It struck me today how easy it would be in London to become a nonperson. Like all the nonbuildings and nonsidestreets and nonphoneboxes you walk past every day and never notice. There, but not really. Existing, but not engaging.

Over a period of time, a little well-applied avoidance is all it would really take. You just… dial yourself back.

You turn up to work every day at the same time and go home at the same time. You don’t talk, laugh, joke with your colleagues. You don’t do anything surprising or impressive. You just do your job and go home. You slowly, eventually become an unimposing, unnoticed office fixture.

You stop calling people back. You barely fill your contact quota with emails and texts, and when your friends want to make plans with you you’re always busy, even when you’re not. Eventually you don’t answer your phone at all.

You put on your coat and leave your house and go to Tesco, or Waitrose, or Sainsbury’s (not Somerfield though – you don’t have a death wish). You buy your cereal and asparagus and teabags and salmon. You line up at the checkout and the cashier asks if you have a Nectar card and you say no. That’ll be nine pounds and thirty-two pence. Would you like a bag? Thank you madam, have a nice day.

And you walk away, and you don’t remember what that person you were just talking to looked like, and they have already forgotten you existed, and you go home, and you watch the news, and you go to sleep, and you get up and play the same game tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that, ad infinitum.

These were all just hypothetical thoughts on a train for me, but the sad truth is that there really are nonpeople in London, and we do walk past them every day as though they were lampposts and phoneboxes. When I moved here two years ago the only homeless person I’d ever really encountered was a young guy in Sydney when I went there on holiday. He was sitting outside a Hungry Jack’s so I went in and bought him some dinner. It broke my heart the way people with arms full of shopping bags and briefcases just rushed past him, or worse, scoffed and shook their heads when he looked up at them. I thought, never, never, never, ever will that be me. How could anyone ignore somebody so pathetic, so obviously and helplessly in need of just a bit of time, a bit of sympathy?

Two years in London and never, ever has come, and I rush past people like that boy every single day. Two years of stories about fakes and drug addicts and gypsies has made me a cynic; or maybe that’s just the excuse I’ve given myself for not caring anymore. I honestly don’t know. But every time I look away from a homeless person with their hand outstretched, there’s a grumpy pensioner inside me that tuts and says, oh, he’s only going to use it to buy alcohol, while another part of me says, Jessica, you’ve just left the off-licence with a bottle of red, you hypocritical cunt.

And there’s another, increasingly vocal part of me that thinks… if you took away my job and my family and my friends and my self-esteem, that could be me sitting on the ground next to the cash machine and holding out my hand, or walking through train carriages holding a cardboard sign that say Hungry and homeless, please help.

It breaks my heart and makes me sick to my fucking stomach.

WTF? (That was a rhetorical question.)

Apparently it’s not just London that’s gone loopy. Things are c-c-c-crazy in Kent as well.

This is the third or fourth time that I’ve heard of someone being knocked from a platform onto train tracks (deliberately, accidentally or otherwise) in the last month.

Standing on the underground platform listening to music or writing a text message I used to idly wonder what would happen if I were to drop my phone, iPod or other precious and essential item onto the tracks. The silly thought in my quaint little brain was that if there was no train due for two minutes or so, I could probably just jump down and grab it.

That was until I learned the track is ELECTRIFIED! Oh yes. Like greased lightning. Oh no, that’s electrifying.

Like there weren’t enough things in London to induce mild panic attacks on a daily basis (I’ll make a list some time). Now I have to worry about people pushing me onto electrified train tracks.

When did we decide steam engines were a bad idea? I would be okay with going back to those.

“Hello baby, you look very beautiful.”

Pffft, I thought, and kept walking.

“I love that sexy dress you are wearing.”

Since the only other person around was the homeless man sitting at the top of the stairs, I figured I could safely assume the guy was talking to me. However, as said dress features a very unsexy print of white baby deer, comes almost up to my neck and goes down to below my knees, and was paired with a buttoned-up black cardigan and opaque black tights, I felt his comment was at best misplaced, and at worst a damn dirty lie.

