the last tube from Piccadilly to Heathrow Terminals 1,2,3&5 passes through Piccadilly Circus at 12:32AM. i know this because i have to know this - that was the latest possible time i could get there and still get out here tonight. i made sure i had plenty of leeway, and if i remember right i passed through there at around 11:47PM. TSO headed off on Sunday morning, leaving me to the last of my packing and running around. our last few days together were spent chilling out most of the time, with trips to the pub and a night out watching As You Like It performed at Shakespeare's Globe thrown in. all told, i think we had a really nice time - a lot crammed into a relatively short period of time, but none of it rushed. lots of walking, trips to Cambridge and Paris, nights at the pub and living the London life... it was a good way to finish off my time in this town.
i took a timeout and hung with the Grey Man in Hyde Park for the afternoon, which was probably a poorly considered move, but still something i wasn't going to miss - one last pleasant couple of hours sitting around on the grass sinking the last of the beers from the fridge. i hit the flat to throw the last of my shit into my bags and bolt off to Woolwich and a night crashing on SiJ's couch before the end. i was exhausted dragging all my crap through the bus and train, then up the hill to her place but relieved that at least it was all finally done and spent the rest of the evening sitting around with her and Lisa shooting the breeze until it was time to pass out.
my packing took days - frenzied periods of throwing things into one bag or another interspersed with time spent backing up data and preparing my Eee for 3 months on the road, my 500GB external hard drive full of movies and backups of crucial data (music, photos, that sort of thing) copied onto my 160GB backup drive which was then wrapped deep in clothes and soft things for preservation in case of the worst. i've done runs to the charity bins to throw out clothes that no longer fit and which i have no real need to drag back across the world (can somebody please think of the carbon?), and went into Bite with a bag load of stuff which i gave away in a joke auction... and somehow managed to score 10 quid for my troubles. i've packed and moved so many times in the last decade that you'd think that i'd be an expert at it by now, but i was still astonished by the number of bags of junk i had to run downstairs to the bins. old paperwork for a job i had for 3 days? bin it. this sock has a hole in it. in the bin with you (i stocked up on multiple pairs of identical socks before i left Aus specifically so that i wouldn't lose a pair if i went through the toes of one). small piles of detritus that you seem to hold on to until it comes time to move? gone. somehow, though, everything's got done and i've managed to not stress too much about it.
i got my bond back earlier today and promptly spent it on booking travel at STA - here one minute, gone the next, but i now know how i'm getting around 2/3 of my route with 3 days sunbathing on the southern Italian coast thrown in near the end, plus the best travel insurance i could afford in case something happens on the road. it's been a long day flying around the city, but productive. i was finishing off my last re-pack 5 minutes before walking out the door this evening and saying goodbye to Moonbug and Simono - a sure sign that i gave myself exactly the right amount of time to finish off the laundry-list of things i had to achieve before i came out to Heathrow tonight. in the end my farewell to SiJ came on the street - she was returning home just as i was leaving and i caught her for 5 minutes in the street as we crossed paths.
tonight i sleep at Heathrow Terminal 3. my flight leaves at 7:40AM and from Woolwich Arsenal i knew i'd never make it out there in the morning in time to catch it, so i decided to pull the classic backpacker's trick of trying to sleep at the airport. i'd probably be trying to pass out already if i hadn't met a guy from California called Gardener who was looking for the right terminal for his Singapore Air flight. we spent the last 2 or so hours chewing each other's ears off, comparing notes and generally keeping each other company. right now he's bedded down near a power-point across the hall from where i'm sitting, ear plugs in his ears to block out the beeping noise of the floor-polishing machine as it cruises around the Arrivals lounge (Departures doesn't have any seats). there are more than a couple of people here. the early-birds have scored the seats without arms and are laid out, happily snoring away. others are sitting awake. others still have laid out on the floor in sleeping bags. one thing's for sure - hardly anyone looks particularly comfortable and looking at what i've managed to scrounge i have the feeling i'll be lying here listening to Andy Mckee for quite some time to come before i get any sleep... if any at all.
in around 7 hours i'll walk off a BA flight and into Europe, leaving behind yet another phase of my life. i've packed it all in once more and between now and October 7th i officially have No Fixed Address and my home on my back with a wish-list of destinations that i know i have no possible way of fulfilling with the time and budget i have available. still, as far as ways to head home go, i'm reckoning that there are far worse than falling over at Canberra Airport off the back of 11 weeks in Europe, 2 days in Hong Kong, a wedding and far more reunions than i care to think about right now.
in the meantime, i'm going to pack my Eee back into my shoulder bag which i'll then throw under my head as a pillow and see whether sleep's going to be an option. if anything's certain about the next 3 months, grabbing sleep wherever i can find it is going to be absolutely cruicial...
Showing posts with label london. Show all posts
Showing posts with label london. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Thursday, June 18, 2009
in the company of friends part 2: last chance to see...
my aversion to early mornings is well publicised. i fucking hate them. i have a preferred sleep cycle of 2-3AM until 10-11AM. it's always worked nicely for me. fortunately i've managed to learn how to get up early when i have to for important occasions - those early flights, cross-timezone phone calls, or picking up a dear friend from Heathrow T5 when her flight arrives at 6:40AM on a Monday. why didn't i provide the same service for Ondine when she and the Marten arrived? well, being out of town at the time didn't help matters. sometimes things just don't mesh. The Short One, on the other hand, i could accomodate and so i did. sure, i had something like 4 hours of sleep the night beforehand, but these things happen. i'm rapidly getting to the point where i'm getting too fucking busy to sleep properly anyway. hitting the Big Red Button was one thing - now i'm going to be happily running around like a fucking maniac until the bombs hit, but that's another story.
TSO's spending a fortnight in London between a conference in Toronto, Canada and a Research Fellowship in Mannheim, Germany, and will be staying in the recently unoccupied bed in my room. you see, there are plans within plans in most of the things that i do and this is one of them. the main reason i haven't already fucked off into the distance is because i wanted to make sure i was in town when people who were coming to see me were there, so i've arranged my plans and timed the explosions to trigger less than 48 hours after she heads east. anything else would just be rude and while there are plenty of people in this world i'll happily be a fucking arsehole to with a smile on my face, TSO's not on the list. not even close. you don't get the title of one of my oldest and dearest friends for nothing, after all.
so far we've had a seriously fabulous time. my goal for the first few days was to walk the girl until her legs fell off. i've found it to be the best way to see this metropolis, and when the weather's been this stunning i've been taking every opportunity. it helps that it's also the best way i've found to break jetlag - get the fuck out in the sunlight and walk until you fall over, have a nice big meal in the evening and pass out early got a good 10 hours passed out, followed by a coffee served in a mug i can fit my head into... not that this size of coffee is unusual for me. my "regular" size of coffee is a Starbucks Venti mug.
what this all adds up to is that since she pulled into town i've made her walk from London Bridge to the London Eye, then across the Thames and up to Leicester Square via Cleopatra's Needle and Trafalgar Square (including a quick look into the National Gallery, naturally), down Whitehall to Westminster, then across the Thames again, down to Vauxhall Cross and then back to Oval on Day 1, then a day spent going from Victoria to Buckingham Palace, through Green Park to Leicester Square via Piccadilly Circus, up Regent St to Oxford, then New Bond and Bond Streets followed by a quick tube ride for an exploration of Harrods and Knightsbridge and finished off meandering up to Hyde Park Corner to chase squirrels around the grass. today was a tour of Camden Town which included an exceedingly long haircut for her and a short, stabbing pain for me then a quick trip down Tottenham Court Road before hightailing it down to Brixton. most of these haven't been solo missions - we had Jacq and Dan with us on Tuesday with Marta joining us for tea at the Eritrean place (yes, twice in 3 days. it's a great little place!) near to mine, then Jacq and Marta again on Wednesady, winding it all up with Caribbean food then cake at Jacq & Matt's place. i'm killing as many birds with as few stones as possible at the moment. if i ever get really good they'll fall from the just sky just by me wanting it. until then, however, i'm including as many people as i can in any activity i organise so that TSO gets the joy of exploring London, with the added benefit of meeting some of the many people who've helped to make my life interesting in the last 9 months. partly, they're going be hard to explain to people back home (even harder than trying to stuff them into my carry-on) and i know in the back of my head that a lot of them i'll never get to see again beyond Facebook and i want to make the last few weeks count.
it's been a grand few days. the majority of the walking's over for now, and i'm now looking at fitting as many other entertaining activities together like a jigsaw puzzle. there's a play to be seen at Shakespeare's Globe, a picnic at Spiral Hill near Woolwich and a couple of pub nights on the cards, two days in Paris booked for next week, and of course somewhere in the middle of all that i need to pack up my shit and find time to sleep. this is something of a "One Last Hurrah" for me - an opportunity to fly around London and take in all the touristy things i've enjoyed seeing one more time before i leave with no serious likelihood of return in the near-future. if i was bumming around on my own for this last fortnight i know i'd never bother, but having TSO around makes it seem far more worth-while. i won't do it for me, but i'll play tour-guide in a heartbeat and i'm loving it. for just a little while longer i can think of London as my city and remind myself of all the little stories and trivia i've picked up over the months by repeating them, things i notice triggering tales that string the town together like a spiderweb and draw it all together, making it come alive in a way that only standing on the precise spot and seeing it all in your mind's eye can do.
the insane thing is that it's all coming together. i'm done with failure and fighting a losing battle with employment. i hit the Big Red Button and set my world in motion again after months of stagnation, dumping me straight into my element. this is what i do best - we're in my world now, where my goals are reliant on no one but me; twist the throttle back until it stops, become a relativistic blur of motion and ride the phase shift into next week. everything's planned and fuck-all's organised, but the crucial pieces are coming together and i know i'll have all of the critical elements in place in time, even if i'm finishing my re-pack in the last 5 minutes before i have to walk out the door and get myself to Heathrow with a spring in my step and my responsibilities catapulted out the window and into oblivion.
but that's all little over 12 days away now and i have other things to worry about, like how to squeeze as much British comedy as possible into what little spare time we have scheduled and who to invite to the pub for drinks on Friday Night. it's a hard job, but some motherfucker's gotta be hated for doing it...
