It has been raining. I am becoming more and more English every day. A little like metamorphosis; not turning into a fly, but maybe a fish, a water-paddler; a duck. The rain swirls and soaks and umbrellas go up like mushrooms around London; wet and slippery and different dulled colours trying to be bright.
In the evenings, it becomes dark, and cold now. It seems the heatwave, occasionally hinted at by sudden unexpected bursts of sunshine in the mornings, was a distant melting dream. Now, the full blast of winter looms with its ice pick-axe; a lean iciness enters the faces of Londoners, their eyes resembling a Munch painting. Inside the salsa club they are still dancing, but now there are less of them, less tourists, the floor thinning out so that for once people can move and only kick eachother accidentally occasionally.
Londoners remind me of desert flowers; bursting into blossom in summer for a brief period of time at first rain, then back again to stark and bare. Only, of course, London is messier. Taxis hurtling around corners looking for lives to kill, red buses chasing them, shop windows gleaming with reflections of car headlamps, pedestrian crossings, their own brightly-lit displays. It gives one the sense of inadequacy; surely, one should be buying everything; if not, what is one's purpose in this place?
Meanwhile, there are hubs of stillness. I start a writing class at the City Lit on Saturday mornings and they are writing about a peaceful haven. There is a South African woman there who writes about the danger of living in Joberg; I, however, write about the fact my purse was stolen yesterday in Oxford Street by very professional theives who unzipped my bag while I was wearing it and took my purse out, whereas not once in seven years in Cape Town was my purse stolen. Sod's law, I think, but then at the time I'm not thinking about Sod's law, I'm thinking life is a sod, and of course, I hate London.
I reported the crime at the police station. A policeman takes my details. Turn off the light, he says to his fellow policeman behind the glass window, that's better, I hate it so bright in here. Our lights stay on, and me and my fellow female friend who had been present at the crime watch his shadowy figure as he writes.
One of the contents of my purse was a UCL alumni library card. Ah, says the policeman, my old college. Oh, I say, what did you study there? Russian history, he says. Fat lot of good that did me. If you had known it would have led to a career in the police, I ask, would you still have studied it? Probably not, he says, and shrugs. Why did you choose Russian history? I ask. It was either that or Chemical Engineering, he says.
Transformed temporarily from uniformed police officer to ex-student with a Russian interest, possibly with communist tendencies, the policeman becomes a human being.When we leave, he says, I can give you a leaflet, we're recruiting right now. We laugh. He was good-looking, wasn't he, says my female friend. I didn't realise until he told me about the Russian history.
In the writing class, however, I hate everyone and everything as the anger emerges. That evening I go dancing and someone steals my salsa fan. The next day I leave my A to Z in a cafe. It has my email in, but no-one calls me. I imagine my belongings being whisked into space and disappearing, it's a bit like sending emails, or something from the Matrix, not being sure whether something will stay real or not. So, when I got home, I took the aspirin pill...
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