London is Everyone's Foreign Country

From the train windows I watch London, sunset roofs, a labyrinth of streets and forgotten slices of city shadow. it stretches on forever, a distance of power stations and tower blocks. The sunset out of the other window is apocalyptic but no-one looks - at least I don't see them look - because they are all reading books. The carriage is mostly silent - just the chugging of the wheels - but there is a teenager with an old Irish voice 'John, John, John, you'e a jackass, an idjit. Outside. Fight now'.
The train was, of course, moving at the time.

Earlier.
In McDonalds at Putney, queuing up. A gang of teenagers, all knife crime voices and jagged, angular somehow jugular movements. Beta male un-heroics. One does something another is not pleased with. 'Suck my ass!' is his unintentionally homo-erotic retort. Em and me see them briefly upstairs shouting and swearing randomly.
We sit downstairs instead.

Before Putney we went for a long walk along the Thames. The Thames is a wide river, and under the sun in an unblemished sky an unreal one, a swimming dream of a river. Across the water the forbidden landscapes of factories and power stations and dockland sites. There seems to be a waste-ground island, covered in weeds and grass, accessible only by water. There are boats on the Thames, empty vessels, rusting and rotting, bobbing in the undulating tides. Against the edge of the Thames an old man jogs slowly and malevolently, spits in the undergrowth and punches the air like a boxer. Dark man, an old gangster ghost and we do not see his face but I imagine it may be as unlovely and hooked as a crows.

A morning of parks, Hyde Park and Kensington Park. The size of the trees here surprise me with their size. Only a few have the first signs of spring leaves on. There are hundreds of joggers and scores of happy dogs. We rest under trees and listen to London about us, outside of this interior deceptive countryside.

The breakfast room in the hotel we stay in is a noisy place, full of scraping chairs and foreign voices, and women filling up the little packets of marmalade and cheese. I do not understand the queuing system and feel hot and stressed, and I let Em do everything instead. The place smells of toast and mornings and I think that this room is someone else's foreign country.

I sleep well, lulled to sleep by the sound of a generator. Outside of the window a narrow space of pipes and a high concrete wall that cuts off the sky. This small, tall room would forever be cool in shadow. A secret place that no-one might love but might always pass through.

London is full of such places.