(no subject)
I moved to London to find a job, or at least to try and think of something to do. For the longest time I have just been dossing around; temping, going out all the time, running. All the money I make is spent on rent and tube tickets - Karol cooks enough for everybody and doesn't ask for anything in return but I know there is really no point in carrying on like this, in this routine, without any progress. I tell my parents that I earn at least twice what I actually do and I think constantly about going away, to Spain or Brazil or Peru or Berlin. Everybody wishes for that though, don't they? Nobody actually wants to get on the tube and go to work every day.
Dad takes me back to the flat, up through Blackheath, Lewisham, Elephant and Castle. Karol has gone to James' mum's in East Ham for Christmas and for some reason I imagine them eating rabbit stew, watching really bad Christmas TV and Karol reading the bible. I imagine it to look like Van Gogh's Potato Eaters, a modern version, I don't know why. Dad goes over to the Halal grocer and I put on the Stone Roses because it's all I ever listen to now. The girl with the gold earrings bangs on the wall, I can see her earrings in my head, bold and yellow and glittering strangely.
We decide to go and see Holbein one last time and I show Dad the drawing of the unidentified man. I've tried for the past hour to find a picture of him online, I want to be able to look at his face and know that he is here with me. Dad is wearing ochre cords and a blue sweater and even though the rooms are crowded, I find him in all his colourful clothes. Afterwards we get the tube up to Hampstead and sit in Louis' until it gets dark, sharing a marzipan moon. Dad's New Year's resolution is to stop shouting at people in the car, stop shouting at the TV, the same as last year. I don't know what mine is, he says I should stop being so hard on myself.
I buy a Standard and we walk past the fat man who rants in the street, down under the trees and into the painted church. You're so hard on yourself, he says.
Dad takes me back to the flat, up through Blackheath, Lewisham, Elephant and Castle. Karol has gone to James' mum's in East Ham for Christmas and for some reason I imagine them eating rabbit stew, watching really bad Christmas TV and Karol reading the bible. I imagine it to look like Van Gogh's Potato Eaters, a modern version, I don't know why. Dad goes over to the Halal grocer and I put on the Stone Roses because it's all I ever listen to now. The girl with the gold earrings bangs on the wall, I can see her earrings in my head, bold and yellow and glittering strangely.
We decide to go and see Holbein one last time and I show Dad the drawing of the unidentified man. I've tried for the past hour to find a picture of him online, I want to be able to look at his face and know that he is here with me. Dad is wearing ochre cords and a blue sweater and even though the rooms are crowded, I find him in all his colourful clothes. Afterwards we get the tube up to Hampstead and sit in Louis' until it gets dark, sharing a marzipan moon. Dad's New Year's resolution is to stop shouting at people in the car, stop shouting at the TV, the same as last year. I don't know what mine is, he says I should stop being so hard on myself.
I buy a Standard and we walk past the fat man who rants in the street, down under the trees and into the painted church. You're so hard on yourself, he says.