This is a story about an Italian hustler in Shoreditch. He broke all the rules, lied to everyone and never took any responsibilities for his actions. He cost me a considerable amount of time and money and I should hate him but for some reason I empathise with his desire for success. He tried, tried and tried again. And he doesn’t stop trying.

Likewise I never stopped chasing him in court for my unpaid wages. I kept on trying and trying despite having no chance of success. Everyone told me it was a waste of time. As enforcing a court order against this Shoreditch playboy would be like throwing spilt milk at a beggar.

Accepting work from Leonardo (not his real name) was a huge mistake. But when you are unemployed and looking for jobs; you try things, silly things, especially if you want to avoid working in an office. Freelancing is an extremely hard thing to do. It’s far easier to take a salary from a big company and bank the savings. Doing your own thing offers freedom and creativity but many people fail working on their own and some more spectacularly than others.

By joining CAN U in June 2013 I unwittingly signed a freelance contract with a startup company on the verge of collapse. Despite obsessively talking about #collaboration and #collaborating on their website their business model was opaque at best. Having a creative army of designers, writers and artists on your books is impressive but it won’t make you any money.

That’s the problem with many East London startup companies. During the first year you have a shiny new website, glamour launch party, coke-addled staff and a low-interest business loan to pay for it all. The second year the bills come through…and this proved to be Leonardo’s downfall.

An infinitely hopeful man with zero understanding of business, Leonardo believed he was predestined to become the greatest entrepreneur in the world. On running up 10k worth of debts in unpaid wages and countless feuds, Leonardo sadly proved to be just another social media consultant in a playground full of young CEO’s.

On being hired under false pretenses, I found myself overseeing their content strategy, writing blogs and updating their ‘What’s On’ microsite. Despite having nothing in common with Leonardo, I initially found him a positive and enjoyable person to work with.

Leonardo’s biggest problem was that he loved the idea of being a CEO but didn’t have the foresight or discipline to be one. For example he became convinced that writing in caps was a good idea. “FROM TODAY I WANT ALL COMMUNICATIONS IN CAPS”, I was surreally told one morning. I responded to his email straight away and explained that from a writing perspective, caps are considered loud and aggressive and it would upset future clients.

“THIS IS PART OF OUR NEW COMMUNICATION STRATEGY AND IS NON -NEGOTIABLE. CAPS ARE POSITIVE AND GREAT FOR BUSINESS”.

Only they are not great for business – they are annoying and irritate nearly everyone.  It soon became clear that Leonardo loved taking calls and updating his Facebook status but did precious little else.

CAN U failed to pay me for my 90+ hours work or any of their staff. Unable to remunerate his freelancers, Leonardo claimed he couldn’t pay anyone until CAN U received ten grand from an Italian restaurant in Hammersmith.

His negotiating tactics for settling this debt involved going over to West London and throwing chairs at the owner. Later he is alleged to have paid some heavies £250 (on the advice of a bogus debt collector) to bash the restaurant owner’s legs. Let’s just assume his methods were unsuccessful.

Abandoning all of his debts in July 2013 he tried to relaunch CAN U as a phoenix company trading under a slightly different name. His former colleagues were bitterly angry but couldn’t find a way to challenge him. Undeterred by his ridiculous emails, I pursued my wages in the small claims court and won a default judgement against CAN U.

It was a moral victory, but a pyrrhic one. CAN U have no funds left available and I will never be compensated for my efforts. No regrets from me – someone had to try and take him down. CAN U are still officially trading but only because I have a court order to keep them superficially alive.

On pursuing his entrepreneurial ambitions through social media, Leonardo appears no closer to making it big. Although I hope one day his fearlessness is rewarded. Reading his bizarre updates on Twitter #alwaysbehonest #nevergiveup I find myself almost wanting him to succeed.

As for all the lies expressed by Leonardo since I joined CAN U, I don’t think he’s a bad person. On the surface he’s a friendly and entertaining character. He keeps on demanding the impossible and makes glorious mistakes. Playing it safe is certainly not his style. He makes me laugh even though I should want to kill him.

