground into a dust so fine it coalesces into a cloud that just hangs there.

Despite the biting sensation in my throat and the heaviness in my lungs, it wasn't India this reminded me of but the ceramic sunflower seeds Ai Weiwei deposited in the Tate Modern's Turbine Hall eight years ago.  The seeds looked vaguely like the pebbles on the playground and were ground to dust in much the same way by tourists and random visitors with child-like enthusiasm for participatory art.  Back then, Tate Modern cordoned off the exhibition after the first weekend.  The playground on Josefwiese will stay open, and I will be back before soon.  It's one of our favorite places in town, even without cross.

bike to work

There are three ways of getting to work by bike.  By far the easiest is in the valley, vaguely following a busy road but mainly on bike paths. In violation of one of the fundamental laws of cycling, the wind always blows from behind.  Last summer, when I had reached a modicum of shape, I managed to do the round trip, all of 31 kilometers, in just under an hour.

The second way of getting to work involves such a sustained climb right at the outset that I've only ever done it the other way. It's a way of getting home from work, and a very good one.  A gently rising road opens increasingly impressive vistas of the Alps when the weather is good.  At the end, there's a hilarious descent into town where I was once almost taken out by a bus.

The third way is by far the hardest.  Going to work across Heitersberg involves a two-kilometer climb that averages close to 10%.  This is quite literally a steep challenge on an empty stomach.  It trims the commute by 3 kilometers, but I don't consider it a short cut.  The ride will inevitably take longer.  Going back is easier, but you need to have the legs for it.

Today I rode across Heitersberg for the first time since my two crashes there last year.  The road is narrow and steep, there are some 90-degree turns without much warning, and one morning a turn was soiled with wet grass.  You get the picture.  It's not a pretty one.

I now have a new bicycle, nearly identical to the old one, which languishes in the basement as a pile of spares.  The steer tube of the fork was ripped in two when I hit a curb sliding fast but rather comfortably on a pad of wet grass.  The rest, including my body, survived the crash almost unharmed.

This is only a dim memory now.  Slightly more recent but fading fast is winter.  January was cold.  There was even some snow.  It has all melted, and the ice on the ponds is gone.  While mornings are still a bit too cold for my comfort, I've been riding.  It's the only thing that keeps me moving at the necessary intensity to shape my legs and clear my head.

Today it was warm for the first time, a glorious day with sunshine and clear views in all directions.  I could see the Alps from the office, glowing orange in the evening sun as I packed up for the day.  The valley wouldn't do, I thought, as I hopped on my bike.  I rode along the hills and then up towards Heitersberg.  This being the easier side, the suffering was manageable.  On the other side, I descended calmly, almost like a responsible person.  Whichever way I take, this is the way to go.

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I'm surprised that I shouldn't have used this title in almost twelve years of blogging (if the last three years of rather rare activity still count), but that's what the search says, and who am I to argue with Google on this?

neighbors

The other day in the stairwell, the neighbor approached me with turmoil in her eyes.  "Is your girlfriend pregnant?" she asked.  "Yes", I said, climbing the stairs past her.  What a weird question, I thought.  It's only two weeks to go and there's no way to hide it.  But the neighbor wasn't done.  "Please keep it quiet in the evenings", she said.  "I need to get up early.  I work a lot."

What an odd request.  It's not like we're throwing a party.  But the neighbor is one for odd requests.  Sometime I think she's got mental issues, and if she doesn't take her pills, all sorts of weirdness spill out of her.  She's rung our bell and knocked the door in the middle of the night as if the house were on fire, while we were one floor higher, quietly watching TV.  When I answered the door, she'd repaired to her flat.  She gets worked up about flushed toilets and the extractor fan in our bathroom.  We try to keep things to a minimum to avoid unnecessarily bothering her, but some things need to be done.  Loud crying, for example, needs to be done when you're a baby.

I turned around and looked the neighbor in the eyes.  "Have you made plans yet?" I asked.  "It's going to be a nightmare, unbearable, World War III."  This last one quoted her from an earlier discussion.  "Your peace is gone, I'm afraid.  The screaming will pierce your ears.  You can forget about sleep for months."  Her look turned frantic; she gaped at me.  "I'm lucky I don't live here", I continued.  "You'd better find someplace else too."

The conversation could have transpired just like this.  She's the kind of person that kills all pity and empathy in me.  But she's also an entirely different kind of person.

The other day, when Flucha was ankle-deep in disaster after the washing machine flooded the basement with black suds, she came down with rags and a bucket to help, on her own volition, concerned and friendly like the perfect neighbor.  The baby wasn't mentioned.

last day

On Monday, the population of London rose to its highest value in history, 8.615 million.  On Tuesday, it was one fewer.  I jumped onto a plane towards the continent and was gone.  As the plane rose over my former home, I felt relieved, probably mostly due to the dissipation of the tension of previous day.  When East London came into view and then, increasingly distantly, the Thames Estuary, a pinch of loss spiced my farewell, but my heart wasn't heavy.

The day before had been exhausting.  I didn't do much all day, but I had never been so tense over such a long time.  I'm not one to grind teeth, but when I sat in the pub at the end of the day with the last Doom Bar in front of me, my jaws hurt.

In the morning, I carried a third of a metric ton of belongings down to the ground floor and stored them in the hallway that is the building's fire escape.  Collection was promised to take place between 9 and 5:30.  That window was a bit wide for my taste.  Around ten, I called the local office of the shipment company to see how they were getting on with the job.  The lady was responsive to my predicament but of little help.  I'd like to have the collection time narrowed down a little because I have no food in the house and need to step out to eat, I explained.  She said 1 to 4 but there was doubt in her voice.

In the morning I had to stay in the flat anyway.  I needed to finish cleaning kitchen and bathroom.  According to the gospel of Perl, laziness is a virtue.  The desire to minimize work makes one efficient, leading to better code and a better life.  I see the value of laziness, but my philosophy is procrastination.  Doing things the last minute avoids unnecessary work.  Something done prematurely might be superseded or become obsolete.  Something done when it's due is done at the right time.  The later one starts with a task, the less time it takes to finish it, simply because more time isn't available.

