Christmas is coming. It’s November but to London’s shop keepers the herds of shoppers are easily spooked. Like hunters, they are carefully baiting their traps, staying downwind of the easily confused consumers but they are readying their weapons all the same. The window displays are slowly turning into confusing artworks. A stick-thin model girl nailed to a reindeer with glitter pouring out of her knees. It’s where the window display merchandisers in large department stores get to show what they can really do, although it seems much of their festive season output resembles a badly planned acid trip.
For the less fanciful shops, Santas and snow scenes seem to be appearing on every aisle. The sponsored lights are going up in Bond Street, now, in November. I’m not sure what this year’s theme is – probably celebrating the miraculous birth of our Lord Jesus Christ with a tasteful The Three Wise men at *insert-generic-store-name-here theme. Each bringing those well known biblical gifts, an Xbox, an ipod and the ‘scream and then watch me vomit’ little chav doll from Mattel. That’s not the Mattell Toy company by the by that’s from Dave Mattell from Dagenham ‘Toys r Cheap and Cut price Booze’ store.
Like the anxious shopkeepers you can smell the money in the air, or at least the expectation of money. Recession? What recession? ‘Tis the season to be exploited. Sad really. It’s really not quite as Dickensian as it could be. But the snow is forecast. And London will do its best. So look out for rosy cheeked pickpockets operated by eastern European gangmasters, feisty chestnut sellers pushing crack and Scrooge as played by the local Councils closing down old people’s homes and care centres. Tis the season to be jolly spend thrifts. Courtesy of MasterCard or Barclaycard presumably.
Barclaycard. These are the same people who are sponsoring the newest fad in town. The Boris bike. The easily accessible bicycle you can ride around town on. No more smelly and hot tube trains. Just leap onto a Boris bike and away you go! Zoom through the parks. The little back streets. They’ve settled in rather quickly I must say. Everywhere you go centrally in London at least. I note that places like say Kidbrooke or Stonebridge Park appear to have been missed out in the locations of bike docking stations. Mainly because the bikes would be in a skip fire or more likely on a container ship to Liberia within hours of deployment. In a way you could say it’s a kind of new classism by bike. But still, you’ll see them weaving and wobbling in out of traffic around Trafalgar Square, the City and Kensington High Street with those type of people you just somehow expect to see on them. I’ve not tried one myself. Death has never appealed to me. Clearly there is a hidden agenda though. It just occurred to me I must be missing something. It’s not a class thing at all. Perhaps it’s a new job creation thing. You can just see the meeting, City Hall, midnight, written on a whiteboard in red.
How can we create job places in a crowded job market? Answer; Put lots of professional people on unwieldy heavy bicycles, take some money from them and then hurl them like baby ducks into friendly London traffic. A nightmarish concoction of rumbling huge lorries, confused mini cab drivers, belligerent black-taxi drivers, Kamikaze Pizza bike delivery boys. Fiendish eh? But I shouldn’t carp. Here in London we are innovators, we pride ourselves on it. Take our restaurant scene for example, where else are you able to choose from dishes whose descriptions are so pretentious you can see the waiter smirking from thirty feet away? In my area it’s rife. Who writes this stuff? “Jus of spring mint and beagle shattered with lemon butter and fresh wild Ecuadorian bong berries lovingly smothered on apricot battered tender codlet tarragon peppered steaks fried au on nuit”. Uh? Then like an infant it either has to be explained to you by some show-off out of work actor. (Nothing wrong with being an actor – Editor) Meanwhile you sit like some Alzheimers patient nodding and smiling still clueless. Or you take a chance and hope it doesn’t taste like fried baby vomit in a glove. Don’t get me wrong, I like creativity and I like food. Just tell me what it is. I’ll order quickly, honest I will.
Having said that, the descriptions dazzle most people long enough for them to not notice the price tag. Which is the whole idea. Normal food at eye watering prices with undecipherable descriptions. But it’s not about the food, so I’m told, it’s the place, the ambience, the vibe and most importantly what it says about you. Vacuous? Empty? No. It’s a London thing.