Leonardo keeps on trying and has never compromised unlike this blogger. I guess for that reason alone, I am a grand down but can’t find it within myself to dislike him.

On leaving my desk at 11.59am, I press CTRL+ALT+DEL and hurry down towards a chain pub for my lunch break. Getting to the pub early is very important. I’m not even hungry at noon but I like to get out before the wolves arrive.

Carrying my notepad and books, I order a glass of coke and sit down by a frosted French window. Sometimes I read great novels, occasionally I write something worth publishing but without fail I stare outside the window. A disappointing spectacle I must add but it hasn’t been for a lack of trying.

Every day I watch a shuffling parade of forty-something men in grey and brown coats; swiftly followed by an Orthodox Jewish man with a scratchy beard.

Not to be left out I see a mad tourist with a yellow plastic mac and pink baseball camp. He’s funny and ridiculous. I write something down at last. He offers something missing from a lunch break in Farringdon, when listening to saccharine American pop music and watching people dressed for work.

30th January 2014

On closing my flat door in Hoxton, I go down three flights of ex-council stairs and head towards the Regent’s Canal. I’ve left early for a change and the estate has been rinsed clean. It’s raining again and I will arrive in Farringdon with mucky wet jeans…

Walking in London gives me a sense of freedom and independence. Perhaps it’s a consequence of never learning to drive that I place an enormous faith in my legs to get me everywhere. From tramping along rustic Scottish cliffs as a teenager to commuting alongside millions in Farringdon, I walk in order to survive.

Usually I have white buds in my ears when I leave the flat, they help block out the grey streets around me. Elegiac feels are the perfect companion for a winter stroll but I put them aside for now. I’ve been listening to Harvest Moon by Neil Young on repeat – it has a romantic hazy melancholy that I like.

The old waterway has changed quite significantly since I was last here. A shrill metallic drilling breaks up the silence from across the waterway. They are constructing a new social housing estate to replace the one they flattened last year – a thirty year circle of growth, stagnation and decay.

On my way northwards I pass underneath curved Georgian bridges while listening to the lonely cry of mallards. Creeping gothic ivy spills over from millionaire homes and smoke-shacked barges bellow out charred peat. It’s a good deal romantic on the towpath.

Charging up a leaf soaked hill I arrive opposite an Islington primary school. The canal has gone now and I must get a move on. Streaming with traffic I join an invisible cast of commuters on Upper Street and increase my walking speed. A crush of red buses float past and workers run towards Angel looking for shelter.

Walking away from station towards Farringdon, I spot St Paul’s Cathedral and the Shard looking bleached and sad in the distance. My journey is nearly over now and I’m running out of time. I am fortunate that I can walk to work, as most Londoners coin out small fortunes on public transport. My legs take me everywhere – that’s what they do.

Just on approaching those glass revolving doors on a wet Thursday morning, I sense something is missing from my journey. It’s only taken me thirty minutes and I have everything I need, but deep down walking can only take you so far.

Asian tourists are posing together in Borough Market with an oyster, taking pictures while cradling a shell of wonder. I stroll past pheasants hanging on forked hooks and watch queues form outside a roasted hog. Served with cress salad and apple sauce, it’s a ravenous dish for men (and women).

Outside a peroxide blonde takes a selfie with a cigarette jutting out of her ruby lips. Trying to catch her reflection on the Shard, a sharp arrestingly empty device, and one that serves no purpose.

Listening to the industrial hiss of progress creak upstairs, I feel under pressure to constantly upgrade and fight. Even going for lunch is a competition now as workers storm past me with their falafel wraps. You have to adapt to new ideas and respond accordingly.

I explore a few more stalls, agonise over some price boards and settle for a sausage roll for £2.5o.

That’s lunchtime at Borough Market.

I love the internet as much as I love geography, it’s an infinite world of endless possibilities and one that allows me to expand my universe. From following violent revolutions in Kiev to going on a date in New York, the internet is a far cry from the banal conversations you have to endure IRL.

Cyberspace is a riotously intelligent place and massively exciting too. Only virtual networks are full of illusions and despite being able to instantaneously chat with someone 4745 miles away, we still have to live and breathe in the physical world. You need money and time to experience life on a big scale and rarely (in my experience) do you get access to both.

