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Apr. 1st, 2006
This is the first time I've been inside a beaten down Starbucks. The sofa I'm sitting on has frayed upholstery and food crumbs under the seat; the wallpaper has long rips which seem to have come off from people scraping their chairs against it; there's garbage on the floor -- paper, chewing gum, sugar packets. It's a Saturday afternoon and there's hardly anyone in here.
Kevin and I walked down Queen's Way, through Hyde Park and up Edgware Road until we decided to stop here for a rest. Although the sun was out, the wind was cold and everything & everyone looked slightly stark and depressing. I had to wear my mittens as we circled the Serpentine Lake.
I'm drinking a tall cappuccino with one sweetner packet (I'm still off sugar during Lent -- it has been surprisingly easy, despite a few bumps in the road like my sudden addiction to Halls). Kevin's facing me, reading How The Light Gets In, a novel I got for free from the Catholic newsletter The Tablet, years ago, when I briefly temped for them. They had a bookstand only for books they were giving away, which had been sent to them by publishers in the hopes of getting reviewed.
During our walk, we were talking about how it's London's (and ours) loss for there being no café culture. The consequence is that we end up treating any shabby Starbucks as a small piece of Paradise.
Kevin rented three movies from the library yesterday: Tarnation, Love and Human Remains (which I've seen before, when I was a student in Montreal), and Broken Flowers. I'm worried we won't have time to watch all of them before they are due.
My coffee has grown cold quickly. Piped jazz playes in the background; two women sitting behind me discuss their lives; the double-decker buses that drive down Edgware Road carry new Armani Jeans ads that seem to say: these bodies are perfect, humanity's elite. Buy these jeans and you can join the elite too. Reminds me that I should buy some jeans tomorrow (but definetly not Armani.)
P.S. I bought Morrissey's latest single "You Have Killed Me" in Woolsworth... it's number 1 in the charts! Weird, but great news (I hope it wasn't the store's way of playing April Fool's Day.)
Kevin and I walked down Queen's Way, through Hyde Park and up Edgware Road until we decided to stop here for a rest. Although the sun was out, the wind was cold and everything & everyone looked slightly stark and depressing. I had to wear my mittens as we circled the Serpentine Lake.
I'm drinking a tall cappuccino with one sweetner packet (I'm still off sugar during Lent -- it has been surprisingly easy, despite a few bumps in the road like my sudden addiction to Halls). Kevin's facing me, reading How The Light Gets In, a novel I got for free from the Catholic newsletter The Tablet, years ago, when I briefly temped for them. They had a bookstand only for books they were giving away, which had been sent to them by publishers in the hopes of getting reviewed.
During our walk, we were talking about how it's London's (and ours) loss for there being no café culture. The consequence is that we end up treating any shabby Starbucks as a small piece of Paradise.
Kevin rented three movies from the library yesterday: Tarnation, Love and Human Remains (which I've seen before, when I was a student in Montreal), and Broken Flowers. I'm worried we won't have time to watch all of them before they are due.
My coffee has grown cold quickly. Piped jazz playes in the background; two women sitting behind me discuss their lives; the double-decker buses that drive down Edgware Road carry new Armani Jeans ads that seem to say: these bodies are perfect, humanity's elite. Buy these jeans and you can join the elite too. Reminds me that I should buy some jeans tomorrow (but definetly not Armani.)
P.S. I bought Morrissey's latest single "You Have Killed Me" in Woolsworth... it's number 1 in the charts! Weird, but great news (I hope it wasn't the store's way of playing April Fool's Day.)