I had finished taping up all the boxes only the night before.  I had hoovered the living room and the bedroom, but the rest was a disaster.  At noon, the property administrator was supposed to stop by to inspect the flat and give his verdict on the likely distribution of the deposit between me and the company.  In the half hour before noon, I started seeing real progress.  The bathroom came to life, the kitchen looked better.  With ten minutes to go, all was done.  It would have been a wasted ten minutes, except I had nothing else to do but wait.  And then the admin was two hours late.

Neither cleaning nor the admin had anything to do with my tension.  The tension came from the slow ticking of time and the immobility that this forced me into, waiting for something to happen while hoping that it hadn't happened yet.  The tension was then exacerbated by what I saw outside my front window.  North End Road runs a market every day except Sunday, with fruit & veg stalls all the way from the Lillie Road roundabout to St. John's Church.  With the stalls, wheelie bins, rogue parking and deliveries to local businesses, there's hardly any parking in the street during the day.  Where would the lorry fit?

I had booked the move on the cheap, through a third-party company that collects payment and then tenders the shipment to companies more suited to the task.  I was told that the driver would not carry a phone.  Be by the door at all times, I was warned.  If the driver cannot get to you, if the driver cannot park, I understood, he would abandon the collection.

My doorbell was broken, but I had left a note on the door with the request to bang hard and my phone number just in case.  Upstairs, I left my door open and got worried every time I turned the vacuum on or the hot water with its explosive boiler.  When the cleaning was done and the admin had come and gone, all that was left for me to was pace between door and window like a tiger in a cage.  Looking outside was not uplifting.  Parking spaces opened up from time to time, but only momentarily.  And with every minute that passed, I got more convinced that I had already missed the collection, that the driver had gone by and seen that there was no way of stopping in front of my building and just continued driving.  It was way past two, five hours into the initially specified collection period.

It got so late that I made peace with the failed collection attempt.  No need to get worked up, I told myself.  Won't change a thing.  Better come up with a plan B.  I dug up my car sharing membership card in case I'd needed a van to move the boxes myself.  It should be possible the next morning to find storage and leave the boxes there before rushing to the airport to fly out, I schemed, before running back to the window to not miss the collection lorry, should it drive by that very moment.  The fruit sellers were praising their produces by the price, as always.  A pound a bowl, a pound a bowl.

By three o'clock I couldn't take it anymore.  I went outside and stayed there.  It was cold, but there was no point staying inside.  I remained a tiger, pacing from the Goose along the bus stop next to it on one side of the road and back on the other in a neat rectangle, watching traffic, counting vans and buses but never getter further than one before abandoning the task due to preoccupations and fogginess of mind.  By half past three I was getting cold.  By four I started to shiver.  Then I got a call.

It was the driver, who had just driven by.  I directed him back and occupied a double parking spot that had mysteriously opened just a few moments earlier.  It was the only time during the day that this much space was available, and it was dearly needed.  When the driver arrived, he didn't do so in a van.  It wasn't a moving van either.  It was full-size lorry, and it barely fit into the spaced I had claimed.  I moved a wheelie bin into the road, which was half blocked by the parked truck.  Five minutes later the boxes were loaded and the driver on his way.  All worries fell off.  I needed a beer.

In the Goose, the late afternoon crowd was having a good time.  I got my last Doom Bar and joined two tiny octogenarian ladies who bantered and laughed, a wheelchair parked inconspicuously next to the table.  One table over, a rough-and-tumble couple, with stained clothes, wild hair and an acrid smell, were having their beers like everyone else.  Further back, three Chelsea fans in blue garb a few days away from the next game had their eyes on the TV screen that followed the inaction of the closing of the winter transfer window live.  The ubiquitous loner with a smartphone, a pensioner with white hair in this case, couldn't care less.  He stared at his little screen as if mesmerized.

trust and consequences

An hour from now, I'll be out of work. With the end of January, my employment at Imperial ends. At almost the same time, my five-year tenancy at North End Road is coming to an end. Getting my life into boxes turned out less difficult than I had feared. I don't have all that much stuff after all, despite the best efforts of my friends who kept giving me leaving presents.

Getting rid of furniture took a while but wasn't all that difficult either. Some things I put on Gumtree. People then called me and offered not only to pick them up from my flat but also reward me monetarily for the privilege. That was good, but it didn't work for everything. Other things I put on Freecycle. This community might be rather small, despite even me heaving heard about it. My shoe rack and my stereo rack were picked up by the same person, about a week apart. I wonder if she'll react to the ads I've posted just now.

Much to my relief, the most difficult sell wasn't the sofa I had brought over from France. It was already broken when I bought it second-hand nearly ten years ago and then almost broke Flucha's back when we hauled it up the stairs to my flat. I dreaded the effort of getting rid of it, but a couple who had just moved into a flat were happy to give me a hand and then drive off with Klippan to make their new home homelier.

My dining table, solid wood and with four matching chairs, was more persistent. The ad languished on Gumtree for a good week with no response. Then, today, there were two expressions of interest. Heather was quicker and definitely more eager. She called, asked for my bank details, and five minutes later an amount matching the asking price showed up in my account. In return, I gave her my address and told her when to pick up the set.

The speed of the banking transaction should be enough to take my breath away, but what really stunned me was the trust this woman put in me. On Ebay, at least there's feedback. You can have some confidence that the person behind the ad is legitimate. With Gumtree, there's absolutely nothing. I could be a complete scam. There might be no table, or at least not at the address I gave.

And yet, this woman was ready to part with her money on nothing more than a phone conversation, nothing more than my word, essentially. In times when religiously confused nutters rampage through Paris to fight the pen with guns, it's most comforting to know that civilization has not died. Maybe I should buy Heather chocolates for being such a good neighbor.

back to London

This blog is comatose.  The entire last year passed in fewer posts than two average months in 2009, my most loquacious year.  There hasn't been anything new since August.  The problem was one of motivation.  I didn't see a point in writing.  It's not that nothing has happened, but London has worn off a bit.  The excitement of the first few years is gone, and the stories, outside traveling, that I felt like sharing often turned out variations on a theme developed earlier, and I left them unpublished.  Routine and repetition had set in.  Away from London, distractions blurred my mind and shifted my focus, pressing questions of career and life.  These things are now getting sorted – for reasons that will be revealed over the next few posts.  But before I start with a story that developed more than half a year ago when I resigned from my job, let me get back to London.

