Picos Gemeos

There was commotion outside Bethnal Green tube station this evening.

Walking from the station to the nearest bus stop, I spotted an elderly man sat in the middle of the road, surrounded by passersbys and the driver of a black minivan. Cars swerved around him, cyclists slowed down to take a good look, pedestrians lost interest in where they were going or the conversations they were having on their mobile phones to stop and watch with furrowed brows.

The man, it seemed, had been jaywalking with some other people when he was knocked over. An elderly Polish lady touched his shoulder and he swatter her away. She crossed over to the bus stop and told someone: “he’s rude! He’s rude!”

The black minivan driver rubbed the old man’s back, got into her car and drove away. New people arrived and formed a human shield around the man. One bespectacled gentleman got off his bike and became a traffic warden. A few of them spoke into mobile phones (emergency services?) The old man remained seated on the cold, wet asphalt, hunched over, cradling his arm.

Buses arrived and people climbed in. I decided to wait for the next one, as did the Polish lady.

“Did anyone call an ambulance?” I asked her.

“He’s lying!” she blurted back. “There’s nothing wrong with his arm! I touch it. I touch it hard. If it was broken, he would feel pain. He feel nothing. He’s pretending.” [1]

“Oh,” and I looked back at the old man (now turned into a con artist in my eyes) and the group of people (suckers.)

“I was behind him when he fell. Nobody touch him. He just fall by himself. He make this to get money from the government.”

“I’m sure the ambulance crew will figure this out when they check him.”

“I fell down my building’s stairs once. I get bruises on my back. I can’t bear even a small touch. So that’s how I know he don’t break arm. I touch and he feel nothing! I know what to do in this country. You go to hospital and you get doctor to write everything down. That’s how you get money from government. But he wants people to believe what he says, and not what the doctor says. He do the wrong way.”

A much emptier No.8 bus arrived and we climbed in together. Her Oyster card was a Freedom Pass. I climbed upstairs and sat on the seat right at the front, where I could look down on the man as the bus drove by. He had now been moved to the median strip. He looked a bit confused.

[1] Recreation of the lady’s Polish accent may be slightly incorrect due to author’s incapability of remembering verbatim what she said.

I rode the No.8 beside a sausage dog. I gave him my hand to sniff as I sat down; I wanted to pet him but his owner (young, bearded guy - is there any other sort in the EastEnd?!) didn't seem too keen to share the dog. It made me miss the ones living with my family in Brasil.

The bus went by the circus set up in Mile End Park. During the weekend, I saw families lining up to buy tickets and I was thoughtful of the chavy ones standing side by side with the muslim ones. It seemed like a good family activity to bring together all sorts of people from the community.

Today, though, there were protesters standing outside the circus with signs on animal cruelty. I thought all circuses now were like Cirque du Soleil!? They still use animals? Very sad...

I was on the phone to a colleague this afternoon when she suddenly said "oh my God, my bus just crashed!"

"What do you mean?"

She started laughing. "It just crashed!"

"Are you OK?"

"Hmm, yeah."

"Maybe you should call me later?" I suggested. She agreed. From the tone of her voice afterwards, I gathered it wasn't that serious.

Our boiler malfunctioned three days ago and we haven't had any hot water since. Yesterday morning I went to the gym before work and noticed for the first time that they pump music into the shower room. Black Eyed Peas don't make good showering companions. Today, I went after work and there were many guys about but I was lucky enough to have the shower room to myself. Our landlords have offered their home's bathtub while they sort someone to check the boiler. They had us over for dinner last night as a thank you for watching over their cat Blanche on the weekend.

I only have two days left at the recruitment agency. A famous Bollywood star came into our building today, according to the security guard at reception, but my team didn't see him. He looks a bit like Antonio Banderas on his Wikipedia page. My co-workers tease me about my new job, about who's going to substitute me, about the little inside jokes we have built over these past weeks. I have no energy to join in the fun because I'm fighting some kind of cold (brought into the office by my line manager, who had a chest infection over the weekend). We are all getting sick.

I'm still reading Joe Orton's diary on the bus rides to work and home. He was very raw and very smart. His entries, though, on the Moroccan boys he brought home and shagged are troubling. I'll be commuting on the Hammersmith line as of next week, which will give me lots of hours underground to get through more books. Anything to keep me distracted from the weather getting cold and grim.

