Lovely London: First Impressions

• Everyone hates the weather. It snowed! Sure, it's March. Sure, the last time these people saw sunshine we were all still pondering the likelihood of the Mayan end of days looking anything like this great new film 2012. Sure, sure. But you're Londoners. It's in your blood to cope with this kind of weather. You're meant to relish it, and then come to my country and complain about our weather.
• That's just the way the Tube smells. You know that sour, old milk kind of odour? Apparently, there isn't a choice about that.
• There's less obsession with royalty... Unless you make the rookie mistake of seeing a magazine stand and learning than the royal baby is now the size of an apricot or an eggplant or what-have-you.
• ...and more with James McAvoy. Him! Mr. Tumnus! The guy who played the guy with muscular dystrophy! Goddamn Gnomeo! He's a big shot action hero now and, it would seem, London's favourite stepson. In the past four days, seventeen action films in which he holds a gun aggressively on the poster have been released. He is acting in MacBeth, Hamlet and the Tempest, all at once. I think I saw a cologne in Boots. Now, I don't have a problem with any of this, and he seems like a pretty nice bloke from his Wikipedia article, but all I can say is that I didn't see it coming.

I guess I should've paid better attention to Wanted.

• Squirrels are great and nobody cares. Have people been desensitied here? I don't get it. Can't they see the little hands?
• There are dead celebrities everywhere. William Blake is a bit of a hero to me. His poetry is outstanding. The effect he had on his contemporaries, and indeed on English literature, is rivalled only by the greatest writers in human history. His work is poignant, captivating, political and proud. Oh, right, and he's buried to your left there.
• You must make your peace with limb loss. Have you been caught in those train doors? I have. Ouch.
• Food is better than Jamie Oliver told me it would be. I mean, really. I expected to find legions of pasty, miserable people lolling in the gutters since, once they tipped onto their backs, they were incapable of righting themselves again, WALL-E-style. If not that, I was waiting for some poor anaemic to pass out on me. Well now, I haven't seen any school dinners so perhaps I can't talk, but has J.O. not been in central Londom recently? PRET A MANGER IS EVERYWHERE. And I can't move for the number of Whole Foods. I know it can't be all this glorious but I'm still waiting to see a queue go out the door at Macca's.

First image sourced from here.

 

Flashback harp and Vaseline on the lens

How meta is this?

It's been a month since I started this blog (and about ten days since I decided to write a review of how things have been going, took a picture, wrote 'How meta is this?' and subsequently forgot all about it). I assure you I won't be writing these every month I pass here, but I think now's as good a time as any to have a think about how things are going.

Reading over my things, I realise I've strayed from my original idea, and, in essence, the purpose of my blog. I'm writing about a (or an, I suppose) scenic world, not an near-unemployment or an questionable/attention-seeking grammar. And now that I'm sort of in the habit of blogging, I'm going to try to drag myself back into that vein. I was talking with my endlessly wonderful aunt about blogging, and something she said really struck true: no-one wants to read about the cupcakes I'm baking. (Unless I provide a recipe and/or beautiful photographs -- look, hey, I'm not a food blogger and anyway, this is just an analogy.) Whatever I do, I have to offer you all something they can't get anyplace else. Anyone can pull haphazard, wonky cupcakes together; that's not what I'm here to write about. I'm going to pull myself back to my intended route, kicking and screaming. I'm going to have less incidental posts; I'm going to actually do something, then write about it. In honesty, I've been kind of lazy.

At this point, I'd like to put it out there that any constructive criticism, feedback and tips on any element of my blogging is a thousand times welcome. I need all the help I can get!

That said, more than anything else I'm just proud I've survived a month actually blogging. And that I actually started! How can I describe how good it felt to reach out to some bloggers I really admire and to hear lovely things back; to read comments, however few; and -- this one really set my heart racing -- to finally finally see my Bloglovin' followers rise from one (me) to two. My readers may only number in the teens at this point, but I've started; I'm breaking into this beautiful blogging community at long last. And it feels so good.