London Adventures #11 - A day for dedication

Holy crap, Zac's shower is so bloody hot.

Every morning, I take off my clothes and jump into the shower, completely forgetting that every time I keep scolding myself with the liquid lava that is the hot water that flows from the brass spout that is the head of his shower. I commend him and his house mates for the shear strength and determination they show each day; plundering them selves under water heated by the devil himself.

And that is what I saw a lot of today—pure and strong dedication. I saw dedication to religion and dedication to work; and to all those people that this is about but will likely never read this, today you were seen by a 20 year old male, and it made him smile. So thank you.

This morning, I noticed something that I guess not may people would really notice. They'd see it, but I doubt they'd really feel thankful for what they saw. I got on the tube at Golders Green (on the Northern Line) at around 9:48am heading towards Edgewear; as the train pulled in, I noticed it was different from most day. Today it was sparkling clean, like really clean and shiny—of which I hadn't seen on a London Underground train. Looking at it, I thought to myself, someone has cleaned this, and that is likely somebodies job, and it's likely not all that fun; but this person has put there all into this and it's likely to go unnoticed because everyone is so busy here. So whoever you are, the person who cleaned that train; you very strangely made my morning that bit better.

As I rode the tube, I felt myself falling into a trace and my thoughts got really rather deep. I started realising my surroundings, and thought to myself "Three years ago, I was likely sat in
the common room of a fishing town's Sixth Form and now I'm halfway through university, I've done a fountain of design and I'm now swanning around London, learning at NME." And there isn't more I can say than that, but I was just blown away by how much has changed in my life, just in education; nevermind the rest of my life.

So, I went into the offices and carried on with the feature I had been set. I worked on it, with one tea break right the way through to lunch at 1pm; and I left for lunch on a point where I was quite happy with it. For lunch, I was once again whisked away to the pub with my fellow editorial warriors. Treated to a pint twice in two weeks? Best internship ever. At the pub, I met a nice fellow by the name of John, who I was informed is the creative direction at 'Sport' the free magazine handed out in London. I had a lovely Pale Ale and headed back with 'da crew' to the office, to finish off the feature I'm working on.

I feel that I cannot talk about the feature as it will be coming up in a future issue; and speaking of dedication, I feel that I have put a lot of hard work into the 6 pages that I have been given to design and dedicated a lot of time to make this the best I could. Unfortunately, as hard as I've tried, I think my version isn't going to print as I've seen alternate versions of the same article printed off around the office. Clearly I'm not disappointed or annoyed because to get something printed in NME just off the back of and internship would be nothing short of a miracle, but my gosh I do wish it could be. I'm bloody over the moon they printed my name in an issue and the fact I even got the chance to do any of the work I have done, or even to be considered to have the internship is just a massive accolade for me.

So here's to hoping, that by some chance they love my work so much that they want to put it in print; or even make a statue of me—either will do really. So the working day ended and I had just finished the feature article, showed Tony and Mark and headed on my way back to warmth of home and my laptop. I got all the way back to zone 3 with nothing really taking my interest, but as I got off the train I saw something that both made me feel a great amount of respect and happiness.

It's 6pm on a winters evening, and I'm looking at a dark wet patch of grass, inside the grounds of a train station. There is a man kneeling with his shoes by his side, shadowed by a large tree on this minimal patch of grass. He is clearly an employee of the underground and is using his break, in which to pray. There is clearly no space for him, and he is praying next to a really busy road, but none-the-less he is so dedicated to his faith that he won't allow his improper surroundings or even cold weather deter him from praising his faith. And although I am an atheist myself; I have such a great amount of respect for this man. 

Just the sight of a prayer mat in England carries a large amount of stigma, most due to false political idiots like the EDL and Britian First. And this man, is saying fuck you to all that because he is so dedicated to his religion. And I respect the hell out of that, because I don't feel I've even been that dedicated to anything in my life.

(SORRY) I didn't take any images today, so here's a Eric Cantona-esque quote I thought of on the tube today: Creativity is formed from the lack of it's existence.