Where NOT to Spend the Passover

Happy Passover to those who celebrate it, and happy spring to everybody

West Indian comments

1. Sentence sructure: In the Jamaican take-aways, you are offered curry chicken, unlike in Indian restaurants, where it's chicken curry. It seems that in Jamaican cuisine, curry acts as a property of the chicken, hence it acts as an adjective.

2. Of all the ethnicities of London, West-Indian people seem to be the loudest. It appears many of them have not adjusted to the English way of murmuring your way about. Even the guys on the corner muttering SKUNK as you pass do it a bit too loud for pushers. And people shout to each other all the time, across the street or from moving cars: hey MAN! come here! RASTAMAN! to me they sound pissed off, but when they catch up with each other it's usually smiles and hugs.

In a way it makes me feel at home. A Swedish guy travelleing in Asia had once told me how sitting next to a table of Israelis, he would always think 'these guys are going to beat each other up any minute, they don't stop shouting at each other'. After a while he figured this was the Israeli way of amiable conversation.

Obscure Visual Sign of the Week (23)

You don't often come across this rare element in the streets of London, so better take a deep breath.

Dodgy Brixton

I woke up at 4am by a strange, loud sound of something bashing against the window. "They're fucking outside" said S. I immediately remembered the time E (the former resident of this flat) told us how "a crack-whore fucking against his window" kept him up at night, and how sick he was of Brixton.
S turned the light on, and shouted 'Stop it'. For a while the bashing stopped, but then it started again, in a steady rhythm. 'Stop it!' it was just getting stronger and faster. I could imagine them
outside and the thought was disgusting. I was just hoping they get it over with so we could go back to sleep. Strangely, there were no human sounds - no sighs or breathing or anything. But still the bashing didn't stop. "This is outrageous. I'm going to throw a glass of water on them through the kitchen window". "No!" said S, "what if it's someone in distress?"
Of course they're in distress, I said.
I'm going upstairs to I+M, to have a look through the window.
But you'll wake them up!
D is sleeping on the sofa, he'll let me in.
As S left the noise starte again. This time I shouted with the top of my voice: GO AWAY! and it stopped. A couple of minutes passed and it was still quiet.
I was falling back to sleep, when I heard the key in the door.

'You won't believe what it was,' said S, disappearing quickly again. I heard the front door of the building open, and then a happy miaouwing, and the footsteps of R's cat running upstairs.
"I'm sick of Brixton" said S "the cats here are so rough".

The Writing on the Wall

Out kitchen wall, to be exact.
Can any Classicist readers of this blog tell me what it says?

Obscure Visual Sign of the Week (22)

Taking hallucinogenic drugs may result in playing football with triangular objects.

At Last

Suddenly, almost overnight, winter's oppression is lifted off our shoulders. I never thought I'd be so happy to see the fascist-yellow of the daffodils. March was cold and bleak, but now it's gone.
It's still grey and dull, and far from warm. But the edge is there no more; the cold does not bite your face, it is now tame and harmless. People walking pass you look up, and sometimes smile. And it is no longer painful to wash dishes.

Living without hot water in such cold weather is no treat. Especially at nights when the temperatures drop below zero. The kettle became our new best friend: heating water to wash my face, wash dishes. I've lived in a squat without electricity before, and one without flushing toilet. But living without hot water I find the hardest. It feels 19th century workers-housing: only we have electricity for light and heating.