Woah, I was a total klutz. I went to on the wrong bit of the Northern Line, and then found out I was just in the wrong damn area and needed to get to Hackney. I made it, pausing only to buy a Double Decker, and found the round church (note: not the round house) where I saw Alan Moore and Stewart Lee say smart things.
I did watercolour drawings. Some cool kids mocked me. They were fairly on the money; my indoor watercolours are pretty sucky. But I got too into it and missed my train. I ended up catching a night bus (so exotic!) where a crazy person stared at me (so London!).
And when I say “kids”, I mean young whippersnappers in their early twenties, all London-cool and confident. In a better world, you could picture me saying “What’s that, kiddo? My use of watercolour is an outdated medium that doesn’t really relate to this environment? Really? Well fuck you. I would have got away with it, if it wasn’t for you pesky meddling twats.”
wow nice Pete
xx
You might also have them hung, drawn and quartered by… shoe laces, the might of the righteous and… a brush. And that would work.
London has not been cool since the Romans left and even then it was a bit shit.
Predictably, I like the watercolours.
Not cool since the Romans? What? I think the original bad-ass hipsters of the Royal Society would have been an amazingly cool bunch of guys to hang out with. Such dudes like Hooke and Halley (who you might think of as a weedy star-gazer, but was actually a captain in the Navy on his own specially-adapted spying-and-stargazing ship, AND was on first name terms with the Tzar of Russia, Peter the Great). It was a time of epic deeds in science.
Thanks for saying you like those watercolours!
Tsk. We’re confusing people, qualities and places. Why would I think of anyone as a weedy star-gazer? Well, ignoring that, it was undeniably a time of epic deeds in science and of course Robert Hooke was an extraordinary man, as was Newton, but I would not have cared one bit for Newton’s mockery of Mr. Hooke, nor his attempts to obliterate record of Hooke’s contributions to science upon which a great deal of his own work was based. And let’s not forget the sycophantic entourages following those perceived as key Royal Society members who would also mock if they saw others doing so. This is the same London-cool you write about in this post. It has been around for a long time. I don’t think that’s cool. Royal Society! As if that would make anyone behave better. :-)
Perhaps I should have said London-cool hasn’t been cool since the Romans left…
Oof, corrected! I apologise for making easy assumptions about your views! And I do agree with your viewpoint on certain types often found in London. However, it’s not like you don’t get them elsewhere…