Tuesday, April 27, 2004

Blistering Barnacles!

This was the first weekend of heat and sunshine under a high pressure cell. Shirts-off weather. It never fails to amaze me how my hormone balance shifts tectonically with the seasons. I don't think I am unique there, because human beings are physically primitive animals. The menstrual cycle that governs their reproduction is all the bleeding proof I need to defend that. I am however more confronted with my animal self than the average vegetable that passes for a man.

Saturday was a cycle ride all the way into London, following the instinctive logic of a mouse in maze. Never in Lycra, which to me is less sexy than women's nylon stockings. It was astonishing how light the traffic was on a Saturday afternoon. Darting in and out among all the side streets, I was able to assess the pulse of London in the space of 2 hours. Why don't journalists do that? Probably because they're too busy getting drunk at the Evening Standard.

The glorious weather had drawn people out, but it was not busy anywhere except in the tourist ghettoes, notably Oxford Street and Hyde Park. Along the way there were small clusters of people that were gathered outside the more well-situated pubs. Otherwise, the Brits have abandoned London. You can come to visit London and never meet anyone who was born here, and that is modern tourism. Ho hum, mediocre, mediocre, mediocre! The tourists in London vary from one year to the next, depending on who the travel companies can con into taking up the hotel bookings. The current average tourist in London is European, 30-50, conservatively middle-class, married or with one or two children in tow. They're here to catch up with their Joneses while it is cheap to do so, and are content with a change of scene without expecting any earthshaking culture. Ho hum, mediocre, mediocre, mediocre!

Even a stop in the King's Arms revealed less testosterone drive than could be found in a pregnant, 5'2" Vietnamese woman. London is flaccid - it has no distinctive local energy. The sexiest person I saw all day was a 17 year old girl, possibly Slovenian, who was wearing a black top bare on the back but secured by 5 strings. What's all this boring fuss about being gay or straight? It is as dull as the fuss about being black and white. Even apartheid was destroyed, so why shouldn't these suffocating labels be consigned to history for the subject of future ridicule.

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