Hope is a temporary form of insanity and I usually immerse myself in long deep thoughts when walking through East London housing estates. My rented world of tower blocks, grocery stores and loitering teen gangs.

When I buy groceries at my local co-operative shop, I often find myself dreaming of a new life elsewhere. There is something about half-price pizzas and 30% off non-bio liquitabs that makes me feel inordinately depressed. And that’s before I make eye contact with the service assistants standing behind the till.

Last spring I was made redundant from an exhausted media company and finally escaped from my desk. After the initial shock of seeing my employer go bust, I received a handsome pay out and experienced what I had always craved – free time and lots of money.

With the virgin bloom of fresh green leaves and daffodils swaying in the mud of Anglican churchyards, I sat in nearby Hoxton cafes searching for a plan. And by sheer chance I found myself embarking upon a transatlantic journey that was foolish, romantic and utterly exhilarating. Life’s not meant to be lived in one place.

And on finding myself in an almost identical situation (minus the severance package) I am pining for a new hopeful song. As there is probably someone out there who is perfect for you but because of serendipity you’ll probably never meet or spend enough time together to make it right.

As you can stay within your postcode, or maybe travel a few miles by tube to the West End, or even take a wee trip to Brighton. But you always end up in the same place as before. Back where you first started and where is the fun in that?

Sentimentality can play tricks on you and you must look forward. But on walking through East London on a weekday afternoon, I realise we’re not as close or better connected as I once hoped. We’re the same as we always were, living our everyday lives, thousands of miles apart.

I’ve been going over my Tumblr back catalogue and I used to write far more openly in the past. For some reason I failed to keep it up-to-date. I probably stopped writing because nobody was reading and loving my posts. My Tumblr page is offbeat, random and completely anonymous. I have 34 followers and I have no idea who they are.

I don’t use my brand name.

I find it sad how we require metrics to feel like something is worthwhile – readers, hits, likes and stats. Does everything have to be passively read and shared by millions? Tumblr is one of the few places where I am completely honest. It’s completely transcendent. Everything else I post on the internet is just for show – including here. A school playground where I conform and pretend to be like everyone else with varying contrarian pretensions.

In the end none of this hustling for attention really matters. I write simply to keep a record of my thoughts, views (which I endlessly revise) and places I have visited. Sometimes I get weary of the cold light of content beaming from multiple screens. And then occasionally I read something that resonates. Something heart warming with a poetic sensibility.

Writing is about finding empathy with strangers when you least expect it.

I had just dropped out of college.  I had moved back to Los Angeles.  I had moved into my first apartment.  I had bought an amazing couch.  I had taken a picture of myself  holding up Finally Truffaut  to send to my ex-boyfriend.  I realized I was hardly ever photographed.  I wanted to change that.  I was becoming an actress.  I was still a poet. Slowly, I began to post pictures of myself in the morning on Facebook.  It was supposed to be a joke.  Who was really going to care about how I felt when I got up that morning? Then a number of people began to care.  Truthfully, I just wanted to have a record of my changing.  I am still changing.

Redchurch Street is my favourite Shoreditch thoroughfare, a piss stained alley reclaimed by French cafes selling kale cupcakes and artisan toast. Unmarked galleries are everywhere and the street art is commissioned behind closed doors. Graffiti is a hand made billboard these days – it just depends on who’s paying. With peeling DJ stickers on lamp posts and derelict buildings covered by scaffolding, Redchurch Street is my foremost memory of East London. Ruinenlust layered with flyers and rat droppings. The paradox that rusts continues to this day.

I woke up in Cambridge yesterday, striding through a beautiful royal palace with an elegant green lawn and empty gravel paths. Ten years lay between us. I stumbled alone through this beautiful novel of a town, meandering past mooing cows, fishermen and antique bicycles. Everything felt remarkably still and privileged. Despite coming from a semi-rural background, I often forget how tranquil life can be outside of the big urban centres.

I will remember this morning for the rest of my life.