TSO's spending a fortnight in London between a conference in Toronto, Canada and a Research Fellowship in Mannheim, Germany, and will be staying in the recently unoccupied bed in my room. you see, there are plans within plans in most of the things that i do and this is one of them. the main reason i haven't already fucked off into the distance is because i wanted to make sure i was in town when people who were coming to see me were there, so i've arranged my plans and timed the explosions to trigger less than 48 hours after she heads east. anything else would just be rude and while there are plenty of people in this world i'll happily be a fucking arsehole to with a smile on my face, TSO's not on the list. not even close. you don't get the title of one of my oldest and dearest friends for nothing, after all.
so far we've had a seriously fabulous time. my goal for the first few days was to walk the girl until her legs fell off. i've found it to be the best way to see this metropolis, and when the weather's been this stunning i've been taking every opportunity. it helps that it's also the best way i've found to break jetlag - get the fuck out in the sunlight and walk until you fall over, have a nice big meal in the evening and pass out early got a good 10 hours passed out, followed by a coffee served in a mug i can fit my head into... not that this size of coffee is unusual for me. my "regular" size of coffee is a Starbucks Venti mug.
what this all adds up to is that since she pulled into town i've made her walk from London Bridge to the London Eye, then across the Thames and up to Leicester Square via Cleopatra's Needle and Trafalgar Square (including a quick look into the National Gallery, naturally), down Whitehall to Westminster, then across the Thames again, down to Vauxhall Cross and then back to Oval on Day 1, then a day spent going from Victoria to Buckingham Palace, through Green Park to Leicester Square via Piccadilly Circus, up Regent St to Oxford, then New Bond and Bond Streets followed by a quick tube ride for an exploration of Harrods and Knightsbridge and finished off meandering up to Hyde Park Corner to chase squirrels around the grass. today was a tour of Camden Town which included an exceedingly long haircut for her and a short, stabbing pain for me then a quick trip down Tottenham Court Road before hightailing it down to Brixton. most of these haven't been solo missions - we had Jacq and Dan with us on Tuesday with Marta joining us for tea at the Eritrean place (yes, twice in 3 days. it's a great little place!) near to mine, then Jacq and Marta again on Wednesady, winding it all up with Caribbean food then cake at Jacq & Matt's place. i'm killing as many birds with as few stones as possible at the moment. if i ever get really good they'll fall from the just sky just by me wanting it. until then, however, i'm including as many people as i can in any activity i organise so that TSO gets the joy of exploring London, with the added benefit of meeting some of the many people who've helped to make my life interesting in the last 9 months. partly, they're going be hard to explain to people back home (even harder than trying to stuff them into my carry-on) and i know in the back of my head that a lot of them i'll never get to see again beyond Facebook and i want to make the last few weeks count.
it's been a grand few days. the majority of the walking's over for now, and i'm now looking at fitting as many other entertaining activities together like a jigsaw puzzle. there's a play to be seen at Shakespeare's Globe, a picnic at Spiral Hill near Woolwich and a couple of pub nights on the cards, two days in Paris booked for next week, and of course somewhere in the middle of all that i need to pack up my shit and find time to sleep. this is something of a "One Last Hurrah" for me - an opportunity to fly around London and take in all the touristy things i've enjoyed seeing one more time before i leave with no serious likelihood of return in the near-future. if i was bumming around on my own for this last fortnight i know i'd never bother, but having TSO around makes it seem far more worth-while. i won't do it for me, but i'll play tour-guide in a heartbeat and i'm loving it. for just a little while longer i can think of London as my city and remind myself of all the little stories and trivia i've picked up over the months by repeating them, things i notice triggering tales that string the town together like a spiderweb and draw it all together, making it come alive in a way that only standing on the precise spot and seeing it all in your mind's eye can do.
the insane thing is that it's all coming together. i'm done with failure and fighting a losing battle with employment. i hit the Big Red Button and set my world in motion again after months of stagnation, dumping me straight into my element. this is what i do best - we're in my world now, where my goals are reliant on no one but me; twist the throttle back until it stops, become a relativistic blur of motion and ride the phase shift into next week. everything's planned and fuck-all's organised, but the crucial pieces are coming together and i know i'll have all of the critical elements in place in time, even if i'm finishing my re-pack in the last 5 minutes before i have to walk out the door and get myself to Heathrow with a spring in my step and my responsibilities catapulted out the window and into oblivion.
but that's all little over 12 days away now and i have other things to worry about, like how to squeeze as much British comedy as possible into what little spare time we have scheduled and who to invite to the pub for drinks on Friday Night. it's a hard job, but some motherfucker's gotta be hated for doing it...
Thursday, June 4, 2009
in the company of friends...
it can be kinda odd seeing people you know from home when you're distinctly Away From Home. i have friends i've met in Perth, Canberra, Melbourne and here in London... it's just a little offputting when they start to mix themselves up. it took a bit of getting used to when Moonbug moved to Canberra. now through amusing happenstance we're both on the other side of the planet, living an hour's bus ride from each other. when Julia moved to Perth from Canberra and came back telling stories of her adventures in some of my old haunts it was strange hearing her perspective. now i've just spent the last week hanging with Ondine and The Marten and somehow it wasn't weird at all. there wasn't even a period of "what have you been up to talk", but then with Ondine there never is. the conversation picks up again like it's only been a day and the rest fills itself in over time after we've finished our okonomiyaki and headed off down the road.
it's been a pleasant time playing tour guide, running them around Camden and Borough Markets, through the touristy areas around Trafalgar Square and generally breaking her by making her walk too damn far. it's been quite civilised as well with lunch at a Michelin Star Chinese restaurant just off Tottenham Court Road one day, and High Tea at the Dorchester Hotel on another followed by the feeding of squirels in Hyde Park. now, if only the Depeche Mode concert they'd come all this way to see hadn't been cancelled i think this would have been an altogether flawless trip for them.
meanwhile, i've been on the cusp of buying my homeward-bound tickets for the last few days. i'd have done it tonight if i'd not received a call about a promising-looking job completely out of the blue yesterday. i'm not excactly holding outv much hope for it. to be honest, i don't really want it. i've been spending my quiet hours with Google Maps open to a full view of Europe, my finger tracing lines on my screen of destinations and investigations of how i'm going to reach them. getting a job now would just get in the way of me wearing the soles of my shoes down to nothing on medieval cobbles and filling my hard drives with photos. that said, if they offer i'll take. i can always get back to Europe another time, whereas arriving back in Canberra penniless would be less than ideal. i'll know sometime next week, and when this job falls through like all the others i'll be able to wash my hands of the entire "working" idea and focus on blowing my slush fund hitting as many countries as i can before i run out of time then go watch my kid brother tie the knot.
it's been a pleasant time playing tour guide, running them around Camden and Borough Markets, through the touristy areas around Trafalgar Square and generally breaking her by making her walk too damn far. it's been quite civilised as well with lunch at a Michelin Star Chinese restaurant just off Tottenham Court Road one day, and High Tea at the Dorchester Hotel on another followed by the feeding of squirels in Hyde Park. now, if only the Depeche Mode concert they'd come all this way to see hadn't been cancelled i think this would have been an altogether flawless trip for them.
meanwhile, i've been on the cusp of buying my homeward-bound tickets for the last few days. i'd have done it tonight if i'd not received a call about a promising-looking job completely out of the blue yesterday. i'm not excactly holding outv much hope for it. to be honest, i don't really want it. i've been spending my quiet hours with Google Maps open to a full view of Europe, my finger tracing lines on my screen of destinations and investigations of how i'm going to reach them. getting a job now would just get in the way of me wearing the soles of my shoes down to nothing on medieval cobbles and filling my hard drives with photos. that said, if they offer i'll take. i can always get back to Europe another time, whereas arriving back in Canberra penniless would be less than ideal. i'll know sometime next week, and when this job falls through like all the others i'll be able to wash my hands of the entire "working" idea and focus on blowing my slush fund hitting as many countries as i can before i run out of time then go watch my kid brother tie the knot.
