breeze

a giant spring cleaning exercise takes place in the old city.

winter debris, the last hats and scarfs stubbornly worn by a few die-hard cold lovers, massive clouds bearing spring showers, cobwebs and doubts, all fly past my window, at speed, blown away.

weekend vignettes

dancing on the tables of a cheesy bar in old street. walking the streets of london with a ghanian chef. being told by a senior navy commander (retired) that if anybody gave me any shit i should find him and he'd sort them out. having organic chilli con carne and drinking a whole bottle of prosecco. making pancakes like a loon on sunday morning. dancing on the tables of a house in highbury and islington.

roll-up, roll-up!

the drink and drugs circus is back in town...

featuring all time favourites:

• my last nutritious meal was a packet of pork scratchings!!
• how did i get all those bruises?!!
• i can't believe i said that!!

and a special preview of the ever popular:

• self-loathing paranoid morning!!

question

in my dream he said where did it all go? how did it disappear so quickly?

i woke up today and it's back to grey and i'm hungover and tired and thirsty.

and the answer to the question is that i just don't know.

signs of spring

signs of spring II
Originally uploaded by ladelentes.

creeping in
pushing out
opening up
forcing through
exploding into the city

glorious

sun shining. people smiling. love london again.

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vauxhall

in the tube station the manager plays classical music. initially i thought it must be some maverik art lover who was trying to educate the masses. however, a few weeks ago i learned that there is a scheme to "tame" the rougher parts of london, and playing classical music is meant to help turn the violence down.

now they allow a starbucks to open in that beautiful building in the corner, which i lovingly watched as it was carefully brought back to the form of its glory days.

so they can play all the classical music they like, but the fury of the liberal middle-classes will soon be unleashed upon them, mark my words!

silver

all is silver

english gentlemen

damsel in distress phones knights in shining armour. small dragon has taken posession of enchanted casle. knight #1 listens to crying and hysterical laughter and is the lucky recipient of a huge screech right in his ear. knight #2 picks up the thread and advises fleeing on white horse as only course of action. damsel cycles, distressed, to safe house. knights receive with food and tea.
damsel sanity restored, english gentlemen come through once more.

walking gone crazy

• mon: kings cross to rosebery avenue, rosebery avenue to vauxhall
• tue: kings cross to rosebery avenue, rosebery avenue to soho, soho to trafalgar sq
• wed: kings cross to rosebery avenue, cycle around manor house
• thu: kings cross to rosebery avenue, rosebery avenue to vauxhall (via national portrait gallery and tate britain), cycle vauxhall to peckham and back
• fri?
  

See more progress on: walk to work

crisis, what crisis?

and so, just to prove me wrong, when i come back home i find i am, indeed, not alone at all.

yes, you've guessed it! it's back...the cute, hairy, unwanted visitor.

he's grown so big that in the event of aforementioned fading, he'll pick up the phone and make sure that friends and family hear about it all in a jiffy.

nothing like a household pest to put things back into perspective.

i go to bed armed with all kinds of weapons of mass destruction.

wish us both luck...

fade

i'm going to dissolve into the grey of this city and nobody will notice and i don't care anymore.

on the subject of doors

it is not just a question of whether the door is open or not, but of whether you can find the right key, and if on finding it you know how to use it, and if you know how to use it, if you want to.

then again, after all that, the lock may have got rusty and not work at all.

contrast

soldier back from iraq suddenly notices the myriad shades of green of england.
tourist back from brazil suddenly notices the infinite variety of greys of england.

if a tree...

screams in the middle of london, will the commuters hear it?

jet-lag

airports and planes are places where you lose your life. from the moment you check-in, everything goes into suspended animation. time passes, but your life doesn't. life is recovered at the other end, leaving the airport, opening the key to your front door.

half-way over the atlantic has to be the place where your real life feels less attached to yourself. you are nothing but a ball of blood, tissue and bone, floating right above the cloud cover, anonymous, directionless.

only thing is you've got to shake that feeling, recover your soul. otherwise, you're stuck. numb. sleepwalking. empty. you look at your front door key and it doesn't make sense. you message your friends and they don't make sense. you sit in your sofa and it feels like an alien spaceship. you're in your house, but a million miles from home.

problems?

such as, whether to have children, and when, and how many. and then, where to send the kids to school, how to raise them up, how to make sure they´ll be ready for life. and, later, how to care for each other when you´re old, how to cope with the ageing process together. how to keep this thing together.

go to hell

mmmm
diosa
ay, mamita
dame tu número
cómo estas!
qué mina
ay, ay, ay...

battlefield

they rip the heads of the green army. they spare no mercy for the pink, the yellow, or the lilac ladies, beheaded only weeks after they had first appeared heare and there. they care nothing for the black workers, off with their heads too. they thoughtlessly scatter the nests of new-born babies, force them to flee for their lives in their new multicoloured aprons. they mutilate, stamp, and destroy, and then they pack their lawn-mowers and move on to the next garden.

reasons

because you have to
because i say so
because that's the way it is
because it's the right thing to do
because everybody does it
because what else can you do?
because we always do that on wednesdays
because you wouldn't like it if i did that to you
because the the knave killed the king

definition

tried to explain the meaning of "self-indulgent" to someone the other day. very hard to define. pretty difficult to translate. try getting the totally sensual uruguayan mind to get the notion of setting yourself limits, of not wallowing, of not allowing yourself to cross "that" line...

enchanted

a spell has been cast over the household. the inhabitants fall asleep at the least provocation. it takes a chair, a sofa, even standing at the counter, while brushing your teeth...sleep will catch you unawares and get hold of you. but my guess is it would have to be a very brave prince to come through the overgrown garden, break the spell and take the prize.

disconcerting

approach entrance to building, ring buzzer, door barks at me like a rabbid dog.

what you don´t learn at school

you have to cross two roads to get there, one even with two-way traffic. past the neglected postbox, which is a mystery, having never seen letters, stamps or postmen in your life. up a few steps, into the blue light of the insect-killing lamps. a huge circular saw emerges from the marble worktop, which is festooned with garlands of plump pink and black sausages. men in white aprons and small white caps grab hold of grotesque body parts and cut them into submission. beyond the counter, a huge poster shows the bovine geography, arrows mapping out your next delicious meal. around the walls, hanging from pirate-hooks, dangle the halves and quarters of once happy cows. rivulets of blood make their way from the worktop to the floor to the city innards. the infernal noise of the saw makes a sudden stop. the buzzer tolls the final song for a stray fly. the stench of death and dinner makes you dizzy. the men laugh, hand you a paper-wrapped soggy package, send you back to your home.
it´s your first visit to the butchers. you didn´t before, but now you know.

storm

shakes the old wooden blinds, rattles the window panes, soaks the pizza delivery man, bends the tall palm tree in the front garden, ululates in your ear, reflects, distorts, envelopes.

parapente

parapente
Originally uploaded by ladelentes.

three steps forward, two steps backwards, small jump and you find yourself sitting on a cloud, watching the world go by, spiralling downwards, swooping upwards, bird's eye view of the most beautiful urban coastline in the world