“Oh yes, very nice darling. And now you say thank you.”

Please allow me to repeat that last bit, just in case you didn’t receive the full impact.

“And now you say thank you.”

I’m sorry… what?

Now I say thank you? Okay, good. I’m glad you told me, actually. Because this isn’t the first time a complete stranger with an unidentifiable European accent has called me baby and made an unsolicited comment about my appearance, and I’ve never known quite how to respond before. To be honest, I would normally go for a stock standard “Fuck off”, but really that’s just out of convenience. I use the phrase so often that it’s never very far out of reach and I don’t have to scramble for it.

Now that I know what the proper response is in situations such as this, I look forward to a much smoother relationship with many of my fellow Londoners.

You know, I guess there have been other times when I’ve leapt recklessly to reactions such as irritation, indignation or disgust, when I could just as easily – and perhaps more suitably – have felt gratitude instead.

So, in the spirit of setting things right…

To the rather large black man who, as I walked past the doorway of a sex shop in Soho one evening a couple of weeks ago, invited me to come in with him “for some fun” – thanks. I know I told you to go fuck yourself, but what I actually meant was that while I already had plans for that particular night, your invitation was certainly appreciated.

To the young men who wake me up every second night yelling at each other across Primrose Hill Road, apparently trying to organise the best time and place for a gentlemanly bout of fisticuffs, or possibly a knife fight (it’s hard to tell through the thick haze surrounding my brain at 2:30am) – merci beaucoup monsieurs. If you ever do manage to coordinate your busy social calendars, give me a shout and I’ll be ringside in a jiffy.

To the anonymous man who called my landline a few weeks ago at 3am to call me darling and enquire about a particularly intimate part of my anatomy when I was home alone, insomnia-stricken and watching Silence of the Lambs on television – muchos gracias, amigo. The ensuing ten minutes of irrational fear that because the phone had rung as I was walking right past it meant you were actually looking inside my apartment made me feel so alive.

To the local fast food joints who incessantly stuff delivery menus into our mail slot… I’m going to ignore for a moment the disturbing question of how you got into our building in the first place, and focus instead on some well-deserved gratitude for your perseverance. It’s true… one can never have too many Sizzling China pamphlets. Thank you for your contribution – not just to the rape and devastation of old growth forests the world over, but also to my own personal Heathrow injection.

Wow. Oprah was right. Gratitude feels good.

Got someone you need to thank? Go ahead, share.

I can’t help but notice how many of us have been stabbing each other lately.

Perhaps, as a friend suggested, it is not so much that there is an increase in knife crime, but that the media is increasingly inclined to report on it. I don’t know. Either way, the London stabbings have not been merely brought to my attention; they have been force-fed down my oesophagus like a goose being fattened for foie gras.

Everywhere I go, macabre tallies shriek at me from newspaper headlines.

17 London Teens Stabbed To Death This Year!
No Wait – Make That 18
Oh No, There Goes Another, and Another…

This is getting ridiculous. And, frankly, embarrassing – someone in France called London the ‘City of Blades’ after last week’s tragic fiasco with the two French students who were murdered in their home. “London is a jungle,” people commented on French news sites. “Gangs kill each other with knives, but the English media doesn’t talk about it because these outbreaks of violence are occurring daily so it is no longer shocking.” It’s not that I blame them for having a go, but it’s a bit humiliating to have our civility called into question by the French, of all people.

However, I beg to differ on the English media comment. It seems to me they can’t stop talking about it.

Of course, we can’t prevent the London Lite from dedicating page after page each evening to the most recent stabbing and its fallout (taking up precious print space that could otherwise be occupied by photos of Amy Winehouse falling over), so I feel that we should instead go to the root of the problem – namely, the fact that people keep carrying knives around and stabbing each other with them.