Friday, May 22, 2009
time off to catch my breath...
i've had a nice quiet week since getting back from Dublin - Eurovision on saturday night after wandering around Shoreditch looking at urban art, playing with carnies in the park on sunday and now a week of chilling around the flat, venturing out here and there for a bit of amusement whenever i can be bothered. Ireland left me nowhere near as exhausted or shattered as Egypt. the pace was better for a start, and i didn't feel like i had to be constantly on the go for fear of missing something important. this meant that the next day i was ready to hit the street which is particularly good since Ellen and i did plenty of walking.
i met Ellen through Moonbug back in December and while we've not been particularly close we've gotten along quiet nicely ever since and so when she picked up a guide-book outlining routes to take through various parts of London where you can see the works of the guerilla-artist Banksy i jumped at it. two people all dressed up for an evening out must have looked odd squeezing between fence-posts or climbing over walls, but these are the things you have to do if you want to see some of the secret scenery of Shoreditch. if you've not heard of Banksy you really should look him up. his work is anti-establishment without being rabidly anarchistic and interestingly executed.
i've hit a nice little groove for the time being. i'm still looking at jobs when i can be bothered, but i'm not really giving it much of my brainspace. in fact, i'm really just going with whatever seems to flow which is part of the reason i've not been blogging a whole lot. i don't really have anything much to say at the moment while i focus on cruising and enjoying the moment, even if that moment involves spending hours at a time cruising the net while i chat to people on IM, or talk to people across the world on Skype. life is going to heat up again soon enough and when it does i'll be screaming off in whatever direction i've found myself facing so i might as well be mentally prepared when it happens...
i met Ellen through Moonbug back in December and while we've not been particularly close we've gotten along quiet nicely ever since and so when she picked up a guide-book outlining routes to take through various parts of London where you can see the works of the guerilla-artist Banksy i jumped at it. two people all dressed up for an evening out must have looked odd squeezing between fence-posts or climbing over walls, but these are the things you have to do if you want to see some of the secret scenery of Shoreditch. if you've not heard of Banksy you really should look him up. his work is anti-establishment without being rabidly anarchistic and interestingly executed.
i've hit a nice little groove for the time being. i'm still looking at jobs when i can be bothered, but i'm not really giving it much of my brainspace. in fact, i'm really just going with whatever seems to flow which is part of the reason i've not been blogging a whole lot. i don't really have anything much to say at the moment while i focus on cruising and enjoying the moment, even if that moment involves spending hours at a time cruising the net while i chat to people on IM, or talk to people across the world on Skype. life is going to heat up again soon enough and when it does i'll be screaming off in whatever direction i've found myself facing so i might as well be mentally prepared when it happens...
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Snippets #14: you know you're a Londoner when...
you know exactly where to stand on the tube platform so you'll be set up just right for when you get off to change lines.
you check the Transport For London website for directions before you check Google Maps.
you stop minding that the pubs call for last orders at 10:45PM because it means you can still get the tube home.
the idea of owning your own car has become a somewhat alien concept.
you no longer laugh when you hear the name "Cockfosters" on the Piccadilly Line.
a 2 hour commute to work is something you'll live with.
you never, ever consider taking the Circle Line unless you're on a pub crawl.
you can get from anywhere to anywhere on foot at 3AM, just by reading the bus stops.
whenever you pass Trafalgar Square you think "bloody tourists".
you start thinking in miles rather than kilometres.
you know where East-17 got their name.
you instinctively know where to get the best chips within a mile radius of your house.
2 miles isn't THAT far to walk.
you pull out your mp3 player whenever you get on public transport, even when you're travelling with a group.
heading to Brighton for the day is nothing, but going to Shepherd's Bush to go shopping is a bit far, innit?
you don't bother carrying a book if you know you'll be traveling in peak times because you know there'll be a free newspaper to read.
you know the only two things you're allowed to say to a stranger on the tube are "excuse me" and "are you done with that paper?"
you can't remember how to tune a television because you don't own one and can't think of why you'd watch free-to-air anyway.
you firmly believe that anywhere past Zone 3 isn't really IN London.
you don't get upset when the pub's full because you know you can just go the one next door.
seeing the sun is more of a surprise than seeing naked women in the newspaper.
whenever you meet an Australian you think "not another one".
you stop expecting your beer to be ice cold and taste faintly of urine.
you consider any meal that costs less than £5 and fills you up to be a bargain.
you've stopped thinking about the exchange rate because it's too heartbreaking, but you can do it in your head if you have to.
you know exactly how far it is to the nearest Tesco or Sainsburys in steps.
you'd consider trying to carry a mattress home on public transport.
a flat that was advertised for rent more than 48 hours ago isn't worth calling about because you know it's already gone.
you can't understand why you can't find an ATM in other cities because you've already gone half-way around the block.
there's a public holiday coming up and you thought about going to Spain and Morocco before you even considered Liverpool or Bristol.
every time you hear someone refer to Milton Keynes you snigger.
it's raining. so?
you see a burst pipe spraying water down the street and you don't think of it as a criminal waste.
pasties and fried chicken have taken over from pies and pizza as your junk-food of choice.
you'll catch a tube anywhere, but avoid the overland at all costs.
you've developed a subtle disrespect for anyone who doesn't, or hasn't lived here themselves...
you check the Transport For London website for directions before you check Google Maps.
you stop minding that the pubs call for last orders at 10:45PM because it means you can still get the tube home.
the idea of owning your own car has become a somewhat alien concept.
you no longer laugh when you hear the name "Cockfosters" on the Piccadilly Line.
a 2 hour commute to work is something you'll live with.
you never, ever consider taking the Circle Line unless you're on a pub crawl.
you can get from anywhere to anywhere on foot at 3AM, just by reading the bus stops.
whenever you pass Trafalgar Square you think "bloody tourists".
you start thinking in miles rather than kilometres.
you know where East-17 got their name.
you instinctively know where to get the best chips within a mile radius of your house.
2 miles isn't THAT far to walk.
you pull out your mp3 player whenever you get on public transport, even when you're travelling with a group.
heading to Brighton for the day is nothing, but going to Shepherd's Bush to go shopping is a bit far, innit?
you don't bother carrying a book if you know you'll be traveling in peak times because you know there'll be a free newspaper to read.
you know the only two things you're allowed to say to a stranger on the tube are "excuse me" and "are you done with that paper?"
you can't remember how to tune a television because you don't own one and can't think of why you'd watch free-to-air anyway.
you firmly believe that anywhere past Zone 3 isn't really IN London.
you don't get upset when the pub's full because you know you can just go the one next door.
seeing the sun is more of a surprise than seeing naked women in the newspaper.
whenever you meet an Australian you think "not another one".
you stop expecting your beer to be ice cold and taste faintly of urine.
you consider any meal that costs less than £5 and fills you up to be a bargain.
you've stopped thinking about the exchange rate because it's too heartbreaking, but you can do it in your head if you have to.
you know exactly how far it is to the nearest Tesco or Sainsburys in steps.
you'd consider trying to carry a mattress home on public transport.
a flat that was advertised for rent more than 48 hours ago isn't worth calling about because you know it's already gone.
you can't understand why you can't find an ATM in other cities because you've already gone half-way around the block.
there's a public holiday coming up and you thought about going to Spain and Morocco before you even considered Liverpool or Bristol.
every time you hear someone refer to Milton Keynes you snigger.
it's raining. so?
you see a burst pipe spraying water down the street and you don't think of it as a criminal waste.
pasties and fried chicken have taken over from pies and pizza as your junk-food of choice.
you'll catch a tube anywhere, but avoid the overland at all costs.
you've developed a subtle disrespect for anyone who doesn't, or hasn't lived here themselves...
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
"I came here to find myself," and other banal comments...
i've never been anywhere it was easier to do a spur-of-the-moment pub crawl than here. i crawled Brunswick St in Fitzroy, Melbourne once, many years ago. i got lucky and there were plenty of bars, although some of them were crappy Old Man bars. i crawled The Rocks in Sydney and was bored by the end. Daniel and i crawled Leicester Square/Covent Garden on Friday night and had an awesome time. we were skipping places because they were too crowded and were still spoiled for choice. i didn't drink the same beer twice that night and by the time we jumped tubes out from Embankment at 11PM we were both staggering.
we met at the Bear & Staff on Charing Cross Rd because it's easy for us to find, as well as being a bit of a haunt for us now and meandered from there - out for a night on the piss for no better reason than that we're both working at the moment, it was a Friday night and we could. i'd like to say that it was the start of a great weekend, but to be honest i spent most of it in bed. the flu i'd started coming down with on Tuesday had lain dormant for the last 3 days and jumped on my back like a deranged monkey come Saturday morning screaming "SUBMIT," so i did. the previous week or so had left me more than a little fucked up and by the afternoon i'd come crashing down into a ditch and the dam burst, releasing a flood of disappointment and self-loathing. i had a nap in the afternoon hoping that i'd feel up to going out with Louise and her friends that night but woke up feeling worse and said fuck it, so she left me to my Stargate and my blanket and went out on the town.
