I’m so lucky lucky lucky

[millionreasons]

Thursday, Jo and I went to yoga-for-old-people at the Gillespie Park Ecology Centre. Even with my sciatic nerve/piriformis muscle intimacy issue, we were by far the flexiblest people there. Afterwards we went to the Dairy to beat DJ’s team in the quiz but still came 5^th, but what’s a bit of schadenfreude between friends?  David and I walked back down Blackstock road in the bustling Ramadan evening.

Saturday, we went to the Serpentine Gallery to look at the big balloon, but it was a little disappointing and so we went into the gallery itself to see some Uncertain States of America. There was a life-size statuette of a naked man spray-painted silver as if he were a performance artiste from Covent Garden. There was a Jacuzzi in a rubber keyless grand piano. There was a neon and plastic snow scene like an ultra-camp shopping centre Christmas display and there were three inkblot paintings to focus on and then have the picture imprinted on your eyelid forever – well, for the next minute and a half anyway. We watched a video of women making dough in mechanical close confines. The film just looped around, over and over until you don’t know where work starts or ends, if ever.

Afterwards, we walked through Hyde Park to Edgware Road for a deelishus lunch in Beirut Express. Hyde Park has some beautiful spots where you could almost forget that you’re a minute away from Oxford St, but like the 19^th century Londoners who reclaimed land from the Fleet and the Thames, I think it’s time for us non-drivers to reclaim the parks from the cars. Richmond, Regent’s and Hyde Parks do not need roads running through them, spreading their noise and dirt.

Sunday afternoon, I meet David, Jo, Heike and Björn in the Albion, picking roast potatoes off of David’s dinner and slurping down sloe gin. We decamp to the newly refurbished Highbury Barn: all brown leatherette sofas, chunky candles and cute-waiter service. Highbury Claire & John, Allan, and Alice and Steve come by. Allan has bought a game-less PSP which has a translation feature so we take it in turns to practice our Japanese, French and English - Björn gets the first ‘A’ on the latter.

Lounging there, I feel so utterly privileged to be living here, to be able to invite friends who live less than half a mile away as if we were in a village. My wage may be half of the national average, my piriformis may be fucked, we may never live somewhere that’s not damp, I may carry around things from childhood that I should have long since discarded, I may never be famous or even appreciated and the Bad Months are coming, but I can laze around on sofas with me mates, feeling happy-not-guilty, talking to an electronic mockney penguin, until it’s home-time.