Yesterday, I took my camera to work and recorded some footage from the No. 8 bus. I wanted to capture the street piano again, hopefully with someone playing it like the day before.

Want to know what it feels like to be in my skin when I commute in the morning, sitting in the No. 8's second floor, with the iShuffle plugged in? Here's my footage (with Broadcast & The Focus Group's "Royal Chant" as soundtrack):



Didn't make it to the community garden today. I'm hoping to meet my brasilian friend Vini Bambini sometime this afternoon and/or go for a long walk. Tomorrow, myself, wink_martindale, desayuno_ingles, one of the Sissies plus some other friends will be attending and volunteering at Cancer Research UK's Pride Walk. There will be a lot of men in drag, apparently.

When I left work yesterday, I started entertaining this fantasy of throwing a party at The Victoria pub - the kind of party where a band is on stage while all the attendees arrive dressed up (in tuxedos, as cowboys, 40s gangsters - whatever the theme dictates.) This fantasy then took me back to the night we saw The Severed Limb play The Victoria - a really good show, but poorly attended.

A few blocks later, who was standing at the same bus stop I catch the No. 8 home? The singer from The Severed Limb, dressed up like Johnny Cash and holding a guitar case. That threw me off a little. Psychic moment? Or do coincidences exist? The questions didn't go any further because the universe threw me another curve ball with the appearance of Darnell from Big Brother 9. Before my mind could find the secret connection between their simultaneous presences, their buses arrived and they were gone.

Wink and I are not in the mood for gardening this morning. But it's nice outside - it would be a shame to spend it indoors.

I'm in Londrina, visiting family. All my bureaucratic problems with the military were solved within a day, without a hitch (and for less than 2 pounds).  I can now renew my passport and sort out my other legal documents here.  

Took loads of photos. Am taking the midnight bus tomorrow back to my mom's guesthouse: a 12-hour trip.  It's 32 celsius, which is apparently "cool" after a recent heatwave.  Am slightly sunburnt and crawling the shades whenever possible.

My dreams have come true: LJ now accepts Google Analytics! I installed it today and I'm very curious to see what comes up after the first 24 hours.

Say hello to my stalkers.

Last night, after a few hours spent with friends at Vagabonds (London's premier monthly night dedicated to 80s trad goth/alternative classics), Kevin and I hop on the No.8 bus, heading home. As the bus stops near Brick Lane, a hoard of drunk revellers push into the bus through the exit doors. Kevin and I move towards the back. The doors' alarms beep incessantly because there's not enough space to close them; I look at Kevin and predict we'll go nowhere (my experience in the past has been with drivers refusing to depart unless people pay their fare or leave the bus.)

The bus is crammed, except in the corridor where Kevin and I are standing. Suddenly, someone starts slamming the windows with their hand. I look and it's a guy outside calling my attention. He orders me to move back so he can get in. I ignore him (I'm drunk and, in any case, what difference does it make where I move if the people elsewhere in the bus aren't budging?) He continues to slam the windows and, after a minute, I look at him again. This time he looks at me as if he could rip my head off - he wants to get in the bus and apparently it's my fault he's not succeeding. He calls me a wanker by gesturing at me with his hand; I tell him to go to the driver and pay up. He hurries to the front of the bus.

Now, in the back of my drunken mind, I imagine the guy climbing on board and pushing his way to the back, where he'll confront me - perhaps even attack me (how dare I talk back at him?) The people near the exit finally force the doors shut, allowing the bus to continue its journey.

As the bus pulls away, I see the guy standing by the bus stop with other people that didn't make it inside. He's got that look of a petulant child that didn't get the toy he wanted. We make eye contact. I lift both my hands at him, shove two fingers up in the air repeatedly (that's two fingers on each hand, doing that ever so British V-sign), watch him scream with outrage and try to chase the bus, then feel a rush of excitement and satisfaction as we leave him behind (to hopefully remember the incident to the end of his life.)

Divine justice, Kevin called it.

( And Then It Snowed in London Today... )

Despite attending a "lame" fetish night at Slimelight on Friday, then not getting any sleep, tina found enough strength yesterday to get on a train from Walthamstow and come meet the actor who plays Kevin and I at Liverpool Street Station. Every Londoner was out and about after a smiley sun rose above the capital. She looked gorgeous as ever, although a little sleepy; we walked over to Brick Lane for the South African B-B-Q I'd promised earlier in the week, as well as a long-overdue catch up.

