An Open Letter To London

Dear London

You really know how to welcome a girl back with open arms, don't you? 24 hours in your freezing bosom and my foot is just aching to kick you in the nuts. Not that you have them, but I can assure you they'd be blue by now if you did, rather like my hands everytime I go outside.

Just so you know, I am actually quite chirpy for someone who has recently returned from 30 degree sunshine into the depths of arctic winter. This may be down to the fact that everything feels surreal, a bit like those Baywatch montage scenes where CJ and Caroline run languidly down the beach with the background in soft focus and you feel like you've stumbled into a pornographic chocolate box illustration.

It's not that my arrival here was a bit bumpy, although it was. That's if you can call a two and a half hour delay in Paris, followed by the failure of our luggage to turn up at Heathrow, bumpy. I prefer the word incompetent myself, but that's the beauty of the English language - so many words, so many ways to hurl insults. I also like the words amateur and floundering, particularly when applied to the BA check-in chick who specifically and repeatedly told me that our luggage would be checked straight through to London, not languish at O.R. Tambo Airport. The words horse and shit come to mind when considering the lack of ground staff at Charles De Gaulle, who caused the rest of the luggage to sit on the tarmac for nearly 3 hours, while we all watched intently from the plane windows to see if it would eventually jump up and load itself. Slack and slothful are two more words I'd employ at this point.

It's not that our lack of warm clothes (see above: Languishing Luggage) meant our trek home in temperatures reaching highs of zero caused us to seriously consider chopping off our fingertips to prevent gangrene, although it did. I've never felt beany-envy quite like I did yesterday, so much so that every small be-hatted child in a 3 metre radius risked his head everytime he entered my personal space on the bus.

It's not even that, despite our most earnest prayers, the tubes from SW London were running almost faultlessly this morning while it snow stormed outside, meaning we had to go to work at normal time and couldn't spend the day cuddled up in bed watching Dexter. Your sense of humour is as gauche as your welcome mat.

What it is, London, is that despite the fact that I feel an offbeat affection for you - rather like I would for a particularly musty pair of old socks - I'm more than a little piqued that you insist on inhabiting this dank island halfway across the world from my real home. We'd get on so much better if you'd only pack it in and move closer. You might find you'd look more inviting too - no offense.

Anyway, since we are destined to nurture this fractious relationship of ours for another 12 months or so, I'll stop there - a fine exercise in restraint, if I do say so myself. Feel free to respond if you like, or simply sit there smirking as you dump another big freeze on us, whatever. Payback's a bitch, remember that.

Yours annoyingly,
Lopz