On the first day of the new year, I'm returning to London for the last time.  Thanks to the limitations of bank holiday travel, I was forced to take Ryanair, fly into Stansted and take an Easybus into town, three names that evoke cheap in the worst way, dearly paid discomfort mitigated by no cheerfulness at all.  The ridiculous clapping upon landing was sustained by only half a dozen hands and died quickly.  Normally, Flucha travels like this when she comes to London, and I pick her up at Baker St.

Tonight our reversal of roles was incomplete.  When I alit at Baker St., she wasn't there to pick me up at the bus stop.  There was no one to ride in the front of the 74 bus with me, past the Chess Store and into town; no one to point out the sights as if I were a first-visiting tourist – Harrods, Hyde Park Corner, the Hilton Hotel – the running joke of so many, and so many too few, visits.

It is clear already that this year will be different.  For one, I had made a conscious and clear new year's resolution.  It was one resolution only, one short phrase, but it was enormous in its circumstances and frighteningly world-shattering, at least regarding my own world.  Before I say more, look, on the right there's Winter Wonderland, its blinking and blaring in brutal contrast to the true winter wonderland where Flucha and I had spent Christmas.  The Black Forest was covered deep in fresh powder, with quiet towns and magical forests.

There's nothing magical about arriving in London, unless it's the first time.  Most outer boroughs of London are truly depressing.  For me, tonight meant one last time through rows of cellulitic houses with splotched and stained façades, businesses with spelling mistakes in their neon signs and sad betting shops.  One last time through the world's most expensive deprivation.

In Central London the glow of Christmas prevailed, with ambitious shoppers on Oxford Street and tasteful lights down Sloan Street.  Then the French flavor of South Kensington gave way to the Chicken Cottage in Earl's Court, and ten minutes later I was back home.  I pulled the contract that had been promised to me by email from my mailbox, and signed it.  Happy New Year all around!

public viewing

Last night I took a beer shower.  It was three minutes into the game and England had just scored a goal.  People around me screamed, jumped and waved their full glasses.  I got soaked.  After the spray had settled, the score was still 0:0.  When the Italians farther back in the pub realized that, half a minute later, they erupted into cheers of their own, celebrating the hypothetical equalizer after England's goal that wasn't.  No beer reached me this time, or maybe none was thrown.

Watching England play with English supporters in a crowded pub late at night was not a pleasant experience.  The game had started at 11 and a large part of the audience seemed to have prepared by binging on ale all evening.  The game began optimistic enough, with singing and hoping, but the atmosphere soon degraded into something vaguely rowdy.  England isn't supposed to win in World Cup finals, but the self-deprecating humor that this country does so well was missing from the spectators' perspective.

The night before, in another pub, things had been different.  The Goose is not a sports bar.  It's a regulars' local, with carpets and cheap food, that even spiffed up after recent remodeling retains an air of home away from home.  The Goose shows the games, but it seems as if many customers don't come to watch them.  They sit there having dinner or a drink and chat with friends.  Overhead, the TV's on, but that's just a distraction.

I was having dinner and a drink with a friend, but we had also come to watch the game.  It could have been a quiet night, had it not been for the large group in orange that clustered near the entrance door.  When Holland scored goal after goal against a shockingly lethargic Spanish team they got more and more noisy.

After the game, karaoke started.  The World Cup doesn't break Friday night traditions at The Goose.  Exuberant men head to toes in orange don't normally feature, but they're easily absorbed.  I know it's unfair the compare the behavior of supporters of a winning team with those of a losing team, but the Dutch were a rather enjoyable bunch, never mind their competitive drinking.

From the small to the big, why are we watching football in pubs in the first place?  In Germany, big screens are erected all over big cities.  People gather from all over to watch together.  The German term for this is "public viewing", as if it were something imported.  The friend who visited me this weekend ask where we'd watch the games, expecting something like "by the Thames" or "on Leicester Square".  He was disappointed that no such showings exist in London.

I told him, half in jest, that it wouldn't work, that English supporters drink too much and get too rowdy, that their doomed passions couldn't be contained if thousands were gathered.  The truth is probably that the pub owners who already operate in a rather dense marketplace, see the World Cup as theirs and wouldn't want competition to spoils the takings.

The Famous 3 Kings where I saw England fall to Italy certainly makes a roaring trade during big games.  Last night it was so busy that everyone through the door got a stamp on their hand and only those with a stamped hand were allowed reentry after the smoke-and-fresh-air break at half time.  They sold their beer as fast as they could.  There was never any slack on the bars.

For me, this works as well.  I'll be back to see the Argies in an hour and for most of games afterwards.  I want to watch in a crowd, with shared emotions and the energy of something important.  But it needs to be contained.  A hundred drunks, with superfluous beer showers, groping and stomping on feet, is all I can take.

in a bubble

Because of homosexuals, those invidious sinners, Britain is drowning. That's what some nutter in politics was claiming, though it's unlikely to have garnered him votes. Despite his idiocy, he was right on the second part of his statement. The southwest of England and a bit of land called Wales have been battered by violent storms for weeks. Whenever the winds calmed, buckets of rain filled the void. Large parts of the country are disaster zones.

A bit of scenic railroad has fallen into the sea in Cornwall, and the Somerset Levels are a vast lake. The latter shouldn't surprise. The Levels are below sea level, land impoldered over centuries in gross contravention of divine purpose. Evangelic simpletons must see a connection. The more practically minded called for the dredging of rivers. But how could even the best-dredged river take water away from the Levels? It won't flow uphill to the sea.

Nearer to home, there are severe flood warnings, the meteorological equivalent of a red terror alert, in the Thames Valley. It was at this point that I started listening. I consider myself living in the Thames Valley. I go running by the river on weekends. It's not that far. What I heard when I opened my ears wasn't encouraging. Many names were foreign to me, but there was flooding near Teddington, which is one of my favorite walking destinations just upriver from Richmond, at the end of the District line. Teddington has a wonderfully intricate and ancient lock-and-weir complex designed to stop the twice-daily insurgency of the tidal river.

These days, the menace lurks upriver. With the wildest winter rains for 250 years washing into the Thames from a vast catchment, the river is expected to rise by inches every day. It's double jeopardy for London. The full moon brings spring tides, exceptional amounts of North Sea pushing up the estuary all the way to the lock at Teddington. The Thames Barrier, London's primary protector against the forces of the sea, has been closed 33 times since December, as much as during the first 17 years of its existence.

