A Week in the Life is where I share snippets into what my life in London is like over the course of a week. Expect thoughts and reflections on everything under the sun. Or grey skies, this is London after all. Let’s keep it real.
Monday 22nd September
I’m on my way to attend an event on the overlap of technology and creativity. This is the bread and butter of every work event I’ve attended in the past three years, although there are sometimes variations and instead of technology and creativity sometimes it is AI and creativity. It barely matters as at the end of the day they all cover the same ground.
A few weeks ago I opened my calendar to forward a meeting invitation to a colleague. She caught a glimpse and asked me why I was attending the same event so many times and I had to explain that, actually, they were different activities run by different organisations but for some weird reason they were all called the same. The AI and Creativity cartel is going strong in London.
Today’s event is a showcase of creators and cultural organisations that are using technology to help them push boundaries and build audiences. Halfway through a presentation from someone at the Royal Shakespeare Company on the future of storytelling, I feel a sudden itch at the back of my throat. Before I have time to grab any water, I start coughing with a violence worthy of Neil Farage’s statement about revoking the indefinite leave to remain this morning.
As the coughing involves my whole body, I need to leave the room and find a place where I can let it all out without scaring people with my convulsions.
By the time I’m done spitting my insides, everyone is out for the coffee break. Someone I know comes to greet me. Noticing my red, watery eyes and general pathetic state, he puts a hand on my arm, looks me in the eye and says to me in a hushed, conspirational voice: “I just want you to know most people don’t think like him.” And with that he makes a beeline to the canapés.
I’m not quite sure who he is talking about or how this is useful information to me in any way in my current state. On my way to get some water I bump into a colleague I didn’t know was also attending this event. “Jesus, you look like shit. You should definitely not be here.”
Now that’s more like it.
Back home I start coughing again and my throat feels very sore all of a sudden, which means the fresh ginger and lemon tea season has officially started. I was perfectly fine yesterday so I have no idea where this is coming from.
Tuesday 23rd September
With the wisdom that comes from listening to your body but also from the objective evidence that I have a temperature, my head feels about to explode, my throat is killing me and I can barely speak, I am regretting having put a call at 9 am this morning. Luckily it is with a very lovely Finnish woman I used to work with before she moved jobs. I give her a heads up about my health condition just in case we are interrupted by a violent coughing fit so that she doesn’t think is a dramatic excuse to end the call early.
My situation deteriorates as the hours pass. I swear my brain is melting away as the watches Dalí painted in The Persistence of Memory. Which is far from ideal as I need to attend another work event this evening and I am not sure my voice is going to survive it. Against any sensible judgement, I get dressed and head off to the event with a mission: speak to a client who has registered and from whom I need to confirm a few details about their London operation. I have one shot at a very brief conversation this evening and I need to use it wisely.
As soon as I step into the room, a colleague who has been following closely the turn to the extreme right in UK politics comes to me with an expression that says “Can you believe what’s going on in this country?” and before he actually opens his mouth I manage to say, very feebly, “I can’t really speak” because I’m trying to preserve the little voice I have to chat to my client whenever she shows up. “Oh, me neither. I am so furious that I have no words left, to be honest.” I would like to clarify the confusion but my throat is itching again so I let the misunderstanding linger as I turn my back to him and make my way to the coffee station for some hot water.
A colleague I haven’t seen in a while spots me and comes towards me with a smile and open arms, ready for a hug. As I don’t want to pass down whatever I have to anyone, instead of reaching out to her and hug her as I would normally do, I dodge her without saying a word and continue towards the coffee station as if nothing.
I am stopped by a third colleague who wants to introduce me to someone and the only thing I manage to say is “Don’t,” putting a hand up to prevent her from touching me, which is witnessed by the person standing next to her and who I suspect she wanted to introduce me to.
I trust I have built a strong enough reputation over the years as a supportive, helpful, considerate, polite, relatively unproblematic, and incredibly witty colleague for anyone to brush aside any thoughts that I’m acting like a fucking twat this evening for no particular reason. It takes a lifetime to build a reputation but a minute to destroy it. Except that right now I am a bit worried I can both destroy my good reputation and build a new one before this event is over.
