DECEMBER 2014: The failed romance; and some tips for how to have successful Christmas fun, that doesn't piss off your waiter (works the rest of the year too)
My Dickensian romantic dreams go into overdrive and then shatter as December draws on, and no snow arrives. As a person of the commonwealth/ postcolonial spaces of New Zealand and Malaysia, England is a place created from fairytales. It is through literature that I learnt about England, and December is the ultimate time for the British fantasy - the lights of Oxford Street, the cold air, the christmas trees and mulled wine. All the things I had been reading about in Dickens, in Enid Blyton, in the adventures of Milly Molly Mandy and Little Friend Susan where suppose to blossom and come true. I arrived in London in September 2001 and the year after, my sister came to visit me at christmas. She was 18, and I was 21. And it snowed. I was living on St Johns Street in Angel, Rachel and I bought a tree and dragged it home, through the 2ft of snow. And so, London, that’s what you did to me - showed me what was possible and let me down time and time again.