CH3 CH2 OH

That’s ethanol, or ethylic alcohol, for all you non-nerds out there. The stuff that hangovers are made of. Guess what I am about to do today…

Today I plan to get drunk. Like I’ve not done in a while. You can find me at the North Cote Festival, in Battersea, listening to jazz and getting pissed. I don’t care about Belfast today, I don’t care how stupid most of the people in all of the newsrooms in all this stinking world are, I don’t care that it’s about to rain in London (what a surprise). I will erase my memory today, do don’t try and remind me that you even exist. Please.

I don’t want to hear police sirens today, I’m sick of them. And ambulances that rush to give someone an aspirin. And if a postman comes my way, he’s toast. I refuse to speak today to anyone that doesn’t have a perfect British accent and does not speak the official language of this country flawlessly.

I won’t call my bank today, I am sick and tired of trying to understand what the operator could be saying in an approximate English about the money in my account – and doing so at a safe distance, in Bangladesh.

I won’t order any junk food – I’ve had tons since I came to London. Chinese, Indian, Turkish, Italian and English – I am now the proud owner of an international and multicultural layer of fat. I will try to ignore the big smelly colourful shops that advertise their Punjabi, Sri Lanka, Polish, Russian and Lebanese cuisine.

I won’t pay any attention to the signs that prompt me where to look when I cross the street and to only do so when the obvious street light turns green. I will turn my back on the repair sites in the middle of the road surrounded by high visibility signs announcing “Works In Progress”, though no workers are on them. And if I see another London fireman wearing a “Be Safe – Be Sound!” T-shirt today, I’ll probably start a fire.

I won’t start the camera today. There’s plenty cameras running all the times in all the wrong places in London. And I’m just as sick of people coming over to me asking what am I shooting – I don’t go around asking cops who are they arresting, I don’t bug chefs to tell me what ingredients are they using, I don’t ask the postman what’s in the letters that he delivers, I don’t go up to bartenders and ask them whether they spit in my pint or not. So today I’ll take a break.

I don’t want to see any Romanians today. At least not the type that clean carpets or toilets for minimum wage, but tell the folks back home they’re some sort of managers in a posh company. Not those who eat “value pack beans” at 20p a can for a week just to save enough money to spend on the Gipsy manele band in a Romanian restaurant in London. Not those who save every single penny for 3 years and then blow it on a BMW. Not those who’ve seen only Wembley, Kingsbury, Colindale, Burnt Oak and Stratford and think they’ve seen London. And most of all not those who can’t ask at least what the time is in English.

So, unless you want to bring some joy to this day, don’t call me, please. Today’s exactly a year since I came to London. And I must say I don’t like it as much as I did on June the 19th 2008. I will binge drink and defy smoking bans, listen to jazz or to Russian music on my Ipod if there’s no one around to talk to. And by the time the day is over, I will try to figure out what to do for my next trick.

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