Dancing to Lou Reed at Below Zero Temperatures

As if getting copies of the latest version of my work to be published in South Korea had not delivered enough pleasant astonishment for one day, Surreal Girl announced I was to be given a ‘surprise’. Beyond being told it was a ‘treat’, being given a precise time (‘4:05pm’) and a maddeningly wide location (‘Piccadilly Circus’), no more information was forthcoming. This was typical of her modus operandi – enchantingly infuriating.

After struggling to buy two extra roasting tins in Little Lebanon as daylight faded, I was reduced to making secret signs with my magic fingers to conjure a black cab. The Powers of the city smiled on me and a carriage with the welcome orange light appeared within moments. After a seat sliding hurtle through the West End, the destination was reached with two minutes to spare.

The ‘surprise’ was vodka cocktails at the ice bar on Heddon Street. For the next 45 minutes I was bundled into a quilted cape and gloves so I could drink cinnamon infused Absolut in a minus five degree environment. Everything inside the bar – walls, benches, artwork, glasses – was made of ice. When I moved through the airlock into the cold, I felt as if I was entering Hannibal Chew’s workshop from Blade Runner. I half-expected the fur hat wearing bartender to say: “You Nexus, huh? I design your eyes.”

As a theme bar, it should have been awful, but it was glorious. I could not help but smiling with childlike glee at speakers and lights recessed behind walls of frozen water, the lusciously vibrant colours of the cocktails and the sight of Surreal Girl dressed like a Siberian Yupik. I loved dancing to Lou Reed at below zero temperatures. My feet may have been frozen, but my cynicism was meltwater.

Afterwards we weaved through the extravagant streets of Mayfair. Shop windows too beautiful and expensive to look in, twinkling lights clustered into the shapes of giant angels. Our toes thawed out as we moved under the invading empire shadow of the Grosvenor Square fortress. Crossing Park Lane’s flowing river of headlights, we hit Hyde Park’s Winter Wonderland.

It was hard to tell if the Ferris wheel centrepiece was meant to be lit like a snowflake of star, but that did not really matter. As it rotated, its blue LED light was a beacon for wonder. With a box of freshly cooked cinnamon pancakes and cups of Glühwein to keep our hands warm, we watched the ice skaters. Around us children ran amok with just purchased fluorescent lightsabres, high on too many caramelised nuts and too much pre-big day excitement. There was no snow, no carols, but at that moment, the romance of Christmas danced among the fairy lights and smiles.

When Cities Dream

This morning canalside was dusted white. The roofs of boats painted with hoar frost, the towpath glinting thanks to its temporary crystal carpet. Neither the smoking chimneys of the barges, pumping out the intoxicating scent of burning wood, nor the runty sun were shifting the new palette.

I walked along the canal, boots crunching frost flowers. I left shiny impressions of my previous position on the path with each footstep, crushed silver ghosts. I exhaled dragon breath, stuffed my hands deep into my pockets and kept moving south.

The pavement of Little Lebanon was untouched by the cocaine spill whiteout. Its storefronts still a riot of colour as crimson cherries fought for space with pillar box red chillies and Tyrian purple aubergines. Even on a frosty London morning, some of the area’s shops still exude a sense of Middle Eastern heat

Finding my pockets too short of coins for either a Beirut breakfast or a coffee, I turned into the Georgian plush of Connaught Square. I made my usual nod to security and was frozen in place not by the Heckler & Koch holders, but the vision at the end of Stanhope Place. Instead of the usual burst of green, under frost and low mist Hyde Park was transformed into an inland sea. The street now ended at the start of an illusion I did not wish to shake.

For a few moments I was caught in the City’s dream of itself, a reverie of tides and rolling spray. When we dream we may become other people. When cities dream, they become other places. In trance, London allows itself to become so large and fantastic its imagined maps even include nautical charts.

Instants of Poetry Written in Memory

The brilliant psychedelic pyramid that recently sprang up overnight near Speakers Corner in Hyde Park was being dismantled today. The glorious incongruity of its blazing pop colour panels quickly gave way to metal skeleton. I watched as cranes and workmen did the work of vultures. Its flesh, reminiscent of Roy Lichenstein high on ayahuasca, directing graffiti gang to honour Akhenaten, was stripped with carrion
efficiency.

As this glorious creature was excarnated before a largely uncaring London, I felt like I was losing a friend. It has been magnificent glimpsing it through the trees each morning. Some days it has stood to like a defiant alien edifice, beamed down from above, not meant for England's cold grey gloom. On others it has focussed its sharp lines towards the blessing of autumnal sun, an Atenism temple that has bled through from some parallel dimension.

It is only because I live in a culture so dedicated to preserving the ephemeral, that my natural reaction is to feel sad about the pyramid disappearing. Romero Britto's 45-foot structure has been a temporary wonder, a magnificent artistic explosion as a dream is manifested in the real. Life itself is a temporary wonder, its best moments – from orgasm to the first taste of a Crème brûlée – instants of poetry written in memory. Maybe there times when we need to go beyond the desire to capture everything in a digital format to rediscover that some stabs of beauty are enhanced by their inherent mortality.