And looking back you I was more malleable at university, more naive, passionate and it’s better to fall in love before you turn 25. Experience forges barriers and excuses. You forget who you really are. Refreshing websites and checking my phone all the time, I wish things could be different. I wish I could be more optimistic and less embarrassing.

But here I am back in London staring out of my bedroom window, pining for the years and chances I will never get back.

Walking down Dumbarton Road in Glasgow, I used to love food shopping and would regularly come home with four bags full. Like a parallel universe my trips to Morrisons took place before the automatisation of checkout assistants and chip-and-pin machines. Burgers and chips had yet to be rebranded as a gourmet meal and hummus and olives were still considered ‘posh food’. Plastic bags were free like they are now.

And while culinary speaking I remain a unmitigated disaster, I used to take a hunter’s pride in having a full fridge. It gave me enormous satisfaction buying chicken fillets, orange juice and yoghurt pots. Family-sized tiger bread loafs were regularly purchased without a moment’s thought. Hot spicy condiments were sampled for the first time and the gas oven was like a golden age scientific discovery. Before I moved down to Glasgow I had never cooked before and for a good reason too.

Crossing over a rain peppered bridge to Partick, I used to walk through a moody, poetic landscape of ruddy tenements and old white men. A sodden world of VHS rental stores, tanning salons and a vibrating flour mill overlooking the River Kelvin. It rained all the time, but that rarely bothered me. I lived in Glasgow for about six years and never once owned an umbrella. Looking back it was remarkable how everyone just accepted you would get soaked every time you left home.

I remember vividly how I used to tower over my fellow pedestrians on Dumbarton Road. My height marked me out from the beginning. Soon enough I would arrive at Morrison’s and depart their sliding doors with an aching shoulder from carrying an over-subscribed basket.

I bought garbage mostly and I can only cringe at what I used to put in my fridge. But I felt grown up and independent and I loved providing for my ex-girlfriends and northern friends when they came over to visit. It’s a far cry from the pod-based science fiction world I live in now. I miss having a clean and social kitchen. We had fun times together.

Stockpiling items I don’t want or necessarily need, I detest food shopping now. Living from moment to moment, I snack intermittently and dine cheaply in cafés and food market stalls. Perhaps I lack patience and culinary flair but I’ve grown tired of traipsing up and down supermarkets, piling up treasures that rot, from which the spirit has already fled.

Author’s Note

Life is not supposed to be confined to one place and living in an N1 council estate, I sometimes long to move on and write about something new. If that turns out to be case, then it certainly won’t be in Arnold Circus, Shoreditch but you’ll have to keep reading to find out why. The article below was originally published on my East London portfolio website that I occasionally share on job application letters, only if I feel the recipients will approve.

This place I prefer to keep to myself. 

Personal blogs have become desperately old-fashioned with their densely written paragraphs chiming against nanosecond Vines and YOs. By virtue of having no readers I feel I can write more openly than in the past.

I do hope this will mean something to someone one day though. Until then I hereby present a re-published story about a fairytale council estate in Shoreditch.

***

For most Londoners I know, the term ‘ex-council’ is a pejorative expressed with a wry shrug. Cheek by jowl people move here and live in council estates under the loving supervision of private landlords. It’s a necessity rather than a choice and if you don’t like it, then move to Leeds.

Everyone dreams about their ideal home and as a self-declared dreamer and social climber, I’d love a two-bedroom flat in Arnold Circus. Designed by Victorian philanthropists for the respectful working-classes, Arnold Circus is one of the most beautiful and fascinating council estates in Britain.

With its red brick tenements individually named after villages on the River Thames and connected by leafy boulevards that extend from a central communal bandstand, Arnold Circus is like a real-time painting fashioned from the rubble of dismantled slums.

This Victorian model village has a fairytale quality that surpasses anything you may find in London’s richer neighbourhoods. What is really inspiring is how street design and architecture can improve people’s lives. It’s like every footstep you make has been accounted for on a map. Indeed there aren’t many council estates registered by English Heritage for their special historic interest.

