I have decided to keep a list of things that I see that I like and things I see that I don’t like. It’s a simple idea.
Like
The girl that walks home in front of me is in her early twenties. She has very thin ankles and a skirt cut at an unfashionable length. In fact all of her clothes are outmoded in some way; her shoulder bag is a brown patchwork, her coat dull tweed, and her black tights too practical and itchy-looking. She is cohesively old-worldly; her outfit and demeanour touching on the fashionable but lacking the self-consciousness of cool. Her feet turn outwards as she walks; she takes dainty steps along the pavement but shuffles awkwardly on the spot before crossing a road. All the office types, me included, don’t hesitate crossing these roads. Yet she twitches like a nervous bird before stepping out. As I continue to walk behind her, I see that her movements flutter with a similar nervousness as people approach her. Maybe she is a Mormon; a religious type on an outting to the secular world. Maybe she’s just an art student; dappy and in another more colourful world. Whoever she is, I like her.
Dislike
There is a big black car stuck in a traffic jam on Whiteladies Road. It is a very big, blocky muscular car. It reminded me of an article I had read about George Bush’s armoured presidential car; it looked kind of like this one. It’s ugly and imposing. Booker T and the MGs’ Green Onions is escaping from the car. It is bass-heavy and dull, yet I’m aware of its funkiness or at least I can sense how funky the driver of the car thinks it is. And my problem is I only like this song when I can watch the live performance of it. Otherwise it sounds like lame, thrusting blues funk that could be enjoyed by some city boy in an ugly, imposing car.