The curious bit about all this is that I could be excused for not noticing. London has been spared the worst excesses of nature. It rains almost every night, and two weeks ago something that could almost be called a tornado ripped through the market on North End Road and scattered bowls and produce all over the street, but the days are relatively dry. My lunchtime runs at work, shockingly numerous for no particular reason, have been held up by rain only once. Hyde Park is a bog, but the footpaths are mostly dry.

It's hard to comprehend why London is an entity apart meteorologically, a dry city rising mightily from inundated fields, but one can't say it's inconsistent. The city is already culturally and economically apart from the rest of the country. Everyone's talking about the upcoming referendum on Scottish independence. For London, independence would make much more sense. Crazier things have been suggested.

haircut

For the last three years, I've got my hair cut not only in the same barbershop just across the street, but also by the same barber, a kid from Egypt in his early 20s.  He's friendly, always waving from behind the picture window of his shop when I walk by.  He's also not very good.

My hair doesn't deserve much attention.  There's not much left of if and what's there doesn't have to impress lucrative clients or a judge on a desperate case.  The only point of cutting it is getting it shorter.  This is always achieved.  But within days, ragged edges grow from my scalp like the Alps folding at a billion times their rate.  The generated crags and crenellations are sharp enough to cut the teeth in my comb, and my head looks badly out of shape, one step away from people throwing me coins.

Nevertheless, I keep returning to the barbershop.  As any barbershop should be, it is a hub of the community.  It's situated at the entrance to a mini-mall with a Russian café, a discount jeweler and a mobile phone repair shop.  The last business is just a guess.  I've never entered the mall.  But I know that neighbors enter the barbershop all the time for chats, tea or simply a change of scenery.

Tonight, there was no tea.  But a man came in borrow a razor.  He gave himself a quick shave on the spot and left a minute later.  Another took a spray bottle off a shelf and squirted instantly vaporizing water over his head, the only permissible relief during Ramadan, which has been sizzling in London as if this were the Gulf.

Neither interruption distracted me from the second aim of my visit – to find out what's going on in Egypt.  I've had sought out conversations before but was always left disappointed by the paucity of words we had in common.  It wasn't as if this guy updated me on community gossip, as a barber should.  He just cut my hair.

But tonight he engaged more.  The topic was evidently dear to his heart.  He opened up and let the words flow, getting increasingly agitated.  I heard about army and people and politicians and corruption, but sadly these keywords weren't imbued with meaning or opinion intelligible to me.  Without a sense of grammar and proper use of vocabulary, most of his articulations remained noise to me, an indecipherable stream of consciousness.

As for the first aim, my hair took a beating in the process.  It was clipped even more scraggily than last time, fault lines zig-zaging above my ears.  It was also clipped very short, a great comfort with the heat showing no sign of letting up.  I know I'll be back in a few weeks' time.

matters

After the knife scare of ten day ago, I'm glad to report that things didn't turn out too bad. Garrad was back in his shop a few days later, almost as if nothing had happened. Something terrible had of course happened, and it was impossible to deny it. From what I could gather, the attacker had been caught but then quickly released. He was apparently mentally unstable, though I can't say how that's a justification for anything.

In my conversations with him, Garrad saw the positive side to this mess and appreciated the fact that nothing serious had happened to him. Notwithstanding the stitches he got and the scars he will keep, he was lucky. Physically, he'll be fine. Mentally, he seems to have suffered more. He keeps talking about moving on, about closing shop and leaving North End Road.

I can't blame him. You're rather exposed in a brightly lit internet café that's open late. But I don't think the street or the neighborhood is all that bad. London has much dodgier parts. What happened here was a freak incident that's by no means representative of the area. But if you're on the receiving end of casual violence, this matters little.

This post could end here, but speaking on the subject of what matters, I have to share an article I saw in the Daily Telegraph today (and don't ask how I came across it). The Telegraph is the newspaper for tweed-and-corduroy conservatives of a certain age. It's not a newspaper I ever buy. Yet the article that caught my eye is absolutely brilliant, not so much for its content, which is just a rehash of what's been published elsewhere but for its clever use of stock photographs.

The previously published information appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the U.S.A., a science weekly of considerable esteem, and concerned the correlation between male attractiveness and penile length. This is your tax money at work. The conclusion: Size matters. This is what the Telegraph highlights. But whose idea was it to illustrate the point with Condi's fierce face and a gesture that must surely be fortuitous?

too close to home

I was on the phone last night when a commotion arose outside.  I contemplated dividing my attention but the conversation quickly won out.  When the shouting got too intense and then sirens added to the noise, I took my computer to the bedroom, which faces away from the road, and heard nothing more.  Hours later, before calling it a night, I threw a curious glance out the front.

A police van was parked directly underneath my window and two Astras across the street.  North End Road was blocked to all traffic, even foot traffic.  Cops manning the cordons up and down the road prevented drunks from staggering onto the scene and diverted traffic into side streets.  A 28 bus was parked at the side of the road, hazard lights flashing, while a smaller 391 made an apprehensive three-point turn and went back towards Fulham.

A narrow lane was open from up the road to The Goose.  This was one-way only, to let people leave.  But even at midnight, the pub was still heaving, an anomaly in the ghostly street, depopulated and eerily quiet.  Whenever the door opened, music was thumping into the night where police officers contemplated their options.  Something serious had happened.

I remembered a story of a friend in another big city. She saw an explosion from her window and, being in tune with technology, took to Twitter for answers. In less than five minutes, the mystery was no more.  I forgot the details but it was an accident, not an attack.

My Twitter account has lain dormant since I opened it a few years back, but last night it rose to the occasion.  Googling (if that's what you do on Twitter) the various possible keywords, I learned not only that José Mourinho, the Chelsea manager for the next half year, had had breakfast at The Goose a few days back, but also that a man had been stabbed multiple times in my street.

News from home

This is not the first time I've come close to violent crime, but this time was the closest so far, and certainly the closest I ever want to be.  The stabbing took place in the internet café below my flat.  Had I not been on the phone, I might have heard the victim's cries.

In London stabbings are intolerably common, but the chances of being run over by a garbage truck are probably still higher.  I'm not losing my head or start feeling unsafe.  A freak incident like this has no bearing on my life.  For the victim, the story is different, but last night, I could only guess.

