London, the beginning.

Ok, so I’m Jelly – I’m not a foodstuff, I’m a person (and if I were a foodstuff I’d be the big bowl of wobbly red stuff – red flavour wins, yellow flavour loses – not jam. Jam is jam, not jelly.)

I’m not a Londoner. Actually, I am, I work in London and I live in London, I suspect that makes me a Londoner, and I’m as much of one as the majority of people I see or speak to every day. The thing is, as well as being a ‘Londoner’ I’m still a Northerner – I’m from reet oop North, and I’m pretty blunt and no nonsense because of it. Being pretty blunt and no nonsense I walk around London and I see a lot of things which nobody bats an eyelid at that stand out to me as being a little odd. More than a little in some cases.

London has a rep – it’s marked out, by the uninitiated, as cold, hard and dirty. London is none of those things, and all of those things. It’s a city with a pulse you can feel through your feet whilst you walk its streets. It’s a city that sings along with you and dances you through its varied days and microcosms. If you want life, full and all consuming, London is it.

So this is the blog of the outsider becoming a Londoner. Of me starting out and the things that I see whilst I find my way.

I’ve developed a way of photographing my favourite randomness every day – if you spot yourself or someone you know let me know, that would make it way more exciting. In the meantime the pictures go up, uncensored.

Love, and all that jazz

Jelly

I saw this guy on the tube and was enchanted by the sheer amount he’d rolled those trousers up; not only had he done that, displaying his bright blue socks in all their glory, he’d matched his tie to his socks. City men you see, that little extra effort, and all the more elegant because of it – take note.

Ok, so he did have two legs in reality – but that would never have made as good a photo – he had one leg propped so far up on his knee that it took me a while to work out what was going on – and I’d already been wondering how he made it up and down onto the tube and, as I mentioned, this made a much better photo…

I like this guy. I liked that he was asleep on a bench on his lunch break. I liked that he was asleep on a bench in a suit. I liked that he had one hand casually draped over his briefcase, keeping guard, ensuring that no passer by could snatch it. I like that two hours after I entered the museum, when I came back out, he was in the exact same position and no doubt very late back from his lunch break…bliss.

The Robot Girl. I saw this girl when I got on the tube. I had quite a long ride on the one line, which usually means that everyone gets off in a couple of stops and you can grab a seat and a left over copy of the metro to read (Paris Hilton, Li-Lo and sex and the city, over and over again like some kind of mindless slebslaw mobious warp) but she stayed right until I got off. Perhaps not that odd in itself but I watched her the whole time and I didn’t see her move, even to blink. I’m not even sure she was breathing, she just stayed, frozen. She is Tube Robot.

Everyone I know up north who’s visited London tells you the same thing; they’re rude, they’re silent, they’re unfriendly, they’re cold. They’re wrong. If you smile, they smile back – just like real live people, who’d have thunk it? I could hear these two from the platform, and I was thrilled to get a seat right opposite them – I have no idea what they were talking about but I couldn’t help but grin along at their roaring laughter and obvious delight – kept me going for the rest of the day, and this picture has me smiling every time I look at it.
Happy London.