Friday, February 05, 2010

You are a Londoner if:

1. You smell the fresh smell of burning coal whilst cycling through the detached neighbourhoods of South London and remember the fresh smell of burning coal you smelled when you travelled for hundreds of miles across the cities in your home country (and especially if you use 'miles' in stead of 'kilometers' in this sentence).

2. You know where and what St. Helen's is and why the bankers go there after the financial crisis.

3. You know not to state your ethnicity when the police is taking down a record because you know that it will be used to generate criminological intelligence which they will use against certain ethnicities to discriminate them.

4. You leave the stinky smell of the attractive East and cycle all the way through the City on a fine Sunday afternoon to play football in Chelsea with all-investment-banker squad of your friends who live in West London in between the smells of lavender and 5 cm. upper-hand of high heels.

5. You feel you are in your childhood memories' Mediterranean/Middle Eastern summer resort where the small edge between the cobblestone pavement and the sidewalk is bent at a lower spherical level than the rest of the road.

6. You go home at the end of a long work and drink-out day and still feel lonely and still find the excuse to blame it on the grey weather.

7. You can appreciate all deep fried bacon, sausage, beans, fried bread and others for breakfast.

There is a lot more, but already for the better or worse, I feel like I am almost one.