Pretentious, moi?

Reading Roland Barthes' Mythologies on the 390 bus into town who should board and take the seat in front of me but two French girls - hah! - it's just like being in Paris in the mid-50s! As I read Barthes' thoughts on wrestling I can't help but be distracted by the girls talking, thinking to myself: 'How come they sound so intelligent even though they're probably discussing the best place to get their nails done in London?' One of them has impressive, long pink nails...and I don't know if they are a sign of Love Island-style celebrity adoration, or merely her preference for nail care. Equally, they could be discussing semiotics, but from the amount of laughter going on, I doubt it. They sound intelligent because I idiotically buy the myth that the French are intellectually more advanced than us Brits.

The bus crawls down Gower Street and eventually into Bloomsbury Street, where LJ once lived and, as usual, I think of the old place with its basement toilet inhabited by slugs, a spooky, cold room, the journey to which in the middle of the night I don't think I'd be able to make nowadays, now that I'm over 30 years older...can you still buy pots to piss in or has modern living rendered them irrelevant?

I bail out of the bus journey - too slow - and seats in the sun outside the Salt & Pepper cafe are calling, along with the Oxfam bookshop opposite, whereas I had intended to go to the record shops in Soho. Oh well, instead I bask in the warm Autumn sun and, for fun, take the photo included here - yes, for fun - pretentious, moi? as they used to say - not me! I'm being ironic, darling. I could never feign intellectualism and live with myself, knowing my self to be anything but an intellectual. But the croissant, coffee and Barthes combination were irresistible - ha-ha. 

I don't ponder the intellectual abilities of the olive-skinned girl who appears on the pavement, more her sanity, poor thing. She has an overcoat slung over her shoulder and tracksuit bottoms hanging so low as to almost reveal her derrière - an unlikely-looking down and out, appearing more as if she got derailed from her Mediterranean track and tumbled into the mean, soon-to-be-cold streets of London. With her long, black corkscrewed hair and dirty white trainers, she barks indecipherable somethings at no-one in particular, then she goes.

As I write a man photographs me. Just as the girl seemed an unlikely tramp he, looking much like Soho legend Jeffrey Bernard with his luxuriant shock of white hair and lived-in dark blue suit, seems an unlikely street snapper. He moves on quickly to browse at the books outside the Lefty bookshop, Bookmarks (geddit?). I wonder, wouldn't it have been polite to ask if I minded being photographed? Perhaps he was wise, though, in avoiding his subject adopting a self-conscious air, as I undoubtedly would have done. I think he was gathering evidence of an almost lost tribe which still sits outside cafes, scribbling in their notebooks. By the time he took the photo I had returned the Barthes book to the bag for fear of being apprehended by the Pretentious Police. Not guilty, your honour, honest...