Sunday came and with it an invitation to go see Watchmen down in Stockwell and i wasn't missing that for the world, illness or no. sitting around a nearby pub afterwards stuffing myself with the Sunday Roast and pint after pint of water, it seems like everyone's having problems finding or keeping work. contracts not extending, roles being made redundant, the party's over and the hangover's just starting to set in. the Children of The Southern Cross have a reputation around here as being here for a good time, not a long time and these folks are no different. Louise is great friends with them, but while i enjoy going out partying with them i know i'll never be. honestly, i appreciate being invited along when they're heading out for a fun night out, hearing people who seem to have all the introspection of an lobotomised otaku with a penchant for high-school romantic comedy talk about how they came to London to "find themselves" sounds shallower than kiddie's paddling pool, and almost as full of shit. as Shadow has been wont to say over the time i've known him: "The problem with going somewhere to get away from your problems is that no matter where you go, there you are." still, these guys DO know how to party so they're obviously onto something. i think perhaps i may still have much to learn from these people.
spin forwards and by the time i was standing at the bus stop on my way back to Heathrow i was already counting down the number of times i'd have to make that trip again. the job's fun enough and i'm glad to have it, but the percentage of my waking hours that i'm spending on public transport at the moment is ridiculous. i'm just thinking of the money and the trip i'll be up to the eyeballs in a fortnight from now and getting the work done.
the next few days are going to be quiet, i think. i need to get over this illness. Louise has come down with it as well and we've both been coughing up a lung. this is the third time she's been knocked for 6 since we came here - this is the first time i've got sick since the flu that laid me out right before we flew out of Sydney - and i'm a bit worried about her to be honest. i'm already starting to get over it and she's still going. the first one had her in bed for a fortnight. the second one lingered for almost as long, although she managed to keep going to work through it. she seems to get every bug that comes round (except for the vomiting-flu that did the rounds back in December/January - we both managed to miss that). i'm not her mum or anything, but it's still a bit of a worry.
London's the sort of place that invites an epidemic though. pack half the population onto the tubes, then into offices in town every day of the week and any airborne or sneeze/cough-transmitted pathogen is going to spread faster than a nymphomaniac student's knees after 4 litres of Fruity Lexia at a toga party. back in Canberra i saw how a cold could wipe out an office. here it could lay waste to suburbs as people infect and reinfect each other with every packed train they hop on, the public transport system becoming a machine of Mass Rapid Infection. when the Umbrella Corporation release the Resident Evil virus, all they'd have to do is drop a canister at Leicester Square and watch as the Northern Line spreads it out through Kings Cross and Waterloo,and the Piccadilly takes it directly to Heathrow then from there: the world.
that sort of makes me wonder whether, if London became Zombie Central, anyone would actually notice. maybe the leaflet and free-newspaper touts would be a little more polite. watch the people on the tube at 6:30PM and you start getting protective of your head-meats because most of the people are standing there looking like something's eaten theirs.
whatever the case, i can afford to have a quiet week. sit around, watch some movies, build up my strength and gird my loins for Egypt. i've been invited to a Pi Party on Saturday night - by the american calendar the date will be 3.14.09 (also, Einstein's Birthday. Happy Birthday Albo!), so the evening promises to be full of IT and Maths geeks getting drunk and eating pie. i'm missing out on going to The Car Wash (70's theme, with a foam canon) but i can't miss a geek gathering - it's been far too long since i've smelled my own kind. i'll go in with my 1337 hoodie, a six-pack of cider, a smile on my face and get my geek on. after that it's just one more week and i'll be getting a tan and trying not to let my pockets get picked or sand in my jocks. 3 weeks away to get some perspective and see whether, when i pull back up in Heathrow, i'm still wanting to hang around. with any luck Louise and i won't piss each other too much and i don't wind up feeding her to the crocodiles. as always, only time will tell, but i'm sure it'll be a whole lot of fun finding out...
we met at the Bear & Staff on Charing Cross Rd because it's easy for us to find, as well as being a bit of a haunt for us now and meandered from there - out for a night on the piss for no better reason than that we're both working at the moment, it was a Friday night and we could. i'd like to say that it was the start of a great weekend, but to be honest i spent most of it in bed. the flu i'd started coming down with on Tuesday had lain dormant for the last 3 days and jumped on my back like a deranged monkey come Saturday morning screaming "SUBMIT," so i did. the previous week or so had left me more than a little fucked up and by the afternoon i'd come crashing down into a ditch and the dam burst, releasing a flood of disappointment and self-loathing. i had a nap in the afternoon hoping that i'd feel up to going out with Louise and her friends that night but woke up feeling worse and said fuck it, so she left me to my Stargate and my blanket and went out on the town.
Sunday came and with it an invitation to go see Watchmen down in Stockwell and i wasn't missing that for the world, illness or no. sitting around a nearby pub afterwards stuffing myself with the Sunday Roast and pint after pint of water, it seems like everyone's having problems finding or keeping work. contracts not extending, roles being made redundant, the party's over and the hangover's just starting to set in. the Children of The Southern Cross have a reputation around here as being here for a good time, not a long time and these folks are no different. Louise is great friends with them, but while i enjoy going out partying with them i know i'll never be. honestly, i appreciate being invited along when they're heading out for a fun night out, hearing people who seem to have all the introspection of an lobotomised otaku with a penchant for high-school romantic comedy talk about how they came to London to "find themselves" sounds shallower than kiddie's paddling pool, and almost as full of shit. as Shadow has been wont to say over the time i've known him: "The problem with going somewhere to get away from your problems is that no matter where you go, there you are." still, these guys DO know how to party so they're obviously onto something. i think perhaps i may still have much to learn from these people.
spin forwards and by the time i was standing at the bus stop on my way back to Heathrow i was already counting down the number of times i'd have to make that trip again. the job's fun enough and i'm glad to have it, but the percentage of my waking hours that i'm spending on public transport at the moment is ridiculous. i'm just thinking of the money and the trip i'll be up to the eyeballs in a fortnight from now and getting the work done.
the next few days are going to be quiet, i think. i need to get over this illness. Louise has come down with it as well and we've both been coughing up a lung. this is the third time she's been knocked for 6 since we came here - this is the first time i've got sick since the flu that laid me out right before we flew out of Sydney - and i'm a bit worried about her to be honest. i'm already starting to get over it and she's still going. the first one had her in bed for a fortnight. the second one lingered for almost as long, although she managed to keep going to work through it. she seems to get every bug that comes round (except for the vomiting-flu that did the rounds back in December/January - we both managed to miss that). i'm not her mum or anything, but it's still a bit of a worry.
London's the sort of place that invites an epidemic though. pack half the population onto the tubes, then into offices in town every day of the week and any airborne or sneeze/cough-transmitted pathogen is going to spread faster than a nymphomaniac student's knees after 4 litres of Fruity Lexia at a toga party. back in Canberra i saw how a cold could wipe out an office. here it could lay waste to suburbs as people infect and reinfect each other with every packed train they hop on, the public transport system becoming a machine of Mass Rapid Infection. when the Umbrella Corporation release the Resident Evil virus, all they'd have to do is drop a canister at Leicester Square and watch as the Northern Line spreads it out through Kings Cross and Waterloo,and the Piccadilly takes it directly to Heathrow then from there: the world.
that sort of makes me wonder whether, if London became Zombie Central, anyone would actually notice. maybe the leaflet and free-newspaper touts would be a little more polite. watch the people on the tube at 6:30PM and you start getting protective of your head-meats because most of the people are standing there looking like something's eaten theirs.
whatever the case, i can afford to have a quiet week. sit around, watch some movies, build up my strength and gird my loins for Egypt. i've been invited to a Pi Party on Saturday night - by the american calendar the date will be 3.14.09 (also, Einstein's Birthday. Happy Birthday Albo!), so the evening promises to be full of IT and Maths geeks getting drunk and eating pie. i'm missing out on going to The Car Wash (70's theme, with a foam canon) but i can't miss a geek gathering - it's been far too long since i've smelled my own kind. i'll go in with my 1337 hoodie, a six-pack of cider, a smile on my face and get my geek on. after that it's just one more week and i'll be getting a tan and trying not to let my pockets get picked or sand in my jocks. 3 weeks away to get some perspective and see whether, when i pull back up in Heathrow, i'm still wanting to hang around. with any luck Louise and i won't piss each other too much and i don't wind up feeding her to the crocodiles. as always, only time will tell, but i'm sure it'll be a whole lot of fun finding out...
Friday, March 6, 2009
good news is golden when you're looking up from the Bottom...
standing at the bus stop just north of the Heathrow runways watching a plane take off every 30 or 40 seconds, Andy McKee providing a calming soundtrack, for a moment the sun poked out from between the clouds and it felt like the world was smiling at me. "You've been beaten and battered," it seemed to be saying, "so here's me giving you a break," and isn't it funny what a difference a day or two make?
i woke up on Tuesday morning feeling like i'd been hit by a truck. actually, saying "morning" is a lie - neither Louise or i were moving before 12:30PM. we were both feeling sick - i was coughing and sniffling, her with a developing sore throat, and shared a look across the room which seemed to say "well, fuck." my phone had rung at 9:15AM - a pimp from my favoure agency calling to get some details from me. it rung again at around 4PM while we fought our way to Sainsburys through the cold and the wind to pick up a couple of backpacks of groceries. neither of us were in any mood to go, but a lack of staples meant we were relying on takeaway so it had to be done.
