Shanghai

Spent the other weekend in Shanghai, (work related, no fun) and man is it crazy. I wrote the following about 11 years ago when I was last there.

Peace Hotel. Roof. Flag poles atop alabaster stone buildings lining the west bank of the Bund shudder in a November breeze. Not a single piece of cloth snaps. Poles themselves are rusted, paint peeling off like sun burned skin, ropes struggle to free themselves from the charade. In the past each of these building belonged to a different flag. A hidden radio still picks up news of Kuomintang victories and the boxer rebellion.
10:44 am. An eager bell sounds the toll, keen to have the job over with. The clock-tower is underscored by a thin shallow arc of laundry roped between pole and air-vent. Yellow tea-towels. Grey jocks. A pair of stiff brown socks: the unratified flag of humanity.

Up the street, the Shanghai Club is now a Kentucky Fried Chicken. It's grand entrance, once filled with French perfumes, cigar-smoke rolled in Havana, Cognac and Champagne, is awash now in the heady aroma of the Colonel's eleven secret herbs and spices; the unmistakable fizz of Coca-Cola adding life.10:59 am. The clock issues a much more solemn note regarding the full hour. Sad almost in the racket that is Shanghai. A tug replies, mock mournfully, 'Is this what it's come to then?'

Other ferries chatter as they cross the dirty effluvia, towards the concrete apartment karsts rising from the re-educated swamps beyond the river. Much of Shanghai is floating, deaf beneath the torrent of air compressors and pneumatic drills: massive black pylon-drivers pounding foundation holes into the mud; taxi-drivers dead on their horns; grinders and drills and hammers slapping rusty iron rails; bone-dry brake-pads, screeching buses, trucks heavy with coal accelerating between clouds of bell wringing cyclists.

And, believe it or not, bird song, echoing up from the urban ravines.

Sandy walks keenly to the beach, turns at the gate to wave to me eating breakfast, safely out of reach of the guys selling coral necklaces.
His father was a fisherman pulling crayfish from the sea. He reels in pink fleshed Germans with tattoos on their shoulder instead.


The worst part of scuba diving has to be the dying. It is, after all, easy to forget you are under water and not flying in the tree tops. Though a lung or two of brine is a fishy reminder. I have often wondered what you would last think?
Probably that you’d paid too much for that coral necklace, or not enough depending on who you are, and that here at twenty meters, with the entire reef around your neck, it seems colorless by comparison.

Leaving Vancouver

5.50 pm Time on road 6 hours. Almost descending into LAX. 2.5 hours of pressing ass with a fat monster truck afficianado who insists on turning to look out the window which presses his mobile phone, still clearly turned on, into my leg. As I write this he is farting on me, in real time. I can feel it through my trousers which I will now have to burn... Just beyond the horizon of his monster truck t-shirt, and just below the peak of his 'Lock and Load' camouflage hat, I can make out bits of the desert. Think of sitting beside Uranus on a plane. He lifts an empty fruit drink bottle to his lips and spits tobacco slop, completely detroying my reverie.

London

Was in London last week. First thing you want to do when you get there is get yourself an Oyster Card. Far as I can make out, it's a smart card that you top up from time to time. Best part is that it calculates your journeys, so you never end up paying more than the cheapest fare you were entiteld to if you had bought it at the start of the day. So for example, if you would have been better off buying a day pass. And even better, bus journeys are a pound a piece. Be careful though, it is not for use on some Thameslink services despite what a bearded eejit at King's Cross station might tell you. While I'm on the toursit advisory board here, you can pick up a sim card from Carphone Warehouse for ten pounds, so bring your phone.

Other things to do: get yourself a can of Carlsberg Special Brew (or some less plebian equivalent), head into Regent's Park with a good book (eg Peter Carey's Theft), and prop under a tree for the afternoon.