Halfway through the event I need to leave the room in a hurry as no amount of ginger and lemon tea (which I brought in a thermos) or menthol sweets can’t keep at bay an extremely nasty coughing fit. If by the end of the week I don’t have abs of steel from violently contracting my insides for ten minutes every half hour, I’m going to be very disappointed indeed.
I go back inside once I regain control of my body and on the registration table I spot an uncollected badge with the name of my client.
She had one job.
In a rare moment of clarity, I decide there’s no need for me to keep suffering so I get my coat and leave quietly. On my way back home, as if possessed by the spirit of a pandemic toilet roll hoarder, I acquire fresh ginger and lemons in quantities that grant me a few raised eyebrows, which in this country is as the equivalent to someone asking “Are you sure you need all that?" or maybe “Are you sure you’ve not gone mad?,” I can’t never remember which one it is.
Wednesday 24th September
At the event yesterday it was discussed that the UK is a market of early adopters.
I can 100% validate this claim as a new covid strain, which goes by Stratus, has been going around for less than a week and I’ve already caught it. I feel like Dua Lipa showing off the new iPhone 17 before it’s officially released.
So far Stratus outperforms previous covid iterations (the previous three I’ve been through to be specific) in terms of onset of symptoms (almost overnight), intensity of sore throat, unnecessary violent cough, and the added plus of a nagging headache that makes you feel as if your head was an overinflated balloon and your brains could explode when you least expect it. On the downside, Stratus seems to be lacking in the mucus department compared to previous covid versions.
Overall it’s a 8’5/10 for me, perhaps one of the best variants covid has released so far. Having said that, unless you really are desperate to go through a feverish state for no reason while your whole body cries for mercy, coughing fits are more like mini-training sets and swallowing feels like eating glass, you can probably stick to your usual seasonal cold for another year.
Donal Trump is on fire today.
First, he’s told the UN that London is governed by Sharia Law which is odd because I think I would have noticed as a non-Muslin woman living here if that were the case but maybe the fever has made me forget it.
Then he’s been urging pregnant women to avoid taking Tylenol (which in the UK we know as paracetamol) at all costs. The reason? Apparently it causes autism in children. This statement has been reinforced by the President’s affirmation that in Cuba there is a rumour (sic) that there is no money for Tylenol and there is virtually no autism on the island, which has come as a surprise to Cuban doctors.
Probably by now most people take anything that comes out of Trump’s mouth with a very large bucket of salt. Let’s not forget he is the same person who suggested injecting disinfectant to the body could help fight covid.
Personally I am going to stick to injecting (via small sips) ginger and lemon tea with a dollop of honey and see how that goes. Based on my previous experience, and as Trump himself would say, it can only good happen.
Thursday 25th September
The fever has gone up a bit and I may be reaching my peak in terms of feeling like utter shit.
Congestion has joined the party and now I only have 10 minutes of body autonomy between a coughing or sneezing fit. Luckily the sore throat has massively improved thanks to my concoction of hot water, fresh ginger, lemon and honey. The downside is that I’m drinking lots of it which means I need to pee every 15 minutes, which combined with my other ailments, means I only have 5 minutes of true independence before I need to expell something from any given orifice. I haven’t left the house since Tuesday evening and I am beyond exhausted.
I’ve come across a video of President Emmanuel Macron being held on the street on his way to the UN General Assembly in New York by Trump’s motorcade.
Because Macron had to walk across New York for 30 minutes, the extended footage by journalist Remy Bruisine shows an unlikely scene: the French President being kissed on the head by a passerby, which Macron handled very graciously, pacifying his bodyguards who were ready to intervene. I can’t help but wonder what would have happened had Trump being the one held in Paris by Macron, made to walk for 30 minutes, and touched by a stranger. Better live with the doubt. It could have been the inciting incident of WWIII.
This side of the pond, Nigel Farage has been condemned for falsely accusing immigrants of eating swans from royal parks.
I have to read that twice to make sure this is not the fever messing up with my head and making me hallucinate things as if I were a vulgar ChatGPT generated answer.
