Saturday 28 June 2008

ONE

I moved to the great city of London nearly two years ago now and it really doesn't feel that long. Life is fast here and everything is attainable at every hour; drink, drugs, clubs and pubs. Hundreds and thousands of people. Tubes, trains and bendy buses.
The city is dazzling and always stole my heart on my weekends up here as a teenager. Canary Wharf looming over the docks with windows shining brighter than the stars of it's black backdrop. The beautiful Thames viewed from any bridge, the streets with pavement I could kiss and say "I'm Home".
The city injected life into otherwise relatively normal suburban living which I being bred of Essex had sorely needed for some time. 21 going on 16 really, discounting the tail-end of my education as any sort of time well spent. The opposite really is true but I can't hold regrets.

These days I look at it differently. I still cherish everything and I love my Camden house. I believe the bustle is a danger, a swamp. A monster if you will. What can give life can also take it away and I have sometimes had the feeling that the streets will swallow me whole. I also believe that I will be an institution, a fixture of this place for years to come and probably until I die.
There's the birdsound man selling cheap tricks on weekends, the angry beardo who shouts at the air, bald baglady with a toothless smile selling books. There's the punks who are probably the same punks from thirty years ago who most likely will be on the bridge forever. There's the guts of the Hawley Arms, my most beloved of all pubs firstly for it's proximity to my bedroom and secondly for the men in either Fred Perry or leather jackets or any number of rocknroll clothing which I would gladly rip off right then and there at the bar.

But I digress. Days and nights mix into a blur and before you know it you are blurred too. Has it really been two years? What have I achieved? What have I seen, felt, heard?
This is the reason for this very blog. I have not written for so long that even the last few paragraphs have switched something in my mind back on...'that's better'. I want to be able to look back on this so that my last memory is not another bloody hangover.

By now I should really introduce myself. My name is Mika. Mika Doll to many, Michael to one [my grandmother]. One of my best friends in the world put the notion of writing in my head and is likely the first person reading this and I should therefore thank him.
In this blog you will see, as Malcolm put it, my "snapshots and rantings, writings and musings". I am a jack of all trades I suppose but a master in none.

One last thing ; this will be worth your while. That's a fact I state without arrogance but more acceptance because I have come to realise my life is as extreme as my emotions.

Good day.

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