It’s not a dip if the thing you dip in it snaps …

I have a black suit and a brown suit so I figured it made sense to get a grey one (incase my brown one is frowned upon at the Palace). Went to NEXT after work. Hilarious. If anyone’s seen me try to find a pair of trousers that fit, multipy that experience by a factor of ten. I’m not a 40 or a 42. But I am a Long. I know this much is true. In one shop the assistant watched me try on every suit they had before informing me that their ‘made to measure’ service was half price at the moment. Which is pretty cool. But it takes 6 weeks. So I just hung around in NEXT laughing at a crowd of guys desperately trying to match suit jackets with trousers, all without their womenfolk to guide them. Although some were on their mobiles to them; “Yea, there are blue bits in it. Sorta like stripes. Oooo. And tiny, tiny red stripes by the blue ones. Uhha. I THINK its wool …”. Having found a rather nice jacket I retired. Looking forward to spending the whole of Wednesday scouring the NEXT sales throughout London in a desperate bid to find a matching pair of trousers.
I wrote the brief introductory essay for Nick in Toronto FINALLY. Needs revising sometime though.
Discovered that the best people to go drinking with in central London are museum workers. This is because they get paid diddely-sqaut and so go to places like the Imperial College Union bar where Blackthorn is £1.30 a pint. I bought a round for under a 5er and subsequently enquired about renting a room.
Read an article in the paper today. Turns out people who listen to too much loud music on their Ipods can suffer from ‘music hallucinations’, i.e. hearing music when none is actually playing. Unfortunately it was the Daily Mail reporting, so this quote was overlooked; “People who are regularly bombarded by loud music tend to hear music.” Really?

Back from France.

Have a double bed in my room for the first time EVER. Got security clearance this morning for working at you-know-where. Told to wear a suit and tie all the time. To “launch a charm offensive for two months”. Better get practicing…
Read an (unfortunately) abysmal review of the biography of JT Leroy directed by and starring Asia Argento (looking pretty hot).

A link for Aynsley – [http://yourwaitressphotos.blogspot.com/]

Bombs.

My day off. So not in central London today. 10.30am. I get back from the shop and my sister answers the door. Gives me a hug. Says a couple of bombs have gone off in central London …

Why pick those stations? Others could have produced far greater numbers of casualties. Trafalgar or Leicester Square, Covent Garden, Waterloo, Euston, Clapham Junction. Why not earlier when the tubes and buses would have been far busier? Some sort of (even greater) cowardice? Even using a twisted logic, it doesn’t really make sense. Not that I am not compassionate, but Watching it unfold on TV just felt to me like watching similar incidents in Madrid, Turkey and Israel. I recognised most of the sites. Remembered vividly times I spent in some of those exact spots. Yet it didn’t seem like it was happening in London. Not my home. It felt to me as alien as watching the Xmas episode of “House” today, in the middle of July. But then it shouldn’t matter where these things happen, but the simple fact that THEY DO happen. The new BBC policy of regulating ‘live’ footage was obviously abandoned. I’d be livid if I knew the dead guy who, naked from the waist up was lying there shuddering as the ambulance staff tried to resuscitate him as they carried him into the hospital. Close-up. Unflinching. 11am. I noticed it was the only piece of footage they didn’t repeat.

Unlucky mate.

“Join in the bike ride and us help beat Lukemia” Gary Linekar

Right Gary. Next time get the text on your subway posters checked before they go to print. Spent this evening after work as I (sadly) often do. Studying the shelves of Charing Cross’ 2nd hand bookshops and observing the habits of fellow browsers (a curious creed). Found that both Ulysses and Gormanghast both have; “Best novel of this century” attributed to them by Anthony Burgess. Hmm. Followed a man who was clearly insane and rather frustrated. Not a good combination. I veared away when he looked like he wanted to strike up conversation. Walked into a cheap chinese in Soho only to find they employed a minimum £10 order policy and promptly left. Told myself to eat a little more daringly in my usual haunt as penance. Warmed my belly with shredded pork & preserved Sezhuan cabbage soup followed by minced pork, ginger and dried salted fish steamed over rice. Apart from the unpleasantly crunchy spinal chord it was all rather delicious. Which, as anyone who knows me will tell you, cheered me up no end.

“[Poilu] The … name for a French soldier. Its literal meaning is ‘hairy, shaggy,’ but the word has conveyed for over a century the idea of the virility of a Samson, whose strength lay in his locks”.
Henri Barbusse – Under Fire