Still home to thousands of social tenants and a few private professionals, I will never rent, let alone, own a flat in Arnold Circus. But for while I still live in East London it will remain my favourite conduit – a gateway to better things.

With the rich green canopies sheltering bourgeois dog walkers and teen gangs, it feels like my footsteps become brush strokes whenever I walk through Arnold Circus. Like I’m subconsciously taking part in someone else’s painting. A snapshot of consciousness amidst the overgrown ferns and rising Plane trees.

Arnold Circus is a bona fide masterpiece in urban planning and all I am is a passing visitor, a solitary figure traversing on foot.

I don’t how know I get myself into these situations. A mid-summer calamity formed the genesis of this move, it pains me to think about it even now. How could I have fucked up so badly. It’s part of my character that incidents of virtually no significance throw me to the stars or plunge me into speechless depressions.

I wish I felt more nervous, it would be more fitting, or perhaps my sense of ease is a reflection of the times. English as an international language, internet on tap and a globalised workforce thriving in the city of London.

I left Scotland a long time ago.

Travelling to Venice at sunset, I arrive at dusk with a gorgeous milky sky sinking behind the Adriatic. Looking at the old maps in my guidebook, it’s remarkable how little the city has changed. How is electricity even possible? For now at least it’s dry and warm. Daily flooding is a hazard I could do without.

Lugging two suitcases and a rucksack on an aquatic waterway with a freshly cropped head, I sat next to Midwestern tourists talking about Becks and Peroni. Their broad Yankee accents were charming and gullible in the kindest possible way. Tourist chatter is something I’ll have to get used to and fast. Accents unlock untapped prejudices reinforced by literature and modern television. Cultural differences, cultural differences.

Already my proposed accommodation has been adversely affected because an old Venetian landlady refused my tenancy as ‘English are always drunk.’ I was amused to hear this story. Such overt racism is funny when it’s a white British guy at the receiving end. And let’s face it, protesting that I’m Scottish is highly unlikely to assuage her concerns about my sobriety.

Almost immediately I felt the language barrier in Venice for English is a professional tongue not a social one. Most people here speak it competently out of necessity. Stumbling into deli stores and restaurants, I immediately realised I have to urgently learn some Italian phrases and numbers. It’s tiresome nodding, smiling and handing over excessively large notes.

In my experience, buying petty junk food alone is ruinously expensive in Venice and I don’t want to eat pizza every night because funghi is easy to pronounce. Meanwhile I have to forgive myself for being an island monoglot, I have been hired for English language skills after all.

For now at least, that’s my forte.

Sitting in a Venetian office watching an elderly Italian couple attend their pot plants, I type into my laptop. Same tabs, same websites and streamed songs as before. No one understands why I am here. Sleep has become a luxury and I am staying in a bog ugly hotel until early November.

On boycotting the only affordable stable in Venice, I am witnessing my body metamorphosis into something leaner. Many evenings I have gone to bed hungry and longing for breakfast.

Although I must acknowledge that my diet in London was snack driven and quite frankly atrocious. Idly wandering down to Shoreditch High Street to buy a cheap Bánh Mì baguette for dinner, only to change your mind and have Jewish bagel instead is a big city luxury.

Come nightfall I go running along the quayside and this only accentuates my physical condition. Streaming past the tourist starlings at St Marks Square, I skip over ornate bridges and race passenger boats and cruise liners. It feels easier and necessary to run longer and harder over here.

Venice is like a spooky romantic ghost story after midnight, where you develop a heightened sensitivity to the elegant stroking of a Gondola’s oar. For sheer aesthetic beauty, I am simply not a gifted enough writer to handsomely describe what I see.

Forced to be more social than I am otherwise inclined, ambivalent friendships are sparked up with passing strangers and drinking orange Spritz cocktails in wine bars is cheaper than beer.

Venice is virtually crime free and rats appear after dark once the selfies have gone to bed. The plague of a medieval Disneyland that nobody has paid to see.

Sometimes I feel unworthy of living in Venice. I don’t pay enough attention to details, especially now the numbers are slowing down. Walking back to the hotel with my headphones on, I feel guilty for not listening to bursts of opera or cutlery exchanging hands in restaurants. Spotify is a generic experience. Play, pause and repeat your songs over and over again.

