Life on a double-decker bus (or The birth of pop homemade psychology)

Being jobless has its positive sides. Since I have been not working, I have started enjoying lots of things I would have never considered before. Having more time to spend on your own makes you realize how many little things can make you happy. I wish I could live in a World where I wouldn't have to work or rush or be in a hurry all the time. I wish I could live in a World where I could still stop in the middle of the street to observe trees and birds and flowers, or just spend an entire day reading a book on a bench. Maybe if all the people weren't working so much to make their livings, they would care more about relationships. Yesterday I was on the bus and I was observing people. People amaze me every time. The bus is a peculiar social environment where you can observe people who are almost totally unaware of you. That is a totally in my favor as I can carry on my silly, poor, pop psychology surveys any time I want. Most of people on a bus would be on their mobiles. Scrolling a social network home page or updating their status with tens of hashtags, texting, calling or playing Fruit Ninja and Temple Run. You can tell it when someone is playing Temple Run as they would swing their mobile phone up and down and left and right, with very concerned expressions on their faces. Italian families on the bus are most of time on their mobiles AND talking to each other. They share out loud all the major Facebook news and status updating. Most of all, they would talk about someone they DON'T like, because that's the way we do. They spend dozens of half hours chatting about him cheating on his wife or her wearing those expensive, posh, ostentatious and bitchy -resented- clothes and shoes. Italian tourists on the bus would compare every single little thing they see out of the window with something they've already seen in Italy. Always so proud of our Country only when we are abroad. Mothers and sons are my second best observation target. I promise every single woman who comes up into the bus with a child would struggle to keep him or her in the buggy. There must be something in buses that arouses children curiosity to death. As soon as mummy pushes the buggy in the corner, Jr. has been fighting with the seatbelt and unfastened it and sneaked on the floor already. Here we are. Let the war begin. As soon as the woman realizes what just happened and grabs the child in her arms, the child would start yelling and crying out loud all his tears. Among the general disappointment, the poor mum feeling totally under pressure as everyone would be staring at her in a look of dismay, she would eventually let the child wiggle out of her arms. Now, don't think I am sort of a psycho obsessed with what people do or don't do on the bus. In all this chaos, all I wanted to do was sitting there, reading a book. Circumstances has forced me to review my priorities. How was I supposed to survive among all this yelling and talking and mobile phones beeping - other than let them entertain me?

Yesterday

Yesterday has been a very hard day. The sky was grey and the weather was windy and cold. I was in Aldgate East tube station waiting for my train to approach: people all around me were silent in their coats, wind was blowing so cold through the galleries and the train kept me waiting for ten minutes in this unreal place. As the appointment I had previously arranged for the afternoon has been anticipated, I didn't even had the time to get a shower or prepare myself properly to see another house. Yet, tired since the night before, my mood wasn't exactly the right one to start another hectic day in London. I didn't even enjoy the journey on the double-decker, and that's obviously a sign that something was wrong with me. 

Aldgate East tube station.

As I arrived in Whitechapel, I almost got lost and I had to ask to a Pakistani shopkeeper for informations, as I still don't have a proper map. I arrived late on my appointment - everything seemed to say "It's not your day", and maybe it would have been better for me to remain in my bed, as I didn't really enjoy what was about to happen. I entered the small apartment in a sort of University Block of Flats called Paymal House. On my left, a door led through the kitchen: a tiny room, so dirty that I almost had to hold my breath. The sink was full of dirty stuff, the shelves looked sticky, all the households were -for unknown reasons- lying on the sticky floor, in a jungle of cables and dust. A creepy staircase lead upstairs, where I have been shown the most squalid bedroom EVER. The bed consisted in nothing but a stained mattress, with no linen, stuffed with a mass of unidentified objects and clothes. The only thing I was able to spot was a laptop, the only sign of a person actually living there. Between the bed and the small window, there were a tiny wardrobe and a chest of drawers, turned upside down. In the small space between me and the wall, there was another mattress which I've been told could have been used for "my overnight guests": I think not even a rat or a homeless dog would have slept on this dusty, mouldy, stained, horrible...thing. Without even checking the toilets, I said thank you to the guy who showed me the room - who was, in the while, begging me to let him know as soon as possible if I intended to rent his room, as he was going to be kicked out in two days since he can't afford to pay the rent. I run back to the bus stop, so tired and depressed by what I had just seen and by the fact that I actually wasted my morning for nothing. But then, on my way back home,  I received a very good news: on Saturday, I can move to the place in Dollis Hill. It will be temporary, but yet it's a good news, isn't it? I immediately started seing things more positively, and I enjoyed the way back on the double-decker much more than the previous morning. I also noticed that, passing through Stamford Hill quartier, the streets were crowded of people wearing unusual clothes and big black hats: a large community of Ortodox Jewish lives there and they keep their traditional clothes and hairstyle, with typical side curls. 

An Ortodox Jewish in Stamford Hill.

As I came back home, I still had a feeling of dirty and sticky and the images of that awful place were still so clear in my mind, that first of all I had a massive carbohydrates lunch to restore my spirit and then I had to wash myself, my room, the shower, the kitchen, and then myself again, in order to take this bad feelings away from me and finally enjoy what remained of the day. 

In the place it has to be.

The sky il almost completely dark blue, only a shade of light peers out on the horizon, a plane flying over my head leaves two white lines behind it. It's a warm springtime evening in London, I step out in the garden to take my laundry inside, but the atmosphere is too moving to be ignored. Today I had a very busy day. I went to Woolwich Arsenal to see a room I might rent for the summer - the journey took me an hour by tube and almost half an hour walking on a rise, in a foreign neighborhood, feeling the highest anxiety EVER as it was the very first time for me to go and see a room I might rent, so it might become my home for few months. After the visit, I decided to come back by bus even if it would have taken me longer. I was there, sitting upstairs in the front line of the double-decker, glued to the mirror, joyful as a child the first time you take him to see an aquarium. I don't feel like a stranger in these foreign streets, corner after corner I'm greed to see new places, new colors and faces. Maybe I won't ever see any of them again, but in that very moment everything is just in the place it has to be. And then, after an hour of sharp turns, trees scratching the top of the bus and children yelling silly songs behind me, here I am: my favorite place in the World. I cannot explain what happens to me when I see it. I just feel so full of life, until the bottom of the deepest hole of my heart, everything inside me is full of this place. Only here, I can breathe peace, harmony and balance. 

My favorite place in the World.

I stepped out of the bus just before crossing Westminster Bridge and I turned left, walking on the riverside until Lambeth Bridge and then decided to stop here to do one of the most beautiful things I ever did in my life. I entered a red phone box, inserted the coins, dialed the number and hold on. "Hello?" The voice of my grandmother on the other side of the receiver sounded at the same time so far away and so close to me. We spoke for few minutes, the line was not very clear and for some reason the phone rejected the coins I tried to put into it. In the overall excitement, I was talking so fast and both of us were talking so loud that I couldn't help ending the phone call with a laugh. I kept this smile with me all day long and I look forward to do this again. 

The red phone box.