"There's a job out near Heathrow. Fill in for someone on Compassionate Leave. There's some laptops to be sorted out and a problem with their Anti-Virus. I think I can get you £160/day. Can you be out there at 9:30 tomorrow morning?"
um... yeah. sure. why not. job's a job and i need the cash.
"Great! I'll get your CV over to them and get back to you soon!"
no worries.
on the way back to base-camp an hour later it rang again - checking i was still good, the cash was ok, that i had an umbrella company set up already. while we unpacked he rang to say that i was in for the next 2-3 days and he'd need details for payroll. while i was stowing my backpack under the bed he called to give me directions, contact names, the sort of things you need to know before you start a new job. an email with everything included is promised, and suddenly i had a job, if only for a couple of days.
Wednesday morning was a complete shambles. i know the commute is going to take a while - guesstimation is around an hour and a half, so i'm at the tube station by 7:45AM. 9:30AM rolled around just as i was finding the right bus to take out of Heathrow Terminals 1,2&3. by 10AM i'm in front of the wrong building and on the phone trying to get directions while i walk up and down the wrong street. at 10:30AM i finally stagger in the right door looking haggard, feeling completely unprofessional, desperately trying to salvage things. the manager's a dear and takes pity on me and i'm more grateful than polite words can express for the coffee that appears in front of me while i start interrogating her for intel on what i need to be doing.
my day's filled with coffee and technical issues while i start to assess their systems. you've got computers riddled with viruses because people are installing software of questional providence. "Yes, we know." what's your corporate policy on these things? some of this stuff is kinda illegal. and leaves you open to liability. "We don't actually have one." right. would you like one? "Yes please!!" i get a lot of stuff sorted and make my leave, with a plan of attack for the next day. i find the bus back to Heathrow and while i stand there watching the planes take off i switch from Cake to Death Cab For Cutie because i figure that if i'm going to be depressed i'll do it propperly. it takes me nearly 2 hours to get to base-camp, by which time i've read a LOT of my book. my trip involves an hour on the Piccadilly Line, changing at Leicester Square, then half an hour or so back to Oval
9AM this morning i've had a smooth run in. i'd stuck Andy McKee on my PSD while i was on the platform at Oval Station for its calming joy and i'm feeling pretty damn good when i'm about to walk in the door to the office and my phone rings:
"Tom here. Where are you at? At the bus?"
nah mate - i'm right out the front door. much easier to get in on time now i know where the hell i'm going. this place isn't exactly on my A-Z...
"Fantastic! Well done! I just spoke to Joanna and it sounds like she was well impressed. They were going to get a junior in for the next two weeks because he'd be cheaper, but she sounds really keen to keep you on for another fortnight. I know you're not keen on the commute, but what would it take to get you to stick around?"
damn... well, no, the commute sucks bollocks but they're nice here and there's free coffee. the cash is pretty dire though... i guess i'd take £180/day for it, but no less. i've got another possibility for next week which is closer to home but the cash is crap. it's a fallback at least...
"I think I can talk her into that. I'll try to get you more of course, but I'll be in touch."
legend. let me know.
2 hours later i'm onto my 4th coffee, my phone beeps its SMS tone and i've got a new contract. i let the manager know that it's all done and dusted and she's so happy that another coffee shows up in short order. i've got my work cut out for me - i've bitten off more than i think they expected i would but at least i'm going to have a bit of fun with this job. it's got the potential to hike my skills in a few things, as well as paying enough cash to make my life MUCH easier in the next few months. at Heathrow on the way back i spend £47 on a Zone 1-6 Travelcard - all the public transport i can eat for a week. with a little certainty it's well worth it. sitting on the tube my phone rings not once but twice with pimps on the line with jobs starting Monday, sounding disappointed that i'm suddenly unavailable. why it all had to come at once, and not spread itself out nicely the way it should is beyond me - punishment for the i'll get a job - no problems! arrogance i had when i left the homeland, i suppose. still, it seems that i'm suddenly popular and i'll have to find a way to migrate that over to when i'm next on the market.
as i've said a few times, Louise has been putting together plans to go and do Egypt. the framework is based around a 15-day tour she's found that covers most of the goddamn country from the looks of things, from felluca sailing down the nile to snorkling in the Red Sea, from Cairo to Aswan via Abu Simbel, from the Pyramids of Giza at sunset to hot air ballooning over the Valley of Kings at dawn. she was looking at doing it around the end of the month in order to beat the Easter Holidays. that's 3 weeks from now. meanwhile, i've wound up with a contract for 2 weeks, and with the ink on that now dry we've booked it for the weekend after i finish (convenient, since the flights for the original weekend would have cost 4 times as much). i'm stoked - Egypt was never a huge thing on my agenda, but she sold me on it when she showed me the trip she had planned, and in the last week or so it's become something of a lynchpin in my projections. even if i was still basing my plans around going back to the land Downunder in a couple of months, i was still going along for the ride to Egypt. now it's booked and paid for and the work i've got for the next two weeks will pay not just for the trip, but 2 months of rent and expenses in London.
once more i feel like i have something to look forward to, and it's a definite, not a pipe-dream. i've no room for hope or wishful thinking - see where that got me? i'm still bruised from the last thing i ivested hope in and i've no taste for it any more. a little certainty puts a smile on my face, even if it involves the certainty of 3 or more hours on public transport every working day for 2 weeks, and once that's done i've the wilderness and adventure of the ruins of one of the world's oldest civilisations to look forward to - the details can be found here:
http://www.thegobus.com/Group-Tours/Egypt/Pyramids-and-Beaches
i can't shake the feeling that in missing out on what at least i thought i wanted i'm settling for the first best thing to show up, but what the fuck? fuck hope and wishful thinking. fuck home and comfort. i was finally forced to Give Up on the one thing i couldn't bring myself to and the universe seems to have finally decided that i have found humility enough to accept what it thinks i need.
i woke up on Tuesday morning feeling like i'd been hit by a truck. actually, saying "morning" is a lie - neither Louise or i were moving before 12:30PM. we were both feeling sick - i was coughing and sniffling, her with a developing sore throat, and shared a look across the room which seemed to say "well, fuck." my phone had rung at 9:15AM - a pimp from my favoure agency calling to get some details from me. it rung again at around 4PM while we fought our way to Sainsburys through the cold and the wind to pick up a couple of backpacks of groceries. neither of us were in any mood to go, but a lack of staples meant we were relying on takeaway so it had to be done.
"There's a job out near Heathrow. Fill in for someone on Compassionate Leave. There's some laptops to be sorted out and a problem with their Anti-Virus. I think I can get you £160/day. Can you be out there at 9:30 tomorrow morning?"
um... yeah. sure. why not. job's a job and i need the cash.
"Great! I'll get your CV over to them and get back to you soon!"
no worries.
on the way back to base-camp an hour later it rang again - checking i was still good, the cash was ok, that i had an umbrella company set up already. while we unpacked he rang to say that i was in for the next 2-3 days and he'd need details for payroll. while i was stowing my backpack under the bed he called to give me directions, contact names, the sort of things you need to know before you start a new job. an email with everything included is promised, and suddenly i had a job, if only for a couple of days.
Wednesday morning was a complete shambles. i know the commute is going to take a while - guesstimation is around an hour and a half, so i'm at the tube station by 7:45AM. 9:30AM rolled around just as i was finding the right bus to take out of Heathrow Terminals 1,2&3. by 10AM i'm in front of the wrong building and on the phone trying to get directions while i walk up and down the wrong street. at 10:30AM i finally stagger in the right door looking haggard, feeling completely unprofessional, desperately trying to salvage things. the manager's a dear and takes pity on me and i'm more grateful than polite words can express for the coffee that appears in front of me while i start interrogating her for intel on what i need to be doing.
my day's filled with coffee and technical issues while i start to assess their systems. you've got computers riddled with viruses because people are installing software of questional providence. "Yes, we know." what's your corporate policy on these things? some of this stuff is kinda illegal. and leaves you open to liability. "We don't actually have one." right. would you like one? "Yes please!!" i get a lot of stuff sorted and make my leave, with a plan of attack for the next day. i find the bus back to Heathrow and while i stand there watching the planes take off i switch from Cake to Death Cab For Cutie because i figure that if i'm going to be depressed i'll do it propperly. it takes me nearly 2 hours to get to base-camp, by which time i've read a LOT of my book. my trip involves an hour on the Piccadilly Line, changing at Leicester Square, then half an hour or so back to Oval
9AM this morning i've had a smooth run in. i'd stuck Andy McKee on my PSD while i was on the platform at Oval Station for its calming joy and i'm feeling pretty damn good when i'm about to walk in the door to the office and my phone rings:
"Tom here. Where are you at? At the bus?"
nah mate - i'm right out the front door. much easier to get in on time now i know where the hell i'm going. this place isn't exactly on my A-Z...
"Fantastic! Well done! I just spoke to Joanna and it sounds like she was well impressed. They were going to get a junior in for the next two weeks because he'd be cheaper, but she sounds really keen to keep you on for another fortnight. I know you're not keen on the commute, but what would it take to get you to stick around?"
damn... well, no, the commute sucks bollocks but they're nice here and there's free coffee. the cash is pretty dire though... i guess i'd take £180/day for it, but no less. i've got another possibility for next week which is closer to home but the cash is crap. it's a fallback at least...
"I think I can talk her into that. I'll try to get you more of course, but I'll be in touch."
legend. let me know.
2 hours later i'm onto my 4th coffee, my phone beeps its SMS tone and i've got a new contract. i let the manager know that it's all done and dusted and she's so happy that another coffee shows up in short order. i've got my work cut out for me - i've bitten off more than i think they expected i would but at least i'm going to have a bit of fun with this job. it's got the potential to hike my skills in a few things, as well as paying enough cash to make my life MUCH easier in the next few months. at Heathrow on the way back i spend £47 on a Zone 1-6 Travelcard - all the public transport i can eat for a week. with a little certainty it's well worth it. sitting on the tube my phone rings not once but twice with pimps on the line with jobs starting Monday, sounding disappointed that i'm suddenly unavailable. why it all had to come at once, and not spread itself out nicely the way it should is beyond me - punishment for the i'll get a job - no problems! arrogance i had when i left the homeland, i suppose. still, it seems that i'm suddenly popular and i'll have to find a way to migrate that over to when i'm next on the market.
as i've said a few times, Louise has been putting together plans to go and do Egypt. the framework is based around a 15-day tour she's found that covers most of the goddamn country from the looks of things, from felluca sailing down the nile to snorkling in the Red Sea, from Cairo to Aswan via Abu Simbel, from the Pyramids of Giza at sunset to hot air ballooning over the Valley of Kings at dawn. she was looking at doing it around the end of the month in order to beat the Easter Holidays. that's 3 weeks from now. meanwhile, i've wound up with a contract for 2 weeks, and with the ink on that now dry we've booked it for the weekend after i finish (convenient, since the flights for the original weekend would have cost 4 times as much). i'm stoked - Egypt was never a huge thing on my agenda, but she sold me on it when she showed me the trip she had planned, and in the last week or so it's become something of a lynchpin in my projections. even if i was still basing my plans around going back to the land Downunder in a couple of months, i was still going along for the ride to Egypt. now it's booked and paid for and the work i've got for the next two weeks will pay not just for the trip, but 2 months of rent and expenses in London.
once more i feel like i have something to look forward to, and it's a definite, not a pipe-dream. i've no room for hope or wishful thinking - see where that got me? i'm still bruised from the last thing i ivested hope in and i've no taste for it any more. a little certainty puts a smile on my face, even if it involves the certainty of 3 or more hours on public transport every working day for 2 weeks, and once that's done i've the wilderness and adventure of the ruins of one of the world's oldest civilisations to look forward to - the details can be found here:
http://www.thegobus.com/Group-
i can't shake the feeling that in missing out on what at least i thought i wanted i'm settling for the first best thing to show up, but what the fuck? fuck hope and wishful thinking. fuck home and comfort. i was finally forced to Give Up on the one thing i couldn't bring myself to and the universe seems to have finally decided that i have found humility enough to accept what it thinks i need.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
the foolish man built his house upon the sand...
today Louise and i got ourselves up and went to the British Museum for a few hours for something to do, get out if the house and clear our heads - mine especially. it's a huge place filled of antiquities of more than a couple of bygone eras that have been looted and gifted over the last few hundred years of British Colonisation and Exploration - perfect for a bit of distraction. Louise loves museums, especially anything to do with Egypt (and there's a LOT of Egyptian stuff in the BM, including what's left of Cleopatra to whom we paid our respects), and i needed to get the fuck out of my own head lest i drown from trying to swim through the murky depths and junk. when we got back to base-camp i sat down and wrote the reply to the email i'd received in response to the call for clarification i'd sent out on Sunday. i'd received it first thing in the morning, read it while i drank my coffee and commenced to stew on it for the rest of the day. by the time i was finished over three and a half thousand words had crisscrossed the internets, and the biggest, most tenuous thing i'd used as a crutch for the last nearly half a year was gone, dissolved and revealed as fantasy and self-deception.
9 months ago i wound up catching up with a girl i'd known on and off for a while. a month or so later we were an item without ever intending to be. a month later i'd fallen for her harder than i had any right to given the circumstances and then 5 months ago i kissed her goodbye on her doorstep, climbed into a rented 4x4 and drove to Sydney on my way out of the country with a little piece of her riding shotgun in the back of my head. i've jokingly referred to it as being one of the most foolish things i've ever done, but then i've done a lot of stupid things in my time so perhaps that's a bit of an exaggeration. today she told me "come back for you, not for me".
we've kept in touch here and there since i flew out - an email here, an IM chat there. i sent her a Valentine's Day message from Inverness while sitting in the common room of the hostel. before i left i told her that i'd be back for her and while the black on my boots has faded the feelings behind my promise didn't. when things have been fucked up and i've been in a pit of despair thinking about going back one day and finding her has kept me moving - my little Get Out Of Jail Free card. she said to me, one night out on the balcony when i was having doubts about my impending departure that "[i] seem to be under the misapprehension that there's something that won't still be here for [me] when you come back," and that stuck with me like a Kick Me sign. turns out that it may not have actually been worth the paper i'd written it on and now i've got no one to blame but myself for my presumption.
last Thursday we wound up having a long chat on IM and it all came out. for a while now i've been questioning the wisdom of hanging around here watching my slush fund trickle away while i sit around getting rejected for job after job and was thinking about making a move - go travelling for a few months before heading back. it wasn't really my ideal solution, but the idea of showing back up in Canberra and on her doorstep with a bunch of flowers and a bucket of Hoboken Crunch had some appeal. what i needed to know, though, was whether an hour later i'd be sitting on her couch exchanging stories and kisses, or out the back of Shadow's place with a hot mug of tea and tears running down my mug, and i REALLY needed to know this BEFORE i pulled the pin and flew half-way around the world. after a couple of hours we hadn't come to a conclusion and agreed to reconvene on my Sunday morning.
Sunday morning became Sunday afternoon and she wasn't answering her phone. i'd bought some SkypeOut credit so that i could call her mobile from here without destroying my credit (and got to test it the day before with Shadow, which was nice) and she wasn't answering. turns out she'd been exhausted after along day and was asleep before i could get out of bed, 11 hours behind, so i sat down for 2 hours with mug after mug of coffee and wrote it all down asking please. the next morning her response came saying "no". i'm not upset with her - it was always on the cards that something like this would happen, and in the finest form of trip it has. doesn't stop me from being gutted. it wasn't an "i don't care for you", more, a she put it:
"it doesn't much feel like our paths are lining up."
after our IM discussion on Thursday, on Friday night i booked a long chat with Louise to find out what she had planned. her job had just finished and i wasn't sure what she was thinking with regards to hanging around here. i gave her the rundown of what i was thinking - that i'd give it a little while longer, go with her on the trip to Egypt she's planning then spent the spring and early summer backpacking Europe. she told me that she wasn't going to be able to afford to come on the Eurotrip, but she'd be staying. find a place to herself and settle in, or if cash got too tight go and stay with family either in London or Manchester. i couldn't say what i was hoping to hear - i've no responsibility to hang around with her, although if she'd been thinking of pulling that same pin i knew i'd be able to walk away with a whole lot less guilt. my pack-leader instincts have been telling me to look after her, and as much as it's usually been unnecessary and much to her confusion i have done in my own way.
the loudest thought i had in my chaotic head was that if the girl i left behind had said "come home" i would have - gone for my wander through the continent and make my way back to the place where the constellations are familiar and the roads call out to be cut up by a pair of tyres. instead, she said "don't", taking with her my easy out.
now i'm sitting in the kitchen again pondering my increasingly unknowable future. now that the main impetus for my return is gone, should i still pack my bags and fuck off out of this place that i've come to love so much? the feeling i get is that if i wound up back in Canberra next month i'd go stir-crazy, but staying here may well send me insane. as The Clash (and B.A.D. covered in the years of my youth) said, "should I stay or should I go?" i don't know any more. i can't decide. 2 days ago i thought i had a clue... or at least, that the decision might conveniently get made for me. now i have even solid ground to stand on. in these situations i tend stay the course - sit still if that's what i've been doing, else keep putting one boot in front of the other. let the universe push me where it will, and since it seems to have gone to such great lengths to utterly confuse me i guess i'll just have to keep going around in circles until it gives me another nudge in whatever direction i'm sitting here waiting for.
whatever the case, tomorrow's another day and i'll assess it when the sun rises, and again the next and the next after that. don't make a decision without enough data, unless the clock's ticking and i still have all the time in the world and while there's a gap in the back of my head i know that "not now" doesn't mean "not ever"... it just won't be something i'll let myself rely upon, or even think about until one day i cross the ACT border on my own terms and in my own time. between now and then there's still things left i have to do, or have done to me. only time will tell.
9 months ago i wound up catching up with a girl i'd known on and off for a while. a month or so later we were an item without ever intending to be. a month later i'd fallen for her harder than i had any right to given the circumstances and then 5 months ago i kissed her goodbye on her doorstep, climbed into a rented 4x4 and drove to Sydney on my way out of the country with a little piece of her riding shotgun in the back of my head. i've jokingly referred to it as being one of the most foolish things i've ever done, but then i've done a lot of stupid things in my time so perhaps that's a bit of an exaggeration. today she told me "come back for you, not for me".
we've kept in touch here and there since i flew out - an email here, an IM chat there. i sent her a Valentine's Day message from Inverness while sitting in the common room of the hostel. before i left i told her that i'd be back for her and while the black on my boots has faded the feelings behind my promise didn't. when things have been fucked up and i've been in a pit of despair thinking about going back one day and finding her has kept me moving - my little Get Out Of Jail Free card. she said to me, one night out on the balcony when i was having doubts about my impending departure that "[i] seem to be under the misapprehension that there's something that won't still be here for [me] when you come back," and that stuck with me like a Kick Me sign. turns out that it may not have actually been worth the paper i'd written it on and now i've got no one to blame but myself for my presumption.
last Thursday we wound up having a long chat on IM and it all came out. for a while now i've been questioning the wisdom of hanging around here watching my slush fund trickle away while i sit around getting rejected for job after job and was thinking about making a move - go travelling for a few months before heading back. it wasn't really my ideal solution, but the idea of showing back up in Canberra and on her doorstep with a bunch of flowers and a bucket of Hoboken Crunch had some appeal. what i needed to know, though, was whether an hour later i'd be sitting on her couch exchanging stories and kisses, or out the back of Shadow's place with a hot mug of tea and tears running down my mug, and i REALLY needed to know this BEFORE i pulled the pin and flew half-way around the world. after a couple of hours we hadn't come to a conclusion and agreed to reconvene on my Sunday morning.
Sunday morning became Sunday afternoon and she wasn't answering her phone. i'd bought some SkypeOut credit so that i could call her mobile from here without destroying my credit (and got to test it the day before with Shadow, which was nice) and she wasn't answering. turns out she'd been exhausted after along day and was asleep before i could get out of bed, 11 hours behind, so i sat down for 2 hours with mug after mug of coffee and wrote it all down asking please. the next morning her response came saying "no". i'm not upset with her - it was always on the cards that something like this would happen, and in the finest form of trip it has. doesn't stop me from being gutted. it wasn't an "i don't care for you", more, a she put it:
"it doesn't much feel like our paths are lining up."
after our IM discussion on Thursday, on Friday night i booked a long chat with Louise to find out what she had planned. her job had just finished and i wasn't sure what she was thinking with regards to hanging around here. i gave her the rundown of what i was thinking - that i'd give it a little while longer, go with her on the trip to Egypt she's planning then spent the spring and early summer backpacking Europe. she told me that she wasn't going to be able to afford to come on the Eurotrip, but she'd be staying. find a place to herself and settle in, or if cash got too tight go and stay with family either in London or Manchester. i couldn't say what i was hoping to hear - i've no responsibility to hang around with her, although if she'd been thinking of pulling that same pin i knew i'd be able to walk away with a whole lot less guilt. my pack-leader instincts have been telling me to look after her, and as much as it's usually been unnecessary and much to her confusion i have done in my own way.
the loudest thought i had in my chaotic head was that if the girl i left behind had said "come home" i would have - gone for my wander through the continent and make my way back to the place where the constellations are familiar and the roads call out to be cut up by a pair of tyres. instead, she said "don't", taking with her my easy out.
now i'm sitting in the kitchen again pondering my increasingly unknowable future. now that the main impetus for my return is gone, should i still pack my bags and fuck off out of this place that i've come to love so much? the feeling i get is that if i wound up back in Canberra next month i'd go stir-crazy, but staying here may well send me insane. as The Clash (and B.A.D. covered in the years of my youth) said, "should I stay or should I go?" i don't know any more. i can't decide. 2 days ago i thought i had a clue... or at least, that the decision might conveniently get made for me. now i have even solid ground to stand on. in these situations i tend stay the course - sit still if that's what i've been doing, else keep putting one boot in front of the other. let the universe push me where it will, and since it seems to have gone to such great lengths to utterly confuse me i guess i'll just have to keep going around in circles until it gives me another nudge in whatever direction i'm sitting here waiting for.
whatever the case, tomorrow's another day and i'll assess it when the sun rises, and again the next and the next after that. don't make a decision without enough data, unless the clock's ticking and i still have all the time in the world and while there's a gap in the back of my head i know that "not now" doesn't mean "not ever"... it just won't be something i'll let myself rely upon, or even think about until one day i cross the ACT border on my own terms and in my own time. between now and then there's still things left i have to do, or have done to me. only time will tell.
Friday, February 27, 2009
things are starting to fall apart...
London has this habit of sneaking up on you - sitting on the train you pass through village after village divided by miles of fields and pasture until the villages start to roll one into the next and you look over your shoulder to realise that that there'll be no more fields and there's London staring back at you with a guilty grin while it tries to pretend it wasn't about to shiv you with the sharpened pool cue it's doing a poor job of hiding behind its back. i've heard tell of people who commute into London from villages in the surrounds (even met a couple) but i'd never believed it was that popular until i rode the train back from Harwich first thing in the morning. by the time we're half-way there the train's crowded. half an hour out and it's packed. these people must spend almost as much time commuting as they do working (more so knowing some of the office-workers i've met over the years), but they don't seem to care... or at least, are resigned to it out the quietly desperate way of the English that Pink Floyd referred to years before i was born.
Louise and i parted company at Liverpool St Station - me taking the bags back to base-camp and her off to work. i walked into the cool quiet of our room. she walked face-first into a Don't Come Monday. the company she's been working for since December runs in cycles of workload and she'd already dodged two staffing cuts. this one got her. on the plus side, she gets to work out the week which means a bit of extra cash for her. on the minus, this leaves her at a massive loose-end, and no idea where her next paycheck's coming from.
my job search has showed little more than previous weeks and i'm not in the mood - going through the motions if for no other reason than that i have fuck-all better to do. i've had an increasingly sinking suspicion since Tuesday that this might be the beginning of the end and my mind's already started to build contingency plans and pondering dates of return to the a sunburned country. i don't know. i really don't. there are too many different factors pulling in different directions. what i'm hearing from the homeland hasn't been positive as far as the job opportunities are concerned, but at least i have infrastructure there - a strong professional reputation, pimps who take my calls, couches to crash on and the dole i can apply for... but i have this sinking feeling that if i wound up back in Canberra in a month or so i'd wind up sitting there staring out across Lake Burley-Griffin thinking WTF? my current temptation is to give it another few weeks or a month, pack it in and go travel the continent. Louise has been talking about doing a 3-week tour through Egypt, which sounds like a great way to get it started. St Patrick's Day is around the corner, as is Ireland, and that seems like the sort of thing that just has to be done, so i could probably fit that in before Egypt... then instead of coming back to London i could head on elsewhere... Greece is just across the Mediterranean. so's Italy, and from either or the rest of Europe's laid out in a patchwork of irregular borders and train lines, begging to be traversed. i could easily lose 2 or 3 months in that and get back into Aus at around Tax Time when budgets are full and the departments are casting around to fill in their FTE. or i could keep hanging around London...
i need to sit down with Louise and see what she has to say, and what her plans are. i don't think she's done yet, but it's a conversation we have to have. not sure whether, or how, it'll change my plans just yet, but if i can remove that variable then at least i can start thinking about how i want to attack things. there's also the small matter of a pretty little brunette who i've not spoken to enough since i left... knowing her mind will certainly help push me in one direction or another.
i hate to think about slinking home with my tail between my legs, but i know in my mind that i've made the best go of it that i could under the circumstances, and backpacking Europe would make a fantastic way to end it... or at least make the return smell less of failure and more of the grand adventure i'd envisioned a year ago when i was first putting my plans together. conversations i have in the coming days will tell me a great deal. i just hope that they provide me with some clarity on which way to jump. at very least i expect that they'll remove any excuse i might have to not make the decision i don't want to have to make myself.
Louise and i parted company at Liverpool St Station - me taking the bags back to base-camp and her off to work. i walked into the cool quiet of our room. she walked face-first into a Don't Come Monday. the company she's been working for since December runs in cycles of workload and she'd already dodged two staffing cuts. this one got her. on the plus side, she gets to work out the week which means a bit of extra cash for her. on the minus, this leaves her at a massive loose-end, and no idea where her next paycheck's coming from.
my job search has showed little more than previous weeks and i'm not in the mood - going through the motions if for no other reason than that i have fuck-all better to do. i've had an increasingly sinking suspicion since Tuesday that this might be the beginning of the end and my mind's already started to build contingency plans and pondering dates of return to the a sunburned country. i don't know. i really don't. there are too many different factors pulling in different directions. what i'm hearing from the homeland hasn't been positive as far as the job opportunities are concerned, but at least i have infrastructure there - a strong professional reputation, pimps who take my calls, couches to crash on and the dole i can apply for... but i have this sinking feeling that if i wound up back in Canberra in a month or so i'd wind up sitting there staring out across Lake Burley-Griffin thinking WTF? my current temptation is to give it another few weeks or a month, pack it in and go travel the continent. Louise has been talking about doing a 3-week tour through Egypt, which sounds like a great way to get it started. St Patrick's Day is around the corner, as is Ireland, and that seems like the sort of thing that just has to be done, so i could probably fit that in before Egypt... then instead of coming back to London i could head on elsewhere... Greece is just across the Mediterranean. so's Italy, and from either or the rest of Europe's laid out in a patchwork of irregular borders and train lines, begging to be traversed. i could easily lose 2 or 3 months in that and get back into Aus at around Tax Time when budgets are full and the departments are casting around to fill in their FTE. or i could keep hanging around London...
i need to sit down with Louise and see what she has to say, and what her plans are. i don't think she's done yet, but it's a conversation we have to have. not sure whether, or how, it'll change my plans just yet, but if i can remove that variable then at least i can start thinking about how i want to attack things. there's also the small matter of a pretty little brunette who i've not spoken to enough since i left... knowing her mind will certainly help push me in one direction or another.
i hate to think about slinking home with my tail between my legs, but i know in my mind that i've made the best go of it that i could under the circumstances, and backpacking Europe would make a fantastic way to end it... or at least make the return smell less of failure and more of the grand adventure i'd envisioned a year ago when i was first putting my plans together. conversations i have in the coming days will tell me a great deal. i just hope that they provide me with some clarity on which way to jump. at very least i expect that they'll remove any excuse i might have to not make the decision i don't want to have to make myself.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
from the bottom, the only way to look is up...
it took one day of being back on the job hunt to knock me back on my arse again. back in London and from out of nowhere the tourists have appeared, clogging my usual haunts around Trafalgar Square with over-excited, camera-waving, stopping-in-the-middle-of-the-footpath exuberance, forcing me to duck, dodge and dive through them all like a rider heading the wrong way down a Malaysian freeway on an aging Chinese moped. the whole world seems to have gone insane and sent the worst of it all here on holiday.
Saturday was one of those nights that ended early, but didn't finish until late. by the time i met Louise at Clapham South Station i was swaying slightly on my feet. she had her friend Margeaux in tow, both dressed to kill and drunk enough to make Boris Yeltsin blush. after having a few drinks at Rhodora's house nearby the expanded party made its way to a loud, busy club in Clapham called Infernos where people danced while i cockblocked random sleezeballs until Louise lost her phone and decided she'd had enough at around midnight - just early enough to miss the last tube out by seconds and have to find the bus to get back to base-camp. we spent Sunday bumming around the house watching Star Wars movies, comparing notes about the last week and generally keeping our heads down, and the next day i shook my arse into Bite with a smile on my face and a spring in my step.
my good mood lasted for about 3 hours - i called all my contacts in the pimping community to say: i'm back from holiday in Scotland. yeah, it was lovely. no jobs, you say? well shit, and cruised the job sites until it was time to meet Louise in Covent Garden for tea. as far as anti-climaxes go, Monday was right up there. nothing to apply for, nothing going on, no positive word in any direction. Louise was effervescent - she'd come out of the funk she'd been in for nearly a week and her grin lit her face up like the London Eye. i, on the other hand, sat there eating good indian food feeling flatter than my naan bread, so for the rest of the evening our roles were reversed and it was her job to cheer me up for a while.
Monday was very much a "hit bottom" sort of day, and i didn't just hit: i carved a nice deep crater on impact. see, i went off on walkabout to get my spirits up again and shake off the despair and frustration. one afternoon of adversity and it all came crushing down again and it broke me... but when you're broken and defeated it opens up a lot of options you wouldn't have considered otherwise. it's also the best way i've ever found to really Give Up, and while i sat there staring into space i decided well, fuck it.
once you've seriously Given Up a lot of things stop mattering. when a pimp calls you up and asks if you've X, Y and Z skills, but your Y's a little lacking you don't explain the intricate details - you just say yes, absolutely. this job's good enough? meh - apply for it anyway. i've taken to telling them that i love it here and i want to stay forever and ever. it's not strictly true. but why should that matter? it's a contract for 3 fucking months, not 3 years! do i have any holidays planned? no - i just got back from one. they don't need to know that i'm off to Amsterdam on Friday, and looking at going to Egypt for most of April. call them white-lies, call them filthy-mistruths, but frankly my dear, i don't give a damn.
i've taken to applying for all sorts of odd jobs. i applied for a job in recruitment because... well, why the fuck not? i've been putting in for all manner of weirdness, emailing friends and asking if they have any contacts, firing my CV all over the internet like an over-enthusiastic male porn star trying to get the record for World's Messiest Moneyshot. i was sitting in the office in Leicester Square yesterday when a new face walked in. i finished off my phone call, looked over and said hello, before explaining that yes, i DO swear a lot, i am an ANGRY motherfucker and i hoped he'd understand. he laughed and said that when he'd walked in he'd been impressed by my phone manner, so this was a bit of a shock by comparison. i laughed, flattered, and told him that you do what you have to do, but in the meantime i was going to make a fucking coffee.
by this time on Friday night i'm going to be on a ferry to The Netherlands. when i spoke to her from Inverness, Louise had said that she really wanted to get out of town for the weekend and was considering locations in Spain that she was happy to wander around alone. i suggested that i'd be mad-keen to head to Amsterdam if she'd consider that as an alternative and she went for it, so on Monday night we booked the trip. the system's really quite awesome: for a reasonable fee you get a train from Liverpool St Station to Harwich, transfer to the ferry where you have a sleeper cabin, arrive at the Hook of Holland early in the morning and catch another train to Amsterdam, arriving at 10ish. this means that not only do you not have to be at Gatwick at WTF in the morning, but you don't get to your destination way late at night and have to pay for a hostel, either. maximum use of your weekend time, and actually cheaper than flying (without having to book weeks or months in advance). young Daniel will be there this weekend - he's got a job interview on Friday and will be hanging around until Sunday, so the plan is to get in, drop our crap at the hostel and run rampage for the day. we're both really looking forward to it - it's the first time we've both left London to go to the same place at the same time for a start, so it feels like we're making good on the whole "we'll go explore Europe" idea we came over here with.
in the meantime i'll be continuing to spam pimps with my CV, using every trick i know to get noticed. for some strange reason there's a feeling around our little shared room that there's Progress being made and regardless of the reality of the situation i can't help but make the most of it. one way or another, catching a boat over to the continent for a weekend of depravity screams "adventure" and i'm massively looking forward to it. one thing's for sure - i just know i'm going to wind up eating a whole lot of things i can't pronounce, and that's almost always guaranteed to be entertaining...
Saturday was one of those nights that ended early, but didn't finish until late. by the time i met Louise at Clapham South Station i was swaying slightly on my feet. she had her friend Margeaux in tow, both dressed to kill and drunk enough to make Boris Yeltsin blush. after having a few drinks at Rhodora's house nearby the expanded party made its way to a loud, busy club in Clapham called Infernos where people danced while i cockblocked random sleezeballs until Louise lost her phone and decided she'd had enough at around midnight - just early enough to miss the last tube out by seconds and have to find the bus to get back to base-camp. we spent Sunday bumming around the house watching Star Wars movies, comparing notes about the last week and generally keeping our heads down, and the next day i shook my arse into Bite with a smile on my face and a spring in my step.
my good mood lasted for about 3 hours - i called all my contacts in the pimping community to say: i'm back from holiday in Scotland. yeah, it was lovely. no jobs, you say? well shit, and cruised the job sites until it was time to meet Louise in Covent Garden for tea. as far as anti-climaxes go, Monday was right up there. nothing to apply for, nothing going on, no positive word in any direction. Louise was effervescent - she'd come out of the funk she'd been in for nearly a week and her grin lit her face up like the London Eye. i, on the other hand, sat there eating good indian food feeling flatter than my naan bread, so for the rest of the evening our roles were reversed and it was her job to cheer me up for a while.
Monday was very much a "hit bottom" sort of day, and i didn't just hit: i carved a nice deep crater on impact. see, i went off on walkabout to get my spirits up again and shake off the despair and frustration. one afternoon of adversity and it all came crushing down again and it broke me... but when you're broken and defeated it opens up a lot of options you wouldn't have considered otherwise. it's also the best way i've ever found to really Give Up, and while i sat there staring into space i decided well, fuck it.
once you've seriously Given Up a lot of things stop mattering. when a pimp calls you up and asks if you've X, Y and Z skills, but your Y's a little lacking you don't explain the intricate details - you just say yes, absolutely. this job's good enough? meh - apply for it anyway. i've taken to telling them that i love it here and i want to stay forever and ever. it's not strictly true. but why should that matter? it's a contract for 3 fucking months, not 3 years! do i have any holidays planned? no - i just got back from one. they don't need to know that i'm off to Amsterdam on Friday, and looking at going to Egypt for most of April. call them white-lies, call them filthy-mistruths, but frankly my dear, i don't give a damn.
i've taken to applying for all sorts of odd jobs. i applied for a job in recruitment because... well, why the fuck not? i've been putting in for all manner of weirdness, emailing friends and asking if they have any contacts, firing my CV all over the internet like an over-enthusiastic male porn star trying to get the record for World's Messiest Moneyshot. i was sitting in the office in Leicester Square yesterday when a new face walked in. i finished off my phone call, looked over and said hello, before explaining that yes, i DO swear a lot, i am an ANGRY motherfucker and i hoped he'd understand. he laughed and said that when he'd walked in he'd been impressed by my phone manner, so this