A walk through South East London

This year, I have decided to wake up in London to start the new year.
And what better than taking a tour through all those south east London hills to start 2007 wisely ?

When I first lived in London back in 97, I thought this was one big flat city. I was later to discover the big smoke is actually surrounded by a crown of hills.

Streatham Hill, Herne Hill, Shooters Hill, Blackheath... that summer of 1997 now seems rather far and flat. I've actually since then only lived up on hills becoming a proper South London princess sat up on some green patch gazing over busy Central London where we sweat, work, commute and drink ourselves to oblivion.

Above, Upper Telegraph Hill, SE4


Not convinced ?


This, ladies and gentlemen, is Southwark.
Yes, Southwark council, London.

So you thought, Southwark was one big concrete stone with the likes of Waterloo, cool Tate Modern, Borough Market and gloomy London bridge platforms ?

Think again.

Nunhead cemetary, folks, very tacky Victorian.
Over the wooden "oh kiss me Darling the deads aren't watching"bench, in the distance : Saint Paul's.

Above and below, Nunhead cemetary, SE15


Still not convinced ?
Here we go...















Get it ?

Life is about going uphill and downhill after all.


Tonight's soundtrack : "Simona" Simonal (and God created Brazil)

Santa's French suicide

It's a fact : Santa's dead busy over Christmas.

Solving the candles burning trees in Germany, sorting out Red bull and other heavy energetic drinks for the raindears crew (turning into heavy boozin' half way through the journey),
answering millions of letters sent by all those snotty kids demanding I pods and other technological non sense rubbish,
beard trimming so the goddamn thing still looks presentable by December 25th GMT-12 (not even mentioning the blooming Russians dragging the whole saga up til January 7th).

I am slightly worried though, Santa is starting to give up as he reaches France in his christmassy jolly let's make the kids happy journey.


It's been 3 or 4 years now, a strange phenomenon has been spreading over the hexagonal frogland : house after house, Santa desperately trying to escape from it all.

Usually opting for window cealing, rooftops, I've even witnessed him trying to lasso some Airfrance plane flying over Parisian foie gras overdosed suburbs on its way to Charles de Gaulle (see above).

Way better than the Daily Mirror, eh ?

Season's Greetings !

Tonight's soundtrack : "the craft" Blackalicious

2720 teabags vs. daytime TV

I could well become a professional jet setter in 2007.

So far in the line up : 3 weddings.
Any of them within dead cheap Easy Jet distance ?
Not a chance, this is serious business : Melbourne,
Cape Town,
Cochabamba (yes Bolivia, not some Mallorja Spanish fun land park).

You would think I am, as we speak, already all geared up with bright bikinis and baby beachtowel, tanning gel and coconut body lotion packed up in my backpack (sorry I meant Samsonite Deluxe here).

Well I'll have the hand luggage version of the Samsonite instead. My long haul flight will be called Eurostar with crazy smelly garlic grumpy Frenchmen as my greeting comittee.

For my friends, this is it :
I have finally paid my final respects to good ol' corporate world.

2720 teabags,
4080 toilet breaks,
208 timesheet completions,
one trillion space bar hits, for each one a loud and continental "et merdeuh !" swearword
only four bosses (not bad given the fast turnover of managers these days)
3 lamp bulb changes,

and lots of mates to go out boozin' with :















and this is it : I am officially now self employed.

This does not mean the boozing stops,
yet,

my new mates are called :
cashflow, tax return forms, hrmc.gov.uk, Stamford street inland revenue office (the telephone booths are worth having a glance at), off peak return to London terminals train ticket, daytime TV and nightime internet.

More self employed reality ?
Daytime south east London supermarket. But we'll come back to that later on.

So, what's changed then ?
Not much apart dangerous daydreaming and the certainty that looking at my last payslip will give me a good kick to go out there and find business in the fear of having to live on Tesco's own label 30p cans.
That and the fact that I have been up til 2 am every night since I returned my work laptop to their corporate owners.

Now, despite all that, I still see some of the positive enligthening energy of "new self employed me" glowing and spreading around with great productivity : Graham, my dearest flatlmate, enthusiastically transported by that self employed new me, has finally scrubbed the bathroom from A to Z, we even have a brand new ebayed shower curtain.
Well, OK, fair enough, Graham has been self employed for the last 6 months.












Welcome to the daytime boredom Kingdom !


Soundtack for tonight : "Daytime robbery" Morcheeba

Bridget Jones office

"So is living in London really like in Bridget Jones' diary Elise ?"

Well, since our recent office move to London Bridge, river side please, apart from the cigarette count...yep my folks. This is London executive life as you imagine it comfortably dipping your croissant into your coffee in Paris.
Food and coffeine to go on your doorstep, young attractive men in suits, Marks and Spencer packaged shiny lunch meal deals and the view on the Gherkin.


Luckily for me, I have managed to find a way of escape in Bermondsey. Never thought much of it to be honest, but going down that tunnel road under the 20 platforms of London Bridge (16 to be precise, platform 1 goes to Cannon street and platform 16 to North Dulwich, all the rest is bugger off to Kent !)was one big bright survival spark I had.

All you need to go is follow down Bermondsey street and a bit like the Channel tunnel the end of it means a complete different world (depending on which side you're travelling to that is). DYI architect studios, independent pubs, greasy off licences and even an ex Milan neighbour of mine selling proper Italian foccacie on Long Lane.
Pfew, I can sleep tight now, I've escaped big cororate world once more !

How does a Bridget Jones office look like then ?
Here we go.....




















Soundtrack for my new executive life : Hard-fi / Stars of CCTV

Douce France

Radio Nostalgie n'existe pas à Londres, ni le 14 juillet, ni le tour de France.
Un point commun ?

En attendant, la gare du Nord me semble de plus en plus belle en attendant mon Eurostar de 08:07 le lundi matin. Vue de Londres, c'est une parisienne bien roulée.

Parisiens et parisiennes qui investissent les quais de Seine à coup de camembert, baguette et vin de table, le tout empaqueté dans le sac du Franprix du coin pour un pique nique de juillet improvisé. Qu'il s'agisse de Hyde Park, Clapham Common ou bien Hampstead Heath, le Londonien lui préfèrera une bouteille de champagne et un paquet de fraises Marks & Spencer. De deux pourtant c'est bien au parisien que les clichés attribuent l'élégance.

Je revendique donc que l'élégance a des plaisirs simples.


Soundtrack for this afternoon : anything on 92,1 FM, Paris

Watch your back Darling !

After spending my last holiday between Berlin and Rome (I did feel kind of a Continental Queen then) , coming back to the big smoke was not as traumatic as what I expected.

I did of course have the occasional I'm lost in Catford Bridge, it's 4am, where is the nearest police station sweaty dreams. I did of course reach my South London home at 2 am because Easy Jet and Gatwick express can never be a win win combination. Add a bit of sunshine and you have a happy frog in London.

Am I madly in love ? Not even.
Was a padded enveloppe waiting on my desk filled with several zeros notes ? That came right after the Catford bridge episode in my dreams you see.
Have all routemaster bus drivers been replaced by well educated-friendly-non ex jailee recruited brand new TFL officers ? I would not even dare dream of that, not even on holiday.

It's the builders.
Sorry ?
Yes the London builders. When I go for my daily lunch stride around the block in Belgravia, the builders they say hi and they smile at me.
OK I'm not naive, but still this is a glimpse of humanity to me !

"Watch your back Darling" they said, as a Jag' nearly tried to run me over.

Watch your back, maybe this is what they should have told the 15 people they laid off in my company last friday, except noone would have bothered to add "Darling".

sountrack tonight : Nouvelle vague -"Bande à part"

Executive bullies

When reading the Idler column in the Weekend Guardian on Saturday, I really wonder who can still trully believe work means emancipation and "being a grown up".
If you carefully read through the lines, we've all had enough but are too polite and tied up to our several zeros salaries to speak up and bugger off from it all.

This morning, as I had just touched my precious Oyster card (£99 only !) on the gates at London Victoria station, I bumped into my flatmate. She was livid. Had walked around the block 10 times before realising that she could not make one more day at work.
She just could not. I don't know if she will tomorrow but what I know for sure is that I certainly did not have an enlightening day at work, which means I haven't even been able to make it up for it.

Even worse, I came home with virgin island and freelancing in south of France plans.
Helpful. Very.

The truth is I believe I am good at my job, I even like most of it, despite ever changing weather clients. But compulsory appraisals processes and managers under pressure make you believe you are
#not good enough and never will be despite trying hard
#good enough but have no recognition (despite trying hard then again)
#nor good nor bad since no one cares (at this stage better not try hard any longer)

It sounds to me we have all become executive bullies.
Sad thing is that robots or aliens still don't rule the world yet, so no excuses really as we are inflicting this executive pain to ourselves !

Maybe if each of us got stuck in a lift for 3 hours with our boss (precisely the one always saying no to each idea we submit) in a career's time and discovered that we both got sent off school for chewing noisy bubble gums in biology class in 5th grade, then work would be more of a human place ?
It woul at least look less like one big elementary school playground.

Soundtrack for this evening : Chostakovitch, Piano concerto Nr 2