This morning, the lights were on in the internet café, but the door was locked.  The shutters were up, but there was no one there.  The place looked hastily abandoned.  I feared the worst for the owner, whom I'm friendly with, but there was no one I could ask.

This afternoon, when I came back from a day in town (Genesis – highly recommended!), I was relieved to see Garrad in his shop, but he didn't look good:  exhausted, worn out and much older than I know him.  He had been stabbed six times last night – here, here, here and here, he pointed up his left side with a tired gesture – while cleaning his shop.  For this horror he was in great shape, standing tall like a hero as he told the story, though his face was stiff with pain.

From up in my flat a few minutes later, I could see him walk off with a friend, slowly, with hesitation in each step and agony in his body, but with determination and the will to return.  As he passed by, neighboring business owners stepped from their stores for well wishes and encouragement.  As shouts reverberated from the market – 3 pound a box, 3 pound a box – and traffic pushed down the road relentlessly, he disappeared into the crowd.

Get well soon!

power cut

A few years back, my water supply was cut off, whether maliciously or by accident I never found out. The result was a minor inconvenience, a renewed appreciation of the incredible comfort that running water is, and awe for the water supplier who sent an emergency response unit out in the middle of the night that fixed the problem within minutes.

Tonight, my power was cut, a potentially more severe disruption. I was sitting at my desk preparing an application for a job that sounds rather exciting when three things happened at once (and the fact that only three things happened shows you what a simple life I lead). The lights went out in the living room, the computer switched to battery power, and the internet went blank.

I continued typing mechanically for a few minutes, while my brain was trying to formulate a response. My thoughts went towards potential sources of light to penetrate the darkness around me. I have plenty of candles but had run my supply of matches down to zero around Christmas and never restocked. My stove auto-ignites but relies on electricity for that. I don't have a lighter. Candles, always good in an emergency, were useless for me.

Somewhere among my stuff is a headlamp that helped me get to, and especially back home from, work safely when I was still riding my bike. I had no idea where to locate it. I don't have a flashlight. The little keychain LED I had once got at a careers fair broke a while ago. The only working source of light was the screen of my laptop. I maxed out its brightness, pointed it away from me, and checked out my flat.

The bread maker had cut out. I don't think the bread was quite done, but I took it out anyway. Couldn't have been more than ten minutes left. I guess I'll find out tomorrow for breakfast. The little screen looked blown, as if the machine had suffered a surge and taken out the circuit. It was getting old, but was it the culprit? All my fuses were dead.

Was it a power cut or loss of power in my flat? My neighbors' windows were dark, but through the gap under my door fell light, and the buildings opposite were lit. I got out on the street to investigate.

Two UK Power Networks vans, their hazard lights flashing, were parked outside my house. A bit further down the street, an electricity manhole cover had been lifted. Two people dug around inside it, their work made possible by a noisily roaring generator. Another guy stood nearby. He came over when he saw me.

"What's going on?" I asked.

"Someone poked around the network and disrupted a switch", he replied. "We had to cut the power to fix it. It won't be more than an hour."

"Is this an emergency?" I asked, trying to veil my criticism in understanding. "I didn't get a note about the cut."

He wouldn't be drawn into a discussion but his response was as clear as it could be. "We had to wait for the businesses to close. We couldn't start before ten. It's gonna be one hour, literally one hour."

They should have notified residents if they knew there was a problem, but there was no need to get worked up. I went back to my flat not just not angry but actually happy that (1) the problem would (in all likelihood) be fixed without my having to do anything, (2) I live in a city where infrastructure work can't be done before ten because it would be too disruptive, and (3) my landlord apparently takes safety seriously, installing battery-powered lighting in the hallways and on the stairs.

The happy ending to this little post is that the power came back before I was done writing. The light came on, the router clicked into gear and the fridge started humming. I still don't know where my headlamp went but I've now added matches to the top of my shopping list.

gone and out

When the bang of the door falling into the frame had dissipated, an eerie calm took possession of the flat. The week before, ten days maybe, though it felt like a month, there had been constant chatter, activity, music, smells and noises from the kitchen, dishes clanking in the sink, shower running and steaming up the bathroom, the asthmatic boiler pushing hard against the winter cold that tried to force its way inside through rickety windows. It was the days of Christmas, however many, and I had visitors.

A couple from Italy had joined my girlfriend and me after Christmas. We had done this before on other occasions, but this time was different. There was a one-year old around to readjust priorities. Where there used to be hot espressos and maybe drinks after dinner, there were now herbal infusions and furtive breaths taken during rare quiet moments. My friends hadn't exactly been irresponsible hedonists, but they used to enjoy their life in a much different way. Now they are parents.

My sister, in a very similar situation, told me about her New Year's party, recalling a 75-year-old couple as they stepped onto their porch to watch the neighbors' launching batteries of fireworks from a hill a hundred feet away from the house. A few moments out in the night, a few sips of champagne and a hug and good wishes, and they had retreated back to the comfort their sofa, oblivious of the world around them.

By that yardstick, I felt at least 90 when 2013 came around. I didn't even go outside. No mingling with the millions down at the Embankment, no countdown shouted deafeningly. I stuck my head out of the window as Big Ben announced the new year on Radio 4, looking for signs of party in the street. Revelers shared hugs in The Goose, but at the bus stop, people waited for their ride as if it were any old night. I saw reflections of distant fireworks that might have been ambulances passing by or just the spinning beacon of the minicab office below. After just enough time for some fresh air, the window went down again and the curtains across. We went back to card games, the Champagne a refreshment rather than a decadent pleasure.

When the door closed on Wednesday and my friends were on their way back to Italy, I was left with the accumulated debris of the festive period. Another change. Usually a recycling sack lasts a month. Now I had two of them clogging the kitchen. At least the rubbish is picked up daily in my part of town. It took half a day to exorcise the demons of sociability and restore order, cleaning the slate for a year that will see big changes.

Happy New Year!

rain and shit

The weekend was a washout. It started raining on Thursday and didn't end. Cornwall was flooded. The trains between Bristol and Exeter stopped running. There were even puddles in Hyde Park. It was unprecedented.

