East End Revisited

Well I woke up Sunday morning,
With no way to hold my head that didn't hurt.
And the beer I had for breakfast wasn't bad,
So I had one more for dessert.
Then I fumbled through my closet for my clothes,
And found my cleanest dirty shirt.
An' I shaved my face and combed my hair,
An' stumbled down the stairs to meet the day. (Kris Kristofferson--Sunday Morning Comming Down)

Maybe it's the homesickness, possibly its the hangover, maybe it's the gind of commuting, and likely it's the pressure of producing 2000 words a day, but I've been here three weeks and hit a funk. So after hitting the sunday markets for some fresh berries and a new, certainly not stolen 3 pound copy of War and Peace (did you read about the quews?), I found myself pounding on the pub door at 1055 hoping that just this once, they'd open the door 5 minutes early so a bloke could get a drink.

The crazy thing about east end pubs (maybe others but I'm not there in the mornings) is that you can be the first guy to walk in and still manage to stand in line for a beer. I don't know what to say ("Forget about it Jake, it's Chinatown"). Once I get my beer (a slightly off brown ale but still good) I managed to choke out a few words of academic merit on my paper when I'm greeted with a Loretta Lynn classic from the jukebox. Call it some sort of hyper-post modernity induced mania (or remeberence of Jake and Elwood singing the very same song at Bob's Country Bunker), but I start lauging histerically. Why, in the world does depression always occur with country music? Next up was some Johnny Cash, and I'm pretty sure Hank WIlliams III followed. I'm in a filty east london bar worried about the tear in my beer (also the dead fly on the glass), when in fact, I'm listening to a Tear in My Beer. Poetic Justice.

Besides work, the last three days are fuzzy. I've put my stamp on a new tread mill at the gym and hope to have it broken by Guy Fox Day (I really have no idea when that is, maybe around Halloween), and on Saturday night, I found myself at the lamest houseparty (7 dudes 1 chick) drinking some sort of mystrey liqour (it was the equivilant of grain alcohol but distilled from grape seeds--grappa?) that after the first sip gave a local aneasthetic quality to the roof of my mouth. It was quite good, and kinda fun--the drink; my mouht's never been numb like that except with novacain. It's never a good party when the sausage ratio goes up by 75% with your arival and the total party attendance 60%. Needless to say I left pretty quickly and went to East London's equivalant of the Hawk, and proceeded to discover exactly how much beer it would take to make the night better (6 pints).

I think I've lived here long enough for both the bewilderment and novelty to wear off and am able to see the truly seamy side of London. The open drug deals, they guy selling a complete car stereo system four blocks away from another guy filing a police report about someone breaking into his car and swiping his system, the fact that I can score some rock, a hooker and make an off liscence better easier than it takes for me to run down to the newstand for some beer (and I can see the news stand from my window). Don't take this as a rant; I set out to learn the bloody bare knuckle truth about London, and this is about as real as it gets, all the grit of the Big Easy, without the swamp (oddly enough the city is more or less located on the flood plane of the Thames, and much of the surrounding lands are quite boggy--they call 'em "heaths" here).

Funny bit of local news, squirrels in Brixton (you know You can crush us, you can bruise us, but you'll have to answer to, oh oh, the guns of Brixton), are found to be addicted to crack. Aprarantly, they are getting into drug deallers' stashes hidden in parks. Ahh, London.