Afterwards, we grabbed some coffee and had a look at the stalls that sell overpriced crap by clueless Shoreditch designers. There seemed to be a vintage store every ten feet, which brought the shopper out of Tina and Kevin: soon he had a grey bag for his notebooks and pens, and she had a vest and a beautiful dark blue dress.



We visited Nog Gallery so Tina could check out their zines and art books; we ended up discovering a neat exhibition of darkly humourous etchings made by a Hackney artist called John M F Casey. They are quite beautiful - I believe he painted the wooden canvasses white, then black, then etched through them to create imagery of hellish horrors that would suit Tim Burton's living room.



We said our goodbyes to Tina around 4.30pm and went to Spitalfields Market to wait for tom. His girlfriend christa had planned for him a massive treasure hunt across London, and we were his almost-at-the-end-of-the-line stop. I had a pirate badge pinned to my bag which said "Happy Birthday to Me"; as soon as he found us, I removed it and he pinned it on his jacket. His task was to sing any of The Smiths' songs in their entirety, with no mistakes, so he could learn his next destination. He shocked me to the Moon and back by not knowing in full any of their lyrics. He stammered through "This Charming Man", failed at "Bigmouth Strikes Again", and was about to bomb on "Shoplifters of the World Unite" when Kevin told me to give him a break and suggest an easy one. So I suggested "How Soon Is Now?", which he murdered hurried through before making his escape. Remind me to never go karaoking with him.

We headed for Waterloo for a meeting with my old friend Kelly at the BFI Southbank. Juliette Binoche's paintings are being exhibited there as part of their "Binoche Season" and they are worth checking out if you are in the area. Her paintings are pairs that match her career's characters with the directors she has worked with. All of her self-portraits are infused with the personalities and physionomies of the directors that created them.

Kelly showed up with a gift for us, some french cheese, figs and lavender she collected from her house in France. We walked over to Soho's Curzon because the idea of watching a grim Icelandic thriller called Jar City on a beautiful September night seemed like a good idea. It was one of those films which could have easily been made for TV - a sort of Prime Suspect with detectives that eat goat heads for dinner and juggle their personal lives with their depressing work. The film had some wonderful aerial shots of Iceland but its main message seemed to be: DON'T LIVE IN THIS FUCKING MISERABLE ISLAND. Iceland's Ministry of Tourism should look into suing.



Outside the cinema, past 11pm, London suddenly seemed overwhelmed by crowds of horny, drunken louts from the 'burbs. Everyone shouted over everyone else, and cars honked uselessly at a traffic that was going nowhere. A gang of women dressed as FBI agents, the leader wearing bridal headgear, stumbled past us. Even the neon lights seemed brighter than usual, intense enough to burn your retinas. A nightmarish sight rolled into view: a red double-decker bus crammed with people, blasting "YMCA". The bus carried girls wearing glittery tiaras who were having a right hoot rubbing their boobs against the windowpanes for the benefit of the men on the sidewalk, their hands banging in the air as if the Village People were the ultimate rave experience. Some girls on the street felt compelled to join the fun by rushing to the windows and doing their own YMCA moves back at the partygoers inside. It only dawned on me to take a photo of this modern horseman of the apocalypse once it was pulling away - thus the shaky photo above.



Today, we took our iPods and newspapers to Vicky Park, bought some bagels and coffee and lay on the grass in full view of the sun. On the way back, we found this chest of drawers sitting on the sidewalk, not too far from our tower block. There was nothing wrong with it apart from its green snot colour (debatable defect) and food stains (solved quickly with a soapy cloth). It's going to sit in the master bedroom after it failed to look alright in the hallway, the sitting room and the dining room.



This little fellow approached us last week, when we were sitting on the lawn outside the Geffrye Museum enjoying coffee and slices of cakes bought at Broadway Market. dawnkitten made the mistake of giving it some of her carrot cake, instantly creating a friend who thought she was made of cake. I never saw a squirrel this upclose before; he was actually slightly intimidating. It didn't even flinch away from Kevin's paparazzi-style photography. Just look at that mouth. It wants to eat you. Yes, YOU!