The confirmation that this has indeed happened comes from a response straight out of the Royal Parks debunking Farage lies, who seem way firmer in rebuking his outrageous claims than the Prime Minister. You know the situation is bad when you have more faith in the gardeners than in the lord of the manor to keep troublemakers from trespassing the grounds.
By the way, I’m officially adopting swan eater as an insult to call out anyone who is an obnoxious prick and/or insists on spreading false information. It feels both elegant and derogatory enough to leave its recipients completely puzzled and slightly confused about whether I perhaps intended to compliment them in an old-fashioned way. Try and say it out loud. Oh, you cheeky, wide-mouthed swan eater! It sounds absolutely fantastic, almost something that could have come straight out of Shakespeare’s pen.
A friend sends me a voice message to tell me she has really enjoyed a post I wrote yesterday in an attempt to distract myself from everything that hurts. “You’ve really captured that feeling of being inside a feverish dream right now,” she says to me laughing.
“It wasn’t very hard,” I reply.
I'm an anarchist... Get me out of here!
For reasons that would be too long to explain but may or may not have to do with a certain agent of chaos who shall not be named on this publication but also with the fact that I’m feverish and my body aches as if I had been run over by a truck, over the past few days I’…
Friday 26th September
Feeling a lot better today which is a nice improvement.
The cough has almost disappear but unfortunately my abs don’t seem to have benefitted from the extra exercise so it’s all been in vain. To whoever invented the phrase “no pain, no gain,” I want my money back.
By midday an email lands in my inbox asking me to confirm whether I’ll be attending a Christmas’ party at the end of November. This is by far the earliest I’ve received a Christmas invitation in this country.
The early onset of the Christmas spirit in the UK always catches me off guard. The explanation I’ve given myself for it is that this is a way to compensate for how short the actual Christmas festivities are here when they come compared to the two and a half week, full-blown, festive bonanza that is Christmas in Spain, which starts on the 22nd December and runs up to January 7th. In athletic terms, in the UK Christmas is a 100mt race while in Spain is a triathlon and you really need to pace yourself in each discipline (drinking, eating, going out - which are held in singles and doubles competitions as you visit extended family besides your own) to make it alive to the new year.
In what has been a week full of news headlines that have sent people wild for one reason or another, here’s the latest to end the week with a bang: Keir Starmer has announced the introduction of digital IDs, a measure intended to control illegal immigration. This hasn’t been very well received and in fact a petition to against it has already reached over 1.4 million signatures and counting (you can sign the petition here if you’re that way inclined).
Not even Substack and all the absurd changes they’ve made this week alone (please remove that annoying silver flower and the right side bar with trending news!) have found such a strong resistance in so little time.
Now, I’ve never understood why the UK doesn’t have a national ID in place or why people are so reluctant to it.
I say that as a Spanish citizen with a national ID card, which is very common across any European country and it offers an additional form of identification besides a passport, which is considered a secondary ID and is only needed for international travel outside the EU.
Having a national ID card is incredibly useful and before Brexit it was the only document I used to travel. It is done in person at a national police station and the whole process takes less than 20 minutes. You provide a picture, your finger prints, your full name, address, date of birth, parents’ names and place of birth. If you’re a minor, you need a parent to come with you and they verify both identities. It costs less than 20 euros and you walk out with it. Easy peasy.
As I’ve had my documents stolen twice while living abroad (once in Italy and once in London) it gave me great peace of mind to have two IDs with me that I could use in case I lost one or was stolen. Now I have to rely on my passport alone to get in and out of the UK because after Brexit national European IDs are no longer a valid document to get into the UK. The thought of losing or having my passport stolen makes me feel extremely anxious.
However, the national IDs we’re so fond of in Europe aren’t the same as the digital ID Starmer is talking about and the timing of the announcement couldn’t have been more ill-fated so I can understand why people have suddenly reacted against the idea. Based on the news that have been published, it seems more a form of control than anything really useful for the majority of the population on a day to day basis. I struggle to see how this will be an effective method to fight illegal immigration or why it has to be compulsory to have it in order to work in the UK when the National Insurance Number already serves that purpose as it is only obtained after providing proof of identity and proof of employment. I believe after Brexit this has been substituted with proof of right to work in the UK.
