If you read my previous post you may be still wondering what did I do. I finally ordered the pack online and two days after got the books delivered to my door. I began reading the first volume yesterday (on the tube, as the instructions specified).

It is very enjoyable and has everything someone like me likes: references to places in London, references as to how the places were some years before, mystery and a bit of horror. I still haven’t gone past the first story but it has almost made me forget I was in the tube and had to alight in the next station!

Highly recommended.

I am an avid reader of horror stories. Don’t ask me why but I like when the writers manage to build a tense atmosphere, piece by piece and suddenly AAAAHH!!!!!! they break it! and you get a chill going up your spine. Bram Stoker is a master in this. Speaking of whom, his Dracula’s Guest short stories collection is an excellent example, and very good for travelling in the tube. I downloaded it from Project Gutenberg and put it into my ipod for reading during my daily commute (really!).

Now I just found about something called One eye grey which is described as tales of folklore and horror stories from another London and also a collaborative effort bringing together people who fancied creating something chilling and pocket sized to read on the tube. It can’t be better!

I’m unsure about visiting a bookshop for having a look or buying them directly online. If I go to the shop I’ll probably end up with a couple more of books and I still have a lot more to read!

I’m hopeless with books :-)

Note: found it via the excellent Londonist

Next September it will be three years since I moved to London, and I still get a bit confused when I look at a London map :-D

I used to live at places where you either lived above or below the river, and saying I live above the river was the same as saying you’re place is below mine. But with all the curves and near loops the Thames describes, it’s impossible to absolutely determine if a given location is where you expect it to be.

Add to it some big parks in the middle, a couple of motorway like lanes which can’t be crossed unless you’re riding some kind of vehicle (like that horribly unpleasant Euston Road) and street layouts trying to avoid any square angle at all the times and you have a very confused me in the scene.

And what apparently looks like far away is actually quite near, such as Camden and Baker Street, yet one thinks of Camden as being way up north, but its prefix is simply NW1. Kilburn looks nearer, but its even more up north than Camden. Notting Hill looks nearer as well but it’s farther than you would expect; Bayswater road linearity is very misleading and what takes 4 minutes in a bus may take you 20 minutes of good, fast paced walking. Marble Arch and Lancaster Gate are left behind and you’re sweating and feeling the strong smell of Hyde Park’s recently cut grass deep inside your nose, and can’t see the moment when you reach Notting Hill Gate.

Even more, once you get used to non-linear streets and avenues, it somehow feels disturbing to be walking for a long time in a straight line, such as Whitehall. How come we are walking more than 25 meters without a single turn either left or right?, one wonders. Big straight avenues such as Vauxhall Bridge Road seem suspiciously European and mainstream, pretty much like taken out of context. And instead of walking all the way up Victoria Street, with its gray and boring institutional buildings, one ends up finding an alternative and erratic path in the side streets with its arch-describing shapes, intersecting one with another, which might be slower but be more entertaining.

I had a horrible nightmare where I spent uncountable hours queuing for I still don’t know what, and at the end of the queue, when I thought it was the time for getting what I was looking for, they said: No more tickets for today

And worst of all, it happened three times!

The first two queues were in a posh place. It reminded me to a shopping centre near here (Victoria Cardinal place) which has lots of glassy walls. The offices had comfy and superposh leather sofas and even posher and refined receptionists. Even though, when reaching the final desk I was always told the fastidious No more tickets, come back tomorrow earlier and try again (with a posh accent, of course).

I was specially angry at this situation because it looked like what they had to do was really easy to get done and they spent more time giving me excuses than doing the work instead.

The third queue was way more horrible. It happened in a very old building, almost derelict, with the wallpaper falling apart wherever you looked at, old furniture and a very small number of clerks working there, for a queue which consisted in four long rows of people. Best of all was that I was sitting in a small chair, like those used for children in school, and whenever the queue advanced, I stood up and pushed the small chair forward with my foot. This produced a very disgusting screech which apparently only I could distinguish amongst the cacophony created by so many people speaking at the same time and complaining about the queue.

I don’t know what happened at the end of this queue. Luckily I woke up before having to come back next day to that derelict place!

Aunque la pregunta sería: ¿entiendes castellano, hijo de puta? O si no, que me expliquen el conjunto de mensaje y firma:

Absurdo es poco…