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…

Some weeks ago, I decided to try one of those websites which deliver a box with organic vegetables and fruits directly to your door. My advice? Do not do that.

The courier completely ignored my selected delivery slot, coming 30 minutes before the slot began. He called me while I was shopping in a shop nearby. Told him: could you please wait? I’m there in 5 minutes!

I was there in just 3 minutes instead. But for reasons which I still haven’t found, he chose to drop the box in the first door of my street (which is not where I live, by the way) and disappear from the map. I called him and he reassured me he had left the box in my door. I began to suspect the worst and then went door by door until I found my box, with my name, telephone number, e-mail and everything else on top of it, as well as the fruits and vegetables, readily available to anyone which wished to pick one.

I picked the box and went to my real door while mentally cursing somebody’s name, and proceeded to check the contents of the box. Again, while they may have been organically grown, some of them came from places like Holland and Italy, whereas the website insisted that nothing in their produce had been airfreighted.

The peaches tasted specially as if they had spent a good whole week in a fridge, ripening there. Why do I always choose peaches to speak about this? They are a good indicator of quality and care. When things are truly authentic, you can tell just by smelling the fruit.

So I sent them an e-mail detailing the ability of their courier to act as a stupid, and got not one but three phone calls the next day, excusing themselves with absurd reasonings: – he tried to deliver early because you live near the market… – it’s the first time he does it – maybe it’s a hard to find street

Funny to say that even pizzas come directly to my door, with no need for me to give step-by-step instructions on how to find a street in bloody central London, as the customer service girl was suggesting I should do next time I order with them. After that she proceeded to try to convince me to set up a weekly order which is something that obviously I didn’t want to do. I said no thanks, let me check this order properly first, and I said that like three times, because she insisted a lot. Aaaah!

And this past Saturday I passed near a little street market and decided to give it a try. And hey, false-organic-traders, you can save your stuff for yourselves. Those were peaches, and what about the cherries! All of that for a ridiculous price, and no hassle at all. I have the strong feeling that the peaches came from Spain (with the horrible weather that we’ve had these past months it’s impossible to get such a sweet flavour in UK), but I don’t care too much because there wasn’t any poster pompously announcing that the street market hadn’t airfreighted their produce.

So if you want to buy good fruits and vegetables in London, go to a market. I still have to check Borough market which they say has the best organic stuff in London. So I’ll let you know!

Did I tell you that I managed to buy one Wii Nunchuck on Saturday? While everybody else was thinking on Le Grand Depart of Le tour de La France I was punching furiously my rival until beating him not one but four times I believe.

In the future, should you need to address me, please do it with Boxing queen as title.