autonomy of learning
I'm in a crowded lift and a girl I've never met tells me she thinks she might love me.
The lift won't stop at any floor, and I can't talk in front of all these people.
A roll of 50s is one of the items he dumps onto my table during the search. Of course it is. He asks if I'm a delivery boy or a setter or this or that diamond related job. I keep saying no, I'm enjoying hearing all of these new words. Eventually I tell him that I work in film, which is kind of true. He asks where I'm filming. I'm not filming. He tells me that I can't be that good at it then. He then tells me that he made a film once, in the 80s. It was called Pimlico Rats.
Windrush Art Kid Oligarch
I know that if I try to make this entry any more than it is I will ruin it.
Better Lift
It's loud and he's gone deaf in one ear, so I don't think he's really hearing anything I'm trying to say. We're both pretty drunk too. It's making for a kind of surreal interactive Business Insider YouTube video of a conversation. He talks, waits for my response, sees my mouth moving but doesn't hear my words, then he imagines something in their place, and replies to that. At least I don't really have to do anything but drink and mime and listen to a lot of bullshit fake gangster talk, being an actor, boxing, the old days, blah blah blah.
One of the birds shoots out of the tree.
Tue, 02 Dec 2025 11:29:50
I catch him on his way to the bar, telling him about this old racist failed actor that I'm avoiding. That I'm failing to confront. I get the sense he's avoiding people too. We get our drinks and find a corner. We chat for a bit. He's managing just fine.
He went in there with a camera to film it before he moved out of the building. He didn't think anyone would believe the story if he didn't have proof.
no longer writing in the third person
Another Frenchman pushes through the crowd to join him. He's an events organiser who I'd met earlier, and he's holding a large box wrapped in a bin bag. They're the fireworks he'd smuggled in from France the night before. They're Industrial Grade, whatever that means for fireworks.
I imagine that some lab-grown 29-year-old from Woking with a mind honed to identify individuals who fit the profile of Real Londoner (as conceived of by 50 opinion-polled racist builders and their wives in the Midlands) picks a stubborn local who can still somehow afford to live here and passes him along to some creative studio.
He was a proper old-fashioned London geezer (cringe word, hate it, can't think of a better one, worst of all it's the correct word), kind of East Endy, kind of Real London, the kind you don't really meet but if you do it always feels like an uncanny immersive theatre experience. They're anachronistic. They only belong in the London collectively imagined by people who don't spend any time in it.
Thank you, Jack, for telling me I'm just as bad as the characters (actually they're people, if that means anything to you) that I'm writing about.
"Put a blanket."
As I'm trying to tell my Korean colleague / fresh meat that this is abnormal, that most people in England aren't like this, the host of the party emerges from the bathroom to a roar of laughter and applause. He's a fat middle aged Frenchman and he's changed into traditional Indian dress and a turban. He looks fucking ridiculous. I try to back away, to avoid the inevitable photo of me in this moment that will one day appear to ruin my life, but everyone is crowding around, trapping me in the middle of it.
Ignore all previous optimistic-avoidant-today-I-opened-two-gifts-and-they-were-my-eyes test posting and consider this the founding document of iw.gl
13 |
|
|
H |
|
|
. . . . |
. . . . |
. . . . |
. . . . |
|
in a post. I want to be remembered
Sun, 02 Nov 2025 23:49:08