Culture
Gustav
My friend Gustav has made La Fourmi Café (The Ant Café) his own enclave. He is potent and distinct like the smell of a squashed bull-ant: Sisters of Mercy balding black frizz, leopard print crotch, rainbow Indian jewellery, homemade black pointed high heels. › Continue reading
A Newly Relocated Londoner’s Guide To Oxford High Street.
Essentials:
- Mobile Phone. And a cheap as shit London sim card, which probably takes about 2 minutes to organise.
- Bottle of water.
- Visa Debit Card. And your passport incase the sales assistants don’t believe you could own your own debit card.
- London A-Z (tube map is included).
- Starbucks Venti Chai Tea Latte. Wet, on soya milk.
- An understanding that the concept of personal space is practically eradicated from your physiological predisposition.
Seventeen Crushes (Paris)
The romanticism of Paris spreads like an invasive exotic: what surprises you most is its subtlety.
Paris is a human city. Urine stains the walls. The weather leaves a lasting dampness. Women are natural, perpetually un-kept hair and minimal make-up. Paris Fashion Week to them is a fucking circus. The people are stare-bears, eyes averting as soon as you catch them. The symmetry of spatial design is as equally stiffly conservative, the corduroy straight lines and the manicured gardens. Everything is glazed over in repetition…but then the crush begins.
Relocation, Relocation, Relocation
I suppose it’s something that few independent 20-somethings consider, let alone explore; the fine art of reducing the collective possessions of their adolescent years down to the one or two large suitcases, on their last legs (due to relentless bashing from airport luggage handlers). Many verbalise their experiences and adventures in witty blogs and obsequious emails to the family. The psychological repercussions of moving to another country, though, are hardly something one can express through Microsoft Word. And contrary to popular belief, the move itself is not nearly as easy as it looks. “Have I made the right decision?” “Why is it that I made this decision now?” “How long are people betting I’ll last?” These are three of approximately twenty-nine thousand questions that have been circling through my head since ricocheting myself all over the greater states of America and landing firmly in London proper. So, how does one survive the distant and unknown territories?