All bright and glittering in the smokeless air

Nothing much happens in Surbiton: the odd fire-drill at the station, fight outside a nightclub... Most of the buildings here have stood for over a century. It feels like London only as much as your second-cousin feels like family- you can see a vague resemblance, common traits but that is all.

As often as I can, I venture into the 'real' city (and it isn't all that often, my budget has been reduced to a mere £30 a week; not so much existing as subsisting- I am just waiting for Geldoff to get on the case, send me some Peaches). In the gaps between these little jaunts, I often forget how liberating London life is; the 'mighty heart' which Wordsworth describes is still beating and, no doubt, a lot more rapidly than when he was composing his poem on the bridge. I won't bore you all by reeling off the old Dr. Johnson quotation but, suffice to say, I am far from tired of London; I only desire to move inward, as far in and away from the M25 as is possible...

In the past few months, I have probably been into the centre more times than ever before, to the point where I am no longer even overwhelmed by it. I am not sure I like it all that much, actually. The point is, I suppose, that it is a major international city and it is there. In a lot of ways I wish I had grown up further away from it and then like Edinburgh, Dublin or even my beloved Killarney, it would be stuck on my desire with the alluring glue of the unknown. Again, once I get in to the city itself, as opposed to its Surrey-esque suburbs, I am certain that this little hang-up will vanish...

It is my suspicion, in fact, that the city is expanding and will thusly become more exciting yet. My friend came to stay over the weekend and when I dropped him off at Stratford Tube*, I couldn't help noticing that there were an awful lot of wrecking balls and rubble, as well as a number of cranes poised like mechanical vultures (please don't think about this simile too much, it is incredibly weak)! My Stratford experience, combined with a recent visit to North Grenwich (Philip K Dick couldn't have better realised a place so half-finished, eerie and dystopic in atmosphere: potted sapling, potted sapling, stretch of concrete, potted sapling, supermarket, nothingness, potted sapling etc ) makes me wonder if they are not just building a new and better London out there... The irony that the east of London may one day be its Wall Street.

Enough of this paranoid musing, anyhow, all I basically wanted to express in this article was my evolving relationship with the historic capital within whose borders I fall, at least ostensibly (and to the protestations of a number of my ill-informed, unsavvy friends). Also, I did plan to slip in somewhere that I had lunch with a mate of mine in the House of Commons yesterday but that would be bragging now, wouldn't it? I don't really go in for all that...

*Riding Shanks's pony