Residents of other cities might smile the resigned smile of inveterate sufferers, but in the UK, the categorization of weather follows different criteria. First off, the occurrence of weather itself is a notable event. Normally, it's between 10 and 20 degrees with changes between a mild mist hanging languidly in the air and feeble sunshine. As soon as conditions stray from that, weather is invoked and chaos breaks out. Every afternoon above 25 degrees launches a heat wave, officially sanctioned by the Met Office.

When, as newspapers report with honest panic between the type, "a severe blizzard is expected to blanket the country with up to four inches of snow", people freeze in anticipation. "Drifts of up to eight inches" are predicted as a bona-fide threat, not a contradiction. They make sure that public transport collapses, the electricity goes out and the provision with victuals becomes patchy. In London, first to break down is the Circle line, the only Underground line that runs true to its name in its entirely.

The last observation holds much to the understanding of the situation. The Circle line doesn't break down because of snow on the tracks or frozen points. The Circle line fails because it's old and fit for operation only in perfect conditions, the above-mentioned drizzle to sun at 20 to 25 degrees. Leeway to deal with deviations from the average is not built into public infrastructure.

As another example, when rain falls, not an unusual event by any stretch of the imagination, the sewers in London, designed more than a century ago, overflow. Thousands of colorectal expurgations come to float on the turbid waters of the Thames. If that's not a pretty thought, it's an even less pretty picture, but no one seems to be bothered unduly. Worse, those with the responsibility and, if it can be believed, the will to change something, are hindered by local authorities, foremost among them the Council of Hammersmith and Fulham, which governs my neighborhood in glorious ineptitude.

Upgrading the sewer system after decades of criminal neglect will not come cheap and it will inconvenience residents. It will also ensure that less shit is washed into the Thames and that kids can play by the water without fear of gastro-enteritis or Salmonella. But who cares about kids when you paid a million quid for a big house in a quiet street? You wouldn't want excavators to shake your foundations or wide lorries to scrape withing inches of your Jag, parked off-street because the library extension you put on your house took the space that used to be the garage's. Thus you have residents' groups fighting a temporarily annoyance only to prolong a persistent evil.

I can understand this attitude. I would assume the same, had I a Jag and a mansion near the river. I wouldn't want to have something in my expensive backyard that's of benefit to everyone. If I wanted to run a charity I would run my own and promote it properly and make sure that my involvement is publicly acknowledged. I can understand all this thinking. What I can't understand it that the Council not only accepts this reasoning as valid but makes it its own. I can't imagine that there's really that much campaign contribution money in local government.

Despite prolonged and serious cursing, a mailer from the Council makes it into my mailbox in painful regularity. This publication, funded with council tax in all likelihood and thus paid for in part by me, is the most partisan news organ I have encountered since the GDR fell to pieces. (It's probably worse than Fox News, the single most socialist aspect of the United States.)

A few weeks ago, the Council News warned of a "Stink-pipe to force World War II style evacuation". Demagoguery before facts, screaming before discussing, frenzy before sense: things I remember well from my childhood when nothing ever got fixed either. What I also remember is government only addressing the problems of a small minority of the citizens and not simply ignoring the rest but mocking them relentlessly.

This is not how things should go. If I stayed longer in London, I'd be tempted to get involved in local political, if only by spreading dissent in local meetings or promoting my mock-pressure group "Don't shit in my river". Alas, I'm leaving soon and anyway, it was only the rainy weekend that made me think about these things.

upmarket

One of the advantages of living in an affluent area is the high quality of food one can purchase effortlessly. In London, the number of Waitrose stores, an upmarket grocer, correlates roughly with the wealth of an area. Specialty shops add international delicacies to the mix. At least once a week, a farmers' market brings fresh produce from just outside London.

I don't live in an affluent area. North End Road is grubby and cheap, lined with pound stores, off-licenses, betting shops and bingo halls, though curiously few kebab houses. Six days a week, a market sprawls from the infamous double roundabout at Lillie Road down to St. John's church, with traders pitching their booths, vans and tables every morning on the eastern side of the road.

There's a cheese man who's French, an egg lady, two olive vendors and a felafel frier, but most of the space is taken up by various fruit and veg businesses. It's good to go out there on a Saturday morning before the crowds show up, before nine in other words, and scoop up some vitamins. At prices that can't be beat, universally a pound a bowl, I get apples, mangos, kaki fruit and, if they're in season, figs, cherries or grapefruit.

The problem is that the produce doesn't always meet the expectations raised by the presentation, acres of red, yellow and green shining in the morning sun. The veggies are often limp, the cherries quick to rot. Peaches are best avoided because they won't last beyond breakfast. I imagine the traders' business model hinging on getting to New Spitalfields Market right before closing and scooping up for bargain prices what other retailers shun. The result is that every purchase should best be consumed the same day.

When I got up one morning after coming back from Marseille a few weeks ago, I noticed a strange smell in my living room. Should air out the room, I figured, and went to the window. That's when I saw the source of the smell. It didn't come from inside.

In front of my window was a tenant new to the market, his blue-and-white tarp half covering a table displaying styrofoam boxes full of fish. It was early in the morning and the market had hardly opened, but the fish already smelled. There were token piles of ice but the carcasses didn't look good. Glistening scales, crisp fins, vivid colors – all the signs of freshness had already been drained from the abused bodies. God knows when they had been dragged from the water and how they had got to the market.

At this point I was fairly confident that the fishmonger would quickly pack up shop. He probably got a load of fish for cheap and now sold them off for quick profit, notwithstanding possible danger to the consumers. When the first locals had died of food poisoning, he would have long moved on, I predicted. But three weeks later, the proprietor of the internet café downstairs keeps fumigating his shop with incense so thick it's hard to see the screens and cries into my shoulder whenever we meet. The fishmonger is still there and the noxious smell of old fish hovers heavily. But no one has fallen ill, and maybe what's on sale simply reflects the purses of the local residents.

At Marylebone farmers' market where I went this morning, the atmosphere couldn't be more different. On a small backstreet parking lot, hidden unless you know where to look, are a few dozen little stalls that visibly favor quality over quantity. Everything is organic or free-range and, what's more important, farm-fresh and crisp.

Telling from the little signs by nearly all poultry and game stalls, pheasant is currently in season. There were also fruits and vegetables as they should be, small flavorful apples, heirloom tomatoes, freshly baked cakes and breads and fish that looked as if they had just come in from a little swim this morning.