Besides, in an age where cyber attacks are on the rise (and a few serious ones have already happened in the UK like this or more recently this) it is important to bear in mind that personal data is extremely juicy for cyber criminals. Creating a digital ID implies that sensitive personal information will be held in a server that isn’t exempt from being breached without having clarity or transparency about who is holding this data and for what exact purpose. It’s worth noting how this has come right after the state visit of Trump to the UK last week, which was followed by the Tech Prosperity Deal and a wave of investment announcements by US companies into the UK. One can only but wonder why digital IDs, a concept first proposed by Tony Blair and then refused on account of the cost and the infrastructured needed for them, are being discussed now.
Speaking of Blair and crazy headlines this week, his name is ringing to run the transnational Gaza authority. If it weren’t because the fever has already disappeared I would think someone has just clicked play on a film called “Colonialism: The Return. Now filmed for IMAX.”
The situation of UK politics this week can be summed up in two words: NOT GOOD.
I’m reading an interview with Greg James where I learn his first gig at BBC Radio 1 paid £80,000 a year (he’s now making £425,000). I like James and I think he does a great job at the Breakfast Show but I’m not sure whether that kind of salary (funded by the public) can be justified. In an exercise of intellectual honesty, I’m also willing to admit that if I made as much money as him I wouldn’t have an issue with that figure.
He is warm, not afraid to be silly, very engaging and good at talking to strangers (both famous and not) and he manages to keep the energy levels up at ungodly hours. To be perfectly frank with you that’s not very different from what I do at any networking event I attend (when not sick) and I don’t get a fraction of the money for my efforts. Clearly I need to rethink my professional future because my outstanding talents are wasted in the vicious cycle of creativity and tech/AI events void I have spiralled into.
The interview also mentions that James lives in North London which confirms my suspicion that we are neighbours.
I already know he walks his dog in Hampstead Heath and he is a regular at the local bookshop as per his Instagram posts. In addition to that, I once bumped into him and his wife on a Sunday while I was on my way to the charity shop. I was juggling a few bags with overflowing clothes and not dressed particularly well as I was not expecting to meet anyone I knew, so this is probably why he gave a little jump when I popped my head from a pile of jumpers to give him a twice over with wide opened eyes (needed to make sure it was really him). Verdict: He is very tall and very attractive.
Before you accuse me of creeping the living shit out of celebrities I randomly cross paths with while going about my business, my reaction was due to a mix of shock at seeing someone famous in my neck of the woods and surprise at realising how tall he actually is in the wild as opposed to his seated self at the Radio 1 Breakfast.
The encounter reminded me to that time when after covid I met a colleague in person for the first time and couldn’t help to remark very enthusiastically he was way taller than his seated online version let on. Apparently I wasn’t the only one impressed by his height (6’2”) and someone had even told him that through the screen he radiated short guy energy. “Whoever said that to you has an obvious height complex.” He didn’t offer names but his laughter validated I had hit the metaphoric (and maybe literal) nail on the head.
Anyway, now that my symptoms are in remission I need to do a bit of stalking to find out where Greg James lives and maybe pop around for a chat on career prospects. After all, we do a very similar job lifting people’s spirits up in times of distress, he on the radio and me at work events and especially on this newsletter, so maybe he has some useful pointers on how I too can join the 1%. It’s not so much about the money, you see, but the power. It’d be nice to stop worrying about being kicked out of the UK just because or being evicted again once I become part of the establishment.
Fingers crossed enough time has passed for him to have forgotten our previous encounter. I’ll try to look a bit more presentable.
I mean, what’s the worst-case scenario if I knock at his door unannounced, completely out of the blue and creep him out for a second time and beg him to please lift me out of poverty and don’t allow the wide-mouthed swan eater to deport me?
It can only good happen.
Abroad is an independent publication about London, living in between cultures, creativity, and being human in the age of artificial intelligence.
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Hope you’re feeling better, Cristina. No brain fog in your writing, that’s for sure!
Is it only me that thinks that anything Tony Blair touches is automatically going to be regarded as highly suspect, just as his political legacy has become toxic because of the Iraq war? And from Blair’s point of view, why can’t he see what a poisoned chalice this purported role would be?