February 05, 2009

• These places stink, right outside the door a no-mans land of artlessly scrawled graffiti and drying piss. Concrete corridors and low wattage lighting. They weren't my corridors, but I walked them like they were, and I lived someplace just like it. "Got the money?" I'd ask and they'd unchain the door each place the same, carpets made of nylon, furniture of cheapboard, TV too loud in the other room and always kids screaming. I'd make a mark in my little book and move on. The only things I didn't like were the early starts and smelling of milk all day.
• Every day, cycling through London to work, I’d stop at the Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens. Sitting halfway up the steps, facing across to the Albert Hall, I’d eat my breakfast. A tin of fruit. Pineapple slices, peach halves, or fruit cocktail. Rain or shine, sometime between eight and ten in the morning, there I’d sit and eat my breakfast. Then it occurred to me. Every day, I’d catch at least one Japanese tourist taking a photograph of me eating my breakfast. But only the Japanese. Which is why I think that I might have my own website in Japan.