Downtime

Faced once again with the crushing ediface of London. Its largeness, its dirtiness, its loping packs of feral children out knifing each other at bus-stops from three in the afternoon. The grime, the smell, the pretentiousness, its unknowability; its sprawl, its glittering, upsetting expense. Its so old. Its bones are old, even the flesh of London is old, falling away, crumbling beneath the teeming masses; the tourist exodus that keeps the shithole afloat; the migrant workforce that rebuilds and sustains its rotting flesh like so many friendly bacteria in a yakult commercial. Public transport is the worst and so therefore it is my fault that the world is so awful because I'm poor. If I hadn't wasted my time attempting to do something creative with my life and instead spent it in the aggressive pursuit of angry naked wealth it could have been a very different story. I might never again have had to go on a bus or experienced the clammy horror of the peak time tube. But this is clearly nonsense; its not like I had a choice! Those with a specific talent for making money make it in any field. Its a gift, a talent, a blessing and one that I don't have. To berate oneself for having no financial nous at all seems like an extra punishment; I'm poor and hate myself for being poor. But I'm still poor.

So I'm on the bus, I'm on the tube, my teeth fall out, my clothes go out of even the tangental relationship to style that they had and then slide back in again, squeezing themselves around my ever thickening form. And my wife has nothing and I can give her nothing. It is a crime to be poor in London. Its a crime to be poor at forty. And its a shame.

Kelly is very quiet and withdrawn at the moment. I'm sizzling with an untapped rage against the cruelty of existence. It's not a good mix. But there are moments of tenderness and serenity. We have each other, for now.I'm not going to let some bastard disease spoil that.

On the train to the spa town of Basers Basers. The Victoria line is down but other than that the journey is fine. A man sold me my ticket at Waterloo. An actual himan employee of the station. It was one of the oddest things to happen for a while: are people making a comeback?