I had come for dairy products. England produces cheeses as good as they are underappreciated. A farmers' market is a good place to sample some. I ended up with a cheddar from Glastonbury and a Mozzarella from Somerset buffalo, but what I really wanted to buy was a bottle of raw milk.

Raw milk is a bit of a rarity, a bit like whale meat, its trade prohibited by law in many places. In the UK, grocery stores are banned from carrying it. Only farmers are allowed to sell untreated milk. When I found out about this a few months ago, I was first surprised that unpasteurized milk existed at all and then got curious about trying.

Unfortunately, the guy who usually sells milk at Marylebone wasn't around today. I'll probably repeat the journey into central London next week. How I wish I lived in a posher area with a good farmers' market nearer by, but then this post would only be half as long.

open house

This weekend was the 20th anniversary of London Open House, the city's annual showcase of architecture. I had attended for the first time five years ago and been more or less faithful to the idea over the years. Open House, a charity, strives to educate the public on architecture, on buildings new and old in the city, by opening doors to offices, private homes and past industrial glory that would normally be locked.

Some landmark buildings – the Gherkin, the Bank of England, Llyod's – get all the attention, but it is the unexpected treasures on the way that make the Open House weekends so satisfying. Being Open House veterans, we had picked a number of more obscure targets. Unfortunately, the early examples of urban sanitation that have always featured prominently on my private wish list – King George V Pumping Station, Markfield Beam Engine and especially Crossness Pumping Station – once again didn't make it because they're too far out.

We didn't get off to a good start. Our first calling point, artists' studios near Barons Court station were only open on Sunday. It would have helped to read the directions properly. At least we had all the time in the world to leisurely travel to Waterloo for the next stop. The 1901 Arts Club is a Victorian schoolmaster's home transformed into an intimate performance space resembling a turn-of-the-century salon. The building itself was an unexpected delight and the short flute and piano recital the best possible advertisement for their concerts. Go there!

This highlight of the day was followed by two duds. We didn't find Marlborough House and ended up in the Royal Society, and then missed out on the Caledonian Club, a private club for gentlemen in skirts, because, again, it was only open on Sunday. Who did the planning here? The day ended on an upward trajectory with visits to 1508, a luxury design studio with rather decadent projects for oligarchs and petro-royalty, and the Channel 4 headquarters.

On Sunday, we wanted to see the Gherkin. The ballot that used to be on that building had been lifted this year. We expected a wait but weren't prepared for what we found. People queued down the road and around the block. There was no hope. We went to a nearby church instead where the tour guide claimed the wait for the Gherkin was five hours. With rain falling harder outside, our decision had been right.

The church was St. Helen's, a rather curious and quite charming Church of England outfit. The church arose from two medieval buildings erected side by side with a shared wall, a footprint I hadn't encountered before. Today, it serves a far-flung community of City workers, economic mercenaries and students. The tour guide matched the vibe after the service: positive, inclusive and happy.

Our next stop was few minutes east, near Liverpool St station. 30 Crown Place is an office tower just outside the city and proudly the mightiest building in the adjacent borough of Hackney. An associate of the building's architect and an employee of the building's tenant, a law firm, gave a tour of the top-floor client reception area and the mid-level cafeteria. How come richly remunerated corporate lawyers pay less for their lunches than postdocs slaving away at Imperial?

We lost our focus somewhat after this visit. There were a few places we didn't find (smartphone, anyone?) and some time we spent wandering around the wet pavements of Brick Lane. As the hours passed, so did our options. A surprising highlight remained. Not far from Kensington Olympia station and right along the tracks is an architect's wet-dream-turned-reality, a modern home hidden at the end of a crumbling mews.

The architect himself was at hand to show off his home, and what a place it was: a psychedelic LED dance floor next to an indoor basement fish pond, a sauna with a glass door and mood lighting, a kitchen whose ingeniously hidden appliances were offset by the 16-foot-long golden sofa, kids' bedrooms that looked like Japanese pod hotel rooms...

The house was staggering in size, especially given the unassuming entrance door, and awesome in its details, but when my initial amazement had worn off I had to admit that I was glad not to live there. Everything – and I mean every little thing in the house – was designed to be in its place. Nothing could be moved, presumably because doing do would go against the architect's vision. Furniture was bolted down, sunk into the floor or extruded from walls. Anything of use was hidden behind clinically white sliding doors.

In stark contrast to these strong currents of enforced minimalism were the dance floor and the light, which periodically changed from pink to light blue but always remained artificial and neon. It looked like a party hub with a flat added as an afterthought. Living there I'd go mad quickly, I think. But when do you get a chance to see such a folly? Only in Open House.

polo in London

Over the last few months, pretty much since the beginning of this year, this blog has suffered from attrition. Time invested in its upkeep has been cut and the number of posts has dwindled. There are a number of reasons for this, most significantly the fact that my mind isn't in it anymore.

I've been in London for more than five years and the enthusiasm and wide-eyed amazement of the first few years has suffered. When I push through the crowds around Leicester Square or hang out in a bar overlooking the Thames, I'm still buzzed with excitement and feel like pinching myself to see whether this is real, but I don't feel like sharing anymore. You've heard it all a hundred times.

Things still happen as they always have. How could they not? London is a crazy place, full of life, full of diversity, full of people from different worlds. I'm in the middle of it, watching, interacting, participating. But when it comes to reporting, to reflecting the day onto a screen, my energy dissipates quicker than I can log on to Blogger.

Yesterday, for example, I spent a day with a friend who had flown in to see Paralympic athletics, a triple-special birthday treat from his wife. My friend would get to see the Greatest Games Ever™, spend time with a mate of many years and be relieved of his paternal duties for a day.

After watching sports on Friday and a night out in Soho afterwards, we took advantage of the brilliant late-summer day straight from a Visit London commercial to stroll along the Thames, from Richmond to the lock at Teddington. It's a stretch of river with infinite charm, lined first with the perfect pubs and residences of a posh borough and later the dense bushes and ungroomed meadows of rural England. The metropolis feels far away, though one is well within the orbit of London.

I had done this walk before – it is among my favorites – and I know the area a bit. I know, for example, that there is a strong German presence there, almost a German community, though I find it odd seeing these two words together. But there's a big German school, a beer garden much like in Bavaria, the bakery that makes the best bread in all of London and a little deli of many delights.

I also know that there's a famous polo club nearby. For some reason, my mom is fascinated with polo and nearly every week when we talk on the phone, she broaches the topic. I, being here, am supposed to check it out as her proxy. "Have gone to see the polo?", she keeps asking. Only yesterday did her quest came to a successful end.

As my friend and I were raiding a blackberry hedge, we noticed strange goings-on beyond. An event of some sort was taking place, spectators, an announcer – could it be? Further down, there was a gap in the hedge: Polo was being played on a large green. Our access was blocked by a low farm gate, closed and topped with barbed wire, but the view was great. When we realized that the gate wasn't locked, we hesitantly made our way through to get a closer look. It turned out that the spectators were far more interesting than the action.

Requiring horses, polo is a sport for the upper class. It is also a place to mingle for the same crowd, and we clearly didn't fit. The women all wore flowing dresses, heels and careful hairdos. The men were in chinos and button-down shirts in pink, violet and assorted pastels. It's likely that the posher you are, the bolder the color of your dress. One gentleman strutted by in a navy blazer and yellow slacks. In our T-shirts and jeans, we stood out like pimples on a prom queen's face.

Everyone can fake dress, I guess, but adopting the correct behavior is more difficult. The picnics on the sideline spoke volumes. Big tables stood heavy with food and champagne, cigar smokers sat in wooden folding chairs and the ladies lingered in canopies to keep their skin pale. It was unclear how all the kit got there; there were no cars. But no detail had been missed. In the back, I saw smaller tables with seconds protected from insects with little mesh structures.

The game itself was not much to behold. I was intrigued to note that, much as in poorly played pick-up football, everyone was charging after the ball at the same time, galloping horses overshooting their target and long-handled mallets windmilling about. "Spread the game!", I wanted to shout, revealing my ignorance, and "Pass the ball!", but then our escape wouldn't have been so smooth.

The day continued for many sunny hours, with beers by the river and dinner al fresco, a slice of London that hasn't got much exposure on this blog. Yet, when I had put my friend on a train to Gatwick and got myself back home, writing was the last thing I wanted to do. With my mind occupied in many other ways – work, job search, the future – there just isn't the drive to babble about London.

In addition, I find myself in and around Marseille more frequently and begin to see my life there. It isn't yet, and as I can't even tell whether it will be, I can't write about it as if I lived there. What you get instead from time to time are ill-composed travel pieces, mostly relating to time spent at airports or otherwise in transit, that I can't imagine you enjoy reading any more than I enjoy writing them.

It's not much of an exaggeration to say that I am neither here nor there at the moment. My two half-lives don't fully add up. This is not exactly a new situation, but it's becoming increasingly draining. The good news is, it's going to end. My contract at Imperial ends in October – this time for sure – and I'll move away from London. After that, the frequency of posts will surely pick up again.

lighting the fire

This morning, listening to Radio 4, I was reminded of the second big event of the Olympics. This morning, at precisely twelve minutes past eight, all church bells in the country would be rung and everyone was asked to join in, be it with bicycle bells, neighbors' door bells or car horns.

The ringing of the bells had been the idea of Martin Creed, a Scottish artist who first rose to fame with the Turner Prize-winning (and, in my opinion, -discrediting) installation The lights going on and off, in which he periodically filled an empty room with light or, in other words, turned the lights on and off automatically. Since then, he has built a career and reputation on turning things on and off, for example by having runners sprint down the length of Tate Britain's Duveen Galleries in intervals. If you wonder what the point is, you should listen to Creed describe it. The inarticulateness of the artists is in perfect harmony with the vacuousness of his works. He has nothing to say and doesn't know how to say it. On the other hand, he knows how to turn things on and off, a skill perfectly suited to the ringing of bells, and his involvement promised a majestic sonic experience, London awash in music.

The first big event of the Olympics was supposed to be majestic and uplifting as well. Boris Johnson, the clown-mayor of London, saw in it "the contagion of joy". When the Olympic flame passed in front of my flat yesterday, families and resident business owners, shoppers and visitors, lined the street in anticipation, yearning for that vibe. A solitary chain of Olympic pennants in primary colors and pink fluttered above as the excitement built below. What happened then be best described as the kid sister of the Tour de France: copious security with flashing lights, a paucity of floats advertising sponsors and a runner that passed by in a flash. Instead of magic, I saw self-importance pushed to ridiculous levels. The only positive aspect was the thorough cleaning of the street before the torch relay. All the detritus of poverty had been swept away by an army of temporary council workers.

Tonight, the flame will reach the Olympic stadium and, culminating a quaint and bucolic opening ceremony, the cauldron will be lit. Tomorrow, the games will properly begin. But even though we're constantly being badgered into patriotism and enthusiasm, doubtful voices remain. The most recent bad news is the heat – never mind that rain would have really screwed with the show. Pollution levels have rising so much in London that athletes are not expected to be able to perform at their peak. I could feel the pain as I weaved across the Gloucester Road crossing, cutting through the hot exhaust of buses that should run on hydrogen and cars that shouldn't be in the city at all. The heat has now subsided and the next days are forecast to be properly English, cooler and wet. May the rain wash the dirt from the air.

Beside the weather (which one can't control anyway), the biggest headache of the organizers was transport. How would a system that runs at capacity most of the time cope with a million extra journeys? Early signs indicate that the worries were misplaced. Far from being afflicted with the contagion of joy, many people, residents and city breakers alike, have chosen to stay away from London during the Olympics. Colleagues of mine who commute to work have reported eerily quite trains. Hotels are far from fully booked. The bug has yet to catch on.

This morning, I was doing my best to catch the bug. I wanted to feel the bells around me. But it was still too early. Had I left home when the anchor reminded the nation of what was to come, I would have been locked away in the white noise of the lab when Big Ben set off three minutes of clatter. So I slowed my breakfast down to a crawl. Bread was buttered assiduously and jam spread most meticulously, with millimeter accuracy until I left at five to eight. Somewhere between Earl's Court and the Olympic lane at Cromwell Road, the minute hand hit the twelve, but I couldn't tell. There was no sound. I had my ears open and was receptive to even the faintest toll. But there was nothing. In the middle of London, the Olympics were going entirely unnoticed.