Monday, April 16, 2012

Only one bar of chocolate in fifteen days; a huge shift from the time when it would have been fifteen bars in one day. Yet, I am honest enough and realistic to know that I'll never be able to wriggle free of my chocolate chains. It's the ying that pulls me by the yang.

Sunday, April 15, 2012

I know years ago I posted something about unneighbourly noise and how it was slowly sending one of my friends towards the edge of despair, which in private and the ravaged confines of her flat, she may have teetered over anyway.

I had the same experience on Friday, we all did in fact, that is all of the people who live in the same small block as me. For five, possibly five hours, (I leave for the office around 7.30, so I don't know when it stopped) the whole block lay awake tormented by a dog whimpering in an unattended, and to all of we sleep denied victims, grossly unneighbourly flat.

Genetically, I am long suffering, I put up with things: through inertia at times; through the mantra I've built over time where I simply myself situations inevitably change, and at the same time throw the balm on troubled waters by telling myself repeatedly, tomorrow is definitely another day and that anything can happen. I'm also a coward and long suffering here is really not rocking the boat and upsetting someone. Why I let the latter persist, I can't say, just I know that I do, and it's insidious.

Still, on Friday, even I had had my gutfull, and reported it to the managing agent, who to my surprise, pre-empted me, and told me she knew exactly why I was calling. Seems another resident had fired off a distressed e-mail. Whether anyone else did I don't know. All I hope is they did. I hope too for action.

The after shock of unneighbourliness never quite goes; it ripples on. We wait tremblingly to see whether tonight, indeed any night, will be violated, or if it's the joy of a straight seven hours uninterrupted.

The key for me is to leave though. Another story in itself

Monday, April 09, 2012

A neat terraced house in a reasonably affluent London suburb, washing the pots, listening to the tail end of Radio 4's Woman's Hour. Why should n't I feel I've slipped in between the pages of a Hampstead set novel?

Sunday, April 08, 2012

Hallelujah, I'm a blog post. The first in weeks. When I consider how my writing life has changed, possibly irrevocably, since I walked out of the Shepherd's Bush Apple store with an i-Pad. An angel and a demon sat on each shoulder now.

There is something narcotic about this irresistible tablet device: once I wrote feverishly and regularly; now, it's no more than languor and somnolence. In writing terms, I'm lolling on the sofa, peeling grapes, more satiated ottoman sultan than frustrated creator drilling into the rock bed of whatever block or impasse I was facing.

Tuesday, April 03, 2012

It's difficult to pick out which of these two cities (my absolute favourites, so expect implicit and explicit bias in anything I say) - London or New York - is the cities city. A hairs breath either way, and even if I could decide, then I still could n't anoint one over the other.

Nevertheless, there are some aspects that the other simply does n't have; for instance London's ceaseless churning street fashions and those fading hieroglyphic adverts that seem to be stencilled on to the sides of most of downtown Manhattan.