It holds so many surprises, multi-culture and a wide variety of entertainment to amuse even the most monotonous of people. The city attracts millions of individual characters: businessmen and women, homeless, buskers, Goths, punks, grungers, prostitutes, criminals the list is never ending.
If I"m looking for a bit of retail therapy I always head straight to Oxford Circus accompanied as usual by my trusty yet comical friend Cassie. Just as I got out of the tube station, I"m greeted by "Topshop," a deluxe yet affordable clothes outlet. It's when I wander down towards Bond Street that I wish I"d saved some of the birthday money I"d received the year before just so I could feel confident enough to walk through the doors of "Selfridges," thinking I could actually purchase something. I envy girls my age parading the streets in their Gina shoes and designer clobber. I know it's shallow, but everybody feels more glamorous if they wear clothing with a name.
We took the London Underground to Leicester Square. One of my favourite routines of going to the West End is travelling on the tube with Cassie. We satisfied our boredom on the tube by getting great pleasure out of a whoopee cushion during the "silence" between stations.
Our Saturday ritual was to wonder round the Trocadero in Piccadilly Circus, to have a laugh and rinse our ten pence pieces in those machines where you drop a coin in hopefully causing another to fall off a shelf below which you would win. Blatantly the coins were stuck together conning eager children into spending all their allowance. I remember we stumbled across a karaoke machine in which you could record your own tape for a bargain at five pounds! I think we picked Madonna's "Like a Virgin." Unfortunately it was barely recognisable as a Madonna classic because of our minimal singing techniques and the poor sound quality of the tape. Some bargain!.
To unwind after all that wonderful, talent less singing, we would take a stroll along the Thames riverside, admiring the wealth, hoping that one day we could live in that kind of luxury.