We are going through the first phase of hyper acceleration, an unprecedented boom of global fertility all wanting the same photograph of the Grand Canal. Likewise I’m just a temporary EU migrant passing through the loveliest city in the world. It was an opportunity I couldn’t let pass.

Everyday I see newly married couples snuggle in beautifully crafted gondolas and it’s very much a case of play, pause and repeat. Same posed smile, loving tilt of the head and furrowed brow, I’ve witnessed a thousand honeymoons upload their story underneath a bridge. Seen through the prism of light, it’s a unique private moment, one shared with loved ones and marvelled over by long distance friends.

Only I see the same love story every single day.

Away from the watery parade, I remove my headphones, the plastic grooves gnashing onto my collar bone and enter an inverted Catholic church. Squashed inside the Venetian back streets, I arrive in a chaste world of silence and reflection.

Despite being militantly secular in my global politics, I took comfort in this medieval refuge. Photography is banned in Venetian churches and the circus of life takes a deferential pause. With my rucksack weighing on my back, I stood in silence amongst elaborately carved tombs and dead wooden benches.

It’s one of the few places in Venice where you can share a private moment, a world without flashing cameras and streamed playlists. Outside the craziness goes on oblivious, and I have to get back to my hotel; shower, get changed and go online again. My smartphone might vibrate with loving messages.

There must be something about human nature that turns everything into a routine.

‘Each of us wages a private battle each day between the grand fantasies we have for ourselves and what actually happens.’

Cathy Guisewite

Already I am making plans for next year. Get fitter, stronger, healthier and brighter than ever before. I need to consume less sugar and run harder and longer. Make my heart beat even faster. Being marooned in a bitter cold village over Christmas makes you look forward. Travelling backwards is a melancholy street.

I’m already thinking how I can improve my East London flat. I have a new flatmate arriving in January and I want to live somewhere effervescent and colourful. Nobody visits me because I tend to socialise outside of my triple shared abode, but I want to make it perfect regardless. A glorious new mattress needs to be delivered, small book shelves ordered and freshly chilled wines stacked nicely in the fridge. Make my place look as cheerful as it can possibly be.

We live a visual age and I regret not taking more photographs. Not being in enough photographs. I wish I looked more handsome underneath a flashing bulb. I think my life would be infinitely happier if that was the case. For reasons unknown but to nature, I prefer to hide behind words and look the other way. I want everything to be perfect.

I need to learn when to omit unnecessary words and write more than I did last year. Be more open and honest. There is one love story I have always wanted to write, but I shy away every time. I romanticise far too much and decay with indecision, but I read and watch many plays.

I just hope it won’t all be for nothing.

I had my photo taken again this morning. My blurry silhouette is probably filling up pixels on Instagram as I write this story. It happens every day, observing untold love stories walking over Rialto Bridge. Europe’s most famous crossing is forever swelling with tourists wanting their Facebook cover of the Grand Canal.

Every day I cross over Rialto Bridge on my way to work. I love watching little men scurry off their boats exchanging ropes for boxes; frantically unpacking wine and chocolates. Occasionally an ambulance dashes underneath like a Bond villain under siege and even the waste disposal boat is fascinating as it churns out steam.

Church bells are crashing around me every hour, but I need to make myself eligible to live in London. Make a leap back towards metropolitan life. Nurse glittering bruises on even broader shoulders. I told my new Lolita-esque flatmate before I left that I have a lot of love to give. It’s a source of comfort to dream and care about someone, like asking a shadow to dance.

Strange how you travel so far only to daydream about the same thing. Silly I know but January has always been a reflective time of year.

Come nightfall I race past Venetian sail boats, angling my body towards the Lido. I don’t want to run after work, but for vanity reasons alone I persist on doing so. Endless daydreams seep like the waves, as I rise and fall down every beautiful crossing. A bridge for each year I am unable to match. All because someone captured my imagination during a particular moment in time.