I know it’s not all Londoners who are to blame, but there is a very small minority of us who are ruining it for everyone else. So if you’re reading this, you stab-happy few, I would like to ask you to please stop it. Keep your knives in the kitchen where they belong, and when you leave the house consider replacing your usual weaponry with some nice, useful accessories such as a man bag, a hacky sack, or this cute umbrella.

Naturally I wouldn’t expect you to throw your blades away just because an anonymous blog author asked you to. So allow me to bring your attention to just some of the many mutual benefits of this proposal, for knife-carriers and non-knife-carriers alike.

Knife-Carriers: You will avoid the inconvenience of carrying a heavy, sharp object that you could accidentally hurt yourself or damage your clothing with.

Non-Knife-Carriers: We will avoid death by knife wound.

Knife-Carriers: You will avoid a hefty jail sentence and possible anal rape while imprisoned if (when?) you get caught and charged with murder.

Non-Knife-Carriers: It’s probably worth mentioning the first Non-Knife-Carrier benefit again actually, as I feel it’s an especially good one.

Knife-Carriers: You will avoid ruining your entire life, losing all your friends, having everyone in London hate you and being the subject of a sneering press campaign, not to mention the guilt of knowing you seriously injured another human or ended their life.

Non-Knife-Carriers: We will stop being terrified of London teenagers and return to feeling merely suspicious, disapproving and superior towards them.

I think you’ll agree that this will be a win-win situation for everyone in London. I look forward to your enthusiastic cooperation. If any of the above points need clarification or if you have anything you’d like to add to the proposal, please contact me using the link below.

Yours Optimistically,

Digressica

Well, the crime didn’t actually happen, per se. Unless vandalism of personal property is a crime. But I think that’s just rude rather than illegal.

Allow me to paint you a picture: It’s Monday evening, 11 pm. I leave the Odeon cinema in Camden as the credits for Prince Caspian roll (preachy flick but nice special effects; more on that later). I stand at the bus stop waiting for the number 31 to take me home to Pretentious Hill – sorry, Primrose Hill. A dodgy-looking dude stands close to me… a little too close. Close enough to make me take a fairly substantial step away.

Then I realise… it’s cool. He’s standing there with (I presume) his girlfriend. Dudes with girlfriends are usually fairly innocuous, I think sensibly. She asks me the time.

“Eleven o’clock,” I say, looking at my watch and smiling. It’s a lie. The time is eleven-oh-three. I feel bad for not telling the truth… maybe she was on her way to something really important, something she couldn’t afford to be three minutes late for. I almost correct myself, but then I remember – I don’t like talking to people.

The bus comes. I get on it. It turns off Camden High Street and up Adelaide Road. It arrives outside my building. I get off, go up to my flat, chat to my housemate V, then go to my room to try on the purchases I made at the Gap earlier this evening. And that’s when I notice it…

My Gap bag has been slashed open.

Dun dun dunnnnnn.

At first I think perhaps I snagged it on something… but I haven’t come into contact with anything that could have made such a long, clean cut. I show V, and she confirms it – you’ve been the victim of a slash’n’dash.

But surely not, I say, still in feeble denial – nothing’s been taken. My new black top and brown cardi are still in the bag.

He probably slashed it and felt around in case you had a wallet or something in there, V tells me sagely. That’s why his girlfriend asked you the time – they do that to distract you while the other one tries to rob you.

Hmm, I say. Well, no harm done. I still have my wallet.

Then it hits me – what exactly is he trying to say by not taking the clothes I just bought? Was it a deliberate choice? Did he not like the feel of the fabrics? The colours? I know they were just wardrobe basics, but still. Did he pull it out, hold it up against himself and check his reflection in a shop window before putting it back? Did he look at the price tag and think, hmmm, summer sales – must be last season’s leftovers? Should I be worried when a would-be thief in a tracksuit and bandana won’t even steal my clothes from me? Maybe he didn’t think his girlfriend would like them.

Well, I’m glad I told that bitch the wrong time. She’ll never get those three minutes back, and I hope she really fucking needed them.