January 2010

Saying that money can’t buy happiness is restrictive.

Money can’t buy happiness but can’t buy many more things, either.

The most stylish home will still force its occupiers to breathe shit, if that home is… in London, just to make one example.

In fact, not only you cannot buy the most precious thing in life (air), but the more money you have, and the more likely it is that you happen to live in a shit-place (e.g. London) where you cannot even have it for free.

Enjoy London, by all means.

Most accommodation in London includes homes that would be regarded with suspect in the rest of the United Kingdom, would only appear amongst the saddest ghettos within developing countries, and could not possibly be on the market in the rest of Europe.

This image (C) is available for editorial use.

Certainly, not with their actual price tags.

“Le parole sono importanti!” (words are important, Nanni Moretti):  calling “London”, with one word only,  a ragbag of luxury villas and shit-hole flats does not make any linguistic sense, yet it is what the game of post codes does by law, and the slums of South East (SE) may appear on the tourist guides under the same name as the penthouses overlooking Buckingham Palace.

I am finally leaving this cursed land, where millions of parasites pay top money to live like ants, to breathe a heavily polluted air, to grow old while commuting in the public transport, and only because unable to find any other employment, anywhere else, different from servicing and supporting the grandeur life of those few, rich ones (who still breath shit, however).

I see that this whole aberration will soon be over. Already London never appears anymore in the wish list of those who know, and shortly (a few years, at most) the big, wrong name “London” will excite a well different set of emotions, certainly including spite, contempt, and pity.

Che spettacolo!

What nicer reading opportunity than in the library of the University of Durham? I love this place: head down, book, journal or magazine; head up, the Cathedral.

It reminds me of another wonderful reading situation: 4th floor of the library of the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa, with a book by Leopardi coming from the Italian Literature shelves: head up, Via della Faggiola through the window, where the poet himself lived.

Sorry, I had no camera cellphone back then, in Pisa!