Back again already

Updating, I was hardly awake when I posted the last entry (don't even ask), but now I am maybe more will enter my mind. I'd never thought of deliberately marketing my sites but after seeing a journalist push her youtubes to get all over the web I am going to have to push this site a bit as blogging ought not to die, maybe evolve but not disappear into a rump of geeks with little else to do.
Breaking my rule again, I'll probably do photos in Hampstead Garden Suburb tomorrow while I mop up the final week of light before the clocks go back. Then Hendon and that's about it for a while. If I don't shoot me, but I will the next time I go out. Things have become banal, this time through no fault of my own. With the best intentions in the world things have totally dried up. If there was the equivalent of a vaginal lubricant for life I'd go and buy some tomorrow and squirt it all over mine. If I'm not careful at this rate it'll start cracking soon as well, and maybe even get thrush. Well, I've had more infections in the last 12 months than since I was at school, proves I wasn't making it up, but no consolation either way. Maybe the lube should also be medicated as well...

Anyway, something internal or external needs to shake things up soon or I may die of boredom. Technically it's hardly a surprise, living alone, friends deserted and no job. Asking for trouble. And barely within my control, just like the weather. Friend and female forecast. Sod all for months. Easy to predict nowadays. Even all but a few people on the bloody internet, my final refuge of civilised people is drying up as people seem to actually find better things to do. Friends Reunited is OK for curiosity value but hardly a route to social life for those who lost it round about the time they left said schools. Especially with people now in Singapore and fucking New Zealand. I get homesick in Borough High Street for christ's sake, these guys cross the whole planet to live? Cats and dogs again, we each have a preference for home or away, and I'm one for home. The older I get the more content I am in my circle. I always say it may be boring but it's my boring. Having lived around the North Circular nearly all my 46 years although many other areas are nice enough to move to with imaginary wife, if not I have to stick to my patch, I know it pretty bloody well by now. I follow the map in my head to work out where to take photos, aim for places I know and take more on the way in new spots. But I can visualise half the map now in my head after so long.

There's no doubt there are special places and awful ones, I live in a special one I managed to afford, confirmed by so many visitors who compliment both the area and the house inside I know it's not just my opinion. Conversely many others agree Camden Town, Peckham, New Cross, Holloway, Wood Green, Tottenham and many more shitholes are the most oppressive, crowded and depressing areas on earth, all crammed into a circle of 10 miles diameter. Then (as a fellow blogger pointed out some time back) you walk a mile from them and find Highgate, Hampstead Garden Suburb, Regents Park and Primrose Hill. Each duff area is often next to the best, except in the case of Tottenham and Walthamstow. They remain in what used to be West Essex, possibly the nearest place on earth to a preview of hell there is. I've travelled the length and breadth of much of England, and though a few stars like Taunton, Bristol, parts of Manchester and Liverpool, Littlehampton, Poole (if you know where to look), Portslade, Plymouth (the old bits) and Portsmouth have small versions (yes I have a bloody good memory), none can ever compare with a ten plus mile slick of shit from Holloway in the west to Upminster in the east without a break. I had to do that journey as far as Ilford till my grandma died in 1975 and there is not a good word to say for one E postcode. Ilford, East Ham, Forest Gate, Bow, Hackney, I honestly felt like I'd died passing through the endless Victorian terraces punctuated by 60s council estates which go on as far as the eye can see, besides the (now disused) factories. All spawned by the dockland industry to the south, but again, all over long ago. Like a huge dinosaur's litter tray, dropping hundreds of years of brick-built faeces across the whole of East London never to decay or be removed but frozen in stone for eternity.

But the point is I live in what was Middlesex and until the 30s all but Harrow and Southall were nearly all fields. We may have the largest spread of almost identical 3 bedroom semis but it's harmless in Kenton. And Preston Road has a very nice totally isolated shopping parade, only spoilt by the recent arrival of parking restrictions. If anyone wanted a TV or book series on North London, they know where to come.