Elderly couples in minx coats look upon me like I’m a different species. Dumbfounded afresh at that scaling leaping figurine skipping over bridges by the sea. My journey is now complete and I’m walking through St Mark’s Square with sweat glistening down my heaving chest.

Back home I switch on the heating, shower and prepare something to eat and still don’t feel complete. I eat more until I feel uncomfortable. It’s getting late now. I have no idea why I do this. This blocking urge to feel nothing and full simultaneously.

In a renovated church in deepest foggy Venice, there is a Bolshevik disco taking place far away from the centre. Half sunk and with a beatnik charm, this club is gunning for billionaire yachts in Venezia. Anti-navy posters are peeling in the cloakroom and dandy bohemians congregate outside with their iPhones and cigarettes. I have no idea where we are or how I’m getting back.

Earlier I had been following a Lido local, an enormously handsome Chilean man and a floppy indie boy from Torino. It cost us three euros to get in, and I will never be able to come back without a guide. My sense of direction is terrible and I struggle whenever I have to deviate from a clearly defined route. Venice is a damp introspective maze after dark, like Victorian London just without the gin and terror.

Pushing our way to the bar #NOFUTURE and anti-Bush posters fill up every permissible space. Vino bianco is served in lethal shot glasses, and bottles of red wine are funnelled into curvy glass caskets. That’s my abiding memory of the night.

A vintage jazz band perform Roxy Music singles and Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This). Their shuffling audience could be their grandchildren, but age doesn’t seem to matter here. Alongside the wide-eyed misfits and ageing lotharios looking for one last kiss, I find myself drifting between moods. Alcohol is no longer as exciting as it used to be.

Watching smoke rise and temperatures soar, I drift between rooms nursing cheap wine and its slim pickings for someone like myself. I have no language skills and my time here is fast running out. Only now I’m grateful for jazz music and that there isn’t a Trip Advisor sticker in sight.

Surrounded by old money in a Venetian town house, I was summoned upstairs by my elderly masters. An epic canvas of St. Marks Square dominated proceedings, like I needed a reminder of where I am living.

Earlier in the same street, a damp alleyway full of pot plants behind the Grand Canal, my boss explained I had to come with him: ‘I need to stay friends with them, Daniel, do you understand?’ I know this is an unfashionable thing to admit in any walk of life. But I like my boss. He’s warm, entertaining and affable. A networking hustler with an eye for a new deal.

After years of working in sterile British offices, my brief sojourn in Italy has been anything but dull. Like my meeting in Oddo’s court, where my apartment’s bills and surcharges were finally revealed. A naked triumph of greed and entitlement, where as a pawn without a voice, I watched Oddo and his wife deliver their demands to my boss.

Sitting opposite them at their grand table, I felt the full weight of powerlessness. They were inadvertently stripping away my salary by making me responsible for their communal property debts.

Once I realised what they were doing and deducted from the paperwork that I was being charged for more than just a electricity bill. I sat silently like my boss’s errant son on remand for a crime I did not commit.

I felt enraged by their shameless greed, but I couldn’t let my boss down. Not in front of him because unlike in past I know the power of words. When to speak and in this instance when to say nothing. I am pragmatic, savvy and calculating in these situations. You play the game.

It’s important to always pick the right words, and refuse to shake hands when I finally depart from my apartment’s front door.

Dozing on my pillow, I wake up and have thirty minutes to spare. Outside the pneumatic groan of the 394 bus trails past on route towards Hackney Downs. My phone is buzzing with messages and the second alarm is just about to go off.

It’s noisy outside and the estate is getting ready for work.

Housewives are chattering outside my balcony and packs of kids in woolly hats are going to school. Local drivers are in the hunt for a parking spot. Downstairs a coarse man nursing a semi-circle of ill-health is effing and blinding like a complete utter cunt.

My alarm is now vibrating on a cold sheet of cotton.

Surrounded by grim tower blocks and dazzling towers of chrome and glass, I prepare for eight hours of home working. Gone are the crashing bells of Venezia and waking up to water taxis and gondola men whooshing past at dawn.

Ole! Ole! Ole!

I lived in a paradise for six months. That gives me comfort as my body swivels on a chair and switches on a bright electronic light.