Soporifico

London in August is muggy; everyone left here who is not on holiday is a somnambulist, sleepwalking through their days and evenings.
They wander aimlessly through through the thick, warm air, dispersing to cross roads at random points regardless of the traffic, and congregating outside pubs in a fug of roll-up smoke talking about the past, but never the present or future.
Threads of old friendships, frayed by time and sorrow, connect in the frail cameraderie of the left-behind-in-London.
Even the moderately poor have managed to borrow a tent, or persuade a relative to let them have a week in their caravan at Skegness.
Notting Hill Carnival is happening this weekend. A few years ago, the police smashed it to smithereens and it has now been rebuilt as a corporate, controlled shadow of its former self with the same relative authenticity to the old version as a McDonalds has to an actual beefburger.
It's drizzling out there in Londonland...