London, what's going on in your parks?

Ohhhh, it was a rather glorious day on Wednesday in our fair Capitol. The sun was yellow and high and the sky was a crisp cobalt blue, fading to white down to the horizon. The ladies, large sunglasses and new shorts, the men, ties off and sleeves rolled up, swelling the pavements and laughing noisily on the chairs and benches outside of small, welcoming cafes and exclusive-looking bars, playing Sash or Ultimate Chillout, volumes 3 to 6.

I decided to lunch ('lunch' as a verb; deal with it) in Regent's Park whilst the sun was out; my vitamin D levels cripplingly low and my tan so pale you could see my heart beating through my chest. I put my packet of ham and a Pepsi Max into a small orange bag and I headed off to greens. Everyone along the way was in the best of spirits- more people smiling, laughing; more people walking in groups; more people sitting on curbs and doorways, smiling at text messages; people taking their time smoking, instead of sucking it hungrily down in one, like a hooker on their last customer of the shift.

Regent's Park, you are quite splendid!

Having walked past the ornate fountains and stunning flower beds- petals in colours I didn't even know existed- I found a nice grassy verge to park my derriere, the gradient leaning into the sun so I could get a bit of brown underneath my increasingly bold turkey neck. I rolled up my sleeves a couple of inches (pow pow, gunshow) and popped my clogs off to air out the trotters. Music on: let's start with 'Shuffle' by Bombay Bicycle Club, perhaps lining up 'Bloodbuzz Ohio' by The National afterwards. Yes, marvellous!

Best of all- better than the ham, or the Pepsi Max, or the music, or the smell of my own feet- the other people sharing our space in the park were having a spectacularly nice time, all in their own ways. There were children worrying pigeons, tourists pointing at the BT Tower, couples putting their hands in each other's back pockets and whispering the sweetest nothings, and joggers pausing in front of members of the opposite sex to catch their breath and flex.

My favourite, however, was two middle-aged gentlemen, silver haired and bespectacled, their brogues catching the glare of the sun. They sat on the grass together, pulling out frosty bottles of beer, and jostling eachother as neither had brought a bottle opener. They laughed as they tried to open the bottles with other bottles, pretended to use their teeth, and finally managed it with one of their belts. They looked like quintessential naughty schoolboys. They only needed a slingshot in the back pocket and their ties around their heads. Perhaps kicking a football at a smaller boy or feeding a girl spiders. Sitting there, legs out spread and likely telling each other bawdy jokes, it reminded me how important green spaces are in London and how the grass beneath your feet and the leaves rustling over head and take you away from the grey and the grim and grub and the grime of the Big Smoke's bustle.

London, [apart from the two embarrassingly simple twenty-somethings putting plastic bags over their heads] your parks in the sunshine, full of smiling people- you're doing it right!

London, what else is happening on the tube?

... Hammersmith & City tube line at 8:45am this morning...


... standing in the gangway near the doors...


... small man to the side of me...


... clipping his fucking fingernails! He even had a fucking nailclipper to do it!


London, you're doing it allllll wrong!

One of them could have flown into my mouth...

What's happening on the London Underground?

"Wait a second... just wait... *gulp* ... eurgghhhh... almost... *gulp-wretch-gulp*... Okay, yeh I'm done, let's go" [throws can in bin]

Finishing too much beer, too quickly, before you enter the tube station reeks of adolescence and the easy desperation of a man used to 'seeing it away'. Well, I wasn't going to take it on to the tube, was I? I'm a generally law abiding model citizen and I wouldn't like to make people feel uncomfortable by openly drinking around them. Indeed, I would rather struggle to keep down bubbles and bile outside the station, whilst trying to neck a lukewarm can of Red Stripe, than go against Big Bad Boris and quaff beer on our hallowed rail.

So my partner in crime Ricky and I hit the London Underground on our way to Clapham with beer in our bellies and the underlying groggy nausea one gets from a stomach frothed up to the size of a whale's chin. We made small talk in between moments of me burping eau de lager, my breath peeling the yellow paint from the handrail on the train. I can't remember the exact conversation but for some reason Slough came up and at that exact moment two young fellas jumped on and, without missing a heartbeat, loudly proclaimed: "SLOUGH, WHAT A SHIT-HOLE". Now, this is a bold opening statement in any case. There is not a situation, that I can think of, where loudly proclaiming "SLOUGH, WHAT A SHIT-HOLE" isn't a bold, bold social manouevre. Perhaps made even bolder for the fact that he was wearing a large pair of purple rimmed plastic sunglasses at 9:30pm on a Saturday night, dozens of feet below the surface of the earth.

So, "SLOUGH, WHAT A SHIT-HOLE,"  it could have gone two ways: we could have defended Slough's honour and integrity, taking a stand against the cruel rap it takes as the bum-stain of Britain; or we could have laughed along with them and discussed our experiences with Slough and how there used to be a Quasar there and that the cinema wasn't actually half bad but now the place is a derelict wasteland and that actually that was perhaps unfair as I hadn't been for more than a decade apart from that one time I went to the STI clinic for a check up... We happened the shit out of option two.

These two chaps were each carrying a 2 litre bottle of Coca Cola each and, having wrapped our discussion on what makes Slough a grubby nought, they offered us a drink. I said, rather astutely, "I don't believe that that's just cola, is it?" "Nah mate," he replied, "It's got some fucking JD in there, hasn't it?" Here's me, gut distended from guzzling body temperature lager-swill to make sure I finish it before boarding, and these yoots have their alcohol still to hand and no one is batting an eyelid! Touche, youthoftoday, touche!

I, of course, declined the invitation to drink his more-than-likely-half-saliva/half-cocktail mix and complimented him on his ingenuity. "You don't travel on the tube much, do you mate?" he said, accusingly. Well I almost spluttered out my marmalade right there and then, my posh flusterings indignantly manifesting themselves as haughty huffs-and-puffs and knee slapping...

Fortunately, to save this awkward situation [George vs The Peasantry] the other fella offered me a look through his purple sunglasses; they made all objects look like they were surrounded by a rainbow aura and I thought, this will be a good night.

With your bold conversational openers and jovial tube banter, London... you're doing it right! 

Dreadful. Just awful.