you do, you don't

Just to clarify. I work in the City. Which is not the same as working in the city. There may be other cities that are called the City, but I don't know about them. In this instance, the City referred to is London. London is not, as it is popularly imagined to be, synonymous with the West End. The Queen does not live in London, Oxford Street is not in London, Soho, Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Parliament, the Eye, Nelson's Column and Hyde Park. None of these are in London. The sprawling suburbs aren't in London, nor are the run-down estates, the corner shops; London is an ancient and quite small city on the north bank of the river Thames, built by the Romans, possibly on a pre-Roman settlement, and inhabited almost continually since about 60 AD, except for a couple of hundred years when it was probably deserted just after the Roman Empire fell. I don't know why I feel the need to mention this.

right now, time for water and listening to a dead man's voice

it's wrong, but it's interesting in a way. i've been studying french with the Michel Thomas CD course, acquired through certain unnamed contacts at the cost of a return tube fare to Oxford Circus (£3.50 ish). which is not bad. still, he is dead now, and that freaks me out. the fact that i'm listening to, and worse interacting with a being that no longer inhabits this, or indeed any physical dimension, is disturbing. what else can i tell you? i did actually tear a door off its hinges today. less satisfying than you'd think. once again subject to the blood sugar demon, which ruined my relationship for about five hours, after which something clicked, we both realised we were going mad for no reason at all, and we got the bus down to Dalston for a really good meal. i'll probably need another one later. if i'm destined to stay up late, i may as well make myself useful.

this is just really really annoying me. i know i should just grit my teeth and wait for him to leave, but the fact is, he's my only link to what this house originally was, and he's so unreliable that i'll probably never see him again. which would be shit. then again, at least it means i won't have to deal with his inability to wash up. let me clarify that- it is both an inability and an incompetence. on the rare occasions that he does actually do it, he actually doesn't do it. so what was dry and dirty, is now wet and dirty. and when it dries, i put it back in the bowl. it's passive aggressive, it's childish, and because he doesn't know it's still his, because his actions have severed the implicit link between washing up as a symbol, and washing up as an accomplished activity involving the transformation of crockery from a state of dirt to one of cleanliness, it isn't as if it will achieve anything, given that he just can't do it. BUT IT MAKES ME SO MAD! grrrr.

other than everything, i'm fine

having tried for far too long to live with other people, i realised there's no point. it's awful to have to admit the truth, but in a way it's a relief. hell really is other people. so, short of becoming a serial killer, and that would just be too much effort, and would get dull in the end- I'm going to become an anchorite, a hermit, a recluse. not entirely, just in any meaningful way. the world, such as it is, such is my inability and impotence when it comes to effecting anything other than affectation, can go suck its own bumhole. it probably already does. and what difference will this grand gesture of non-involvement make? what will this admission of defeat accomplish? aside from having nobody else to moan at or clean up after, probably not a lot. i'd give it a week, and i'll be accosting complete strangers just to get some kind of feedback. not that this is a serious proposition. that would involve being serious. please.

so if it's here, where is it?

yes. here is the payoff. cd 4 of the michel thomas advanced french CD, by which time i can use 19 tenses in another language. 19!that's more than i thought existed in english. it's terrifying really. because of this course i am in the unique state of inverted communication skill, where i can actually say more than i can hear. i'll have to practise listening to people in order that my ears can catch up with my mouth. which, yes, okay, will require my not being alone all the time. i'll just have to move to france. quelle domage. or is it dommage?

well, hootananny

I can't make head nor tail of this. at least it's warming up in here. now, in order to prevent the near-inevitable collapse of society, there needs to be a bit of structure here. okay. it's friday, which, as any self-respecting trivia fascist will tell you is named in honour of the goddess Freya. this is the beginning of a thought process, so bear with me. Right.



The bible (however that ended up being written) invents the whole seven-day week thing. not sure why, haven't read up on it. and in hebrew, the days were merely numbered. even the hebrew word 'Shabbat' from which we derive Sabbath, is nothing more than the word for "seven". which means that according to that tradition, light came into being on a Sunday morning. But that's even more tangential than where I was going. So, the idea of a seven-day week does not (apparently) track some astronomical phenomenon, nor is it by any means the standard number. i think the Aztecs had a ten day week, not sure how much of that was weekend though.



And we live out our lives according to this strange biblical numbering process, but we've populated the days with four Norse gods, one Roman god and two astronomical objects. The moon, the sun, can't remember who Tuesday is named after, Woden, Thor, Freya and (why the hell is this even here?) Saturn. Which I think says an awful lot about our culture. I don't know what it says, but something probably significant.



The French, now the french have the moon (lundi), the roman god of war (mardi) not sure what mercredi means, jeudi is I think something to do with youth, friday might be for selling things, saturday... no idea, and Sunday... I've kind of lost the thread here.



Um, the Spanish? the same thing with monday and tuesday, and then they actually call Saturday sabado, from the Hebrew root for seventh, even though we usually start counting days on a Monday.



I should read about this, it's all coming out as nonsense. However, there is something very strange that just happened. The coffee did its usual bowel-loosening trick, and in the toilet is a book on dream theory that fell open at the metaphor chapter. the introduction to the chapter mentions that the word trivia is itself a metaphor, and a very curious one.



A trivium is the meeting point of three roads, and in some way there is a thought process attendant to this 'T' or 'Y' junction which suggests that it is immaterial which road one takes, either because the journey is pointless in the first place, or more tellingly because the journey itself is the point, and route is immaterial.



Anyway...

a mistake is not the same as a lie

as it turns out, the coffee is pretty good. in fact, it's really good. there was just some kind of warming-up process that my taste buds needed to sort out. i made the mistake of brushing my teeth before the coffee, which is never good. it's not a comforting thing to have accurate sensory awareness when you live in Hackney. so yes, the coffee is very good. presentation plays a part, of course. i have a nice, thick mug, black on the outside, white on the inside, that describes something along the lines of an inverted, truncated cone. yes, i know i could have just said it's wider at the top than at the bottom, but then who was going to save the starving masses?

there was a reason, but reason is so 'German Enlightenment'

this is now the second time today that I've failed to make myself a strong enough cup of coffee, and given that putting a pillow in the washing machine and making bad coffee represents the sum total of my achievements since I awoke, I think it's fairly safe to assume that this particular Friday isn't going to plan. This, however, would be an erroneous conclusion, as it's based on the assumption that there is a plan.