I have a friend who is incredibly astute.
“That’s the problem with being female in a big city,” she said recently. “You’re always either hunting for an apartment, a job, or a guy”.
Living in London is like living in the worst video game ever. You can’t pause, you don’t get a second chance, and you never die. Just you, and eight million other freaks, aimlessly wandering this damp shitfest of a conurbation, where the default setting is autonomic hyperactivity so high, there’s no way a discreet smile can be interpreted as anything other than life-menacing.
I didn’t realise they decorate the hamster wheel of compartmental destitution for Christmas. They do. In the really fucked up way that makes a rodent really excited, because the bars of his cage got a fresh lick of paint. Hey! You! Don’t be hoodwinked into toying with notions that your pathetic existence is meaningless and vapid. Look at all the things we have to offer! You can pay for your ride through tunnels of dust contactlessly. You get nectar points. Everything you drink is about to taste a hundred times better, because WE JUST STARTED POURING STUFF INTO CUPS THAT ARE RED!
The world also just got infinitely more exciting because Samsung have brought out a “notebook” that spontaneously combusts as its way of telling you it’s fully charged. I can’t sue for identity theft here, but dude.
I’m a writer.
We have two tools we can exclusively call our own. Notebooks and pens. We’ve been around for thousands of years. Ten minutes, you’ve been on the scene, and you’ve already violated the very elements that constitute us. Just behind “photographer”, everyone is (of course) now also a “writer”. I see them, polluting my headspace with their toffee nut proletariat, while I cling mercilessly on to my one remaining pleasure. Writing on 22×7 squared Clairefontaine notebooks with a brushed vellum paper weight of 90g/m².
Now I’m both angry and sad, because the fancy pink grapefruit I bought to cheer myself up was rubbish, and the £500 Waitrose are promising I can win in return for feedback is a sad lie. My postcode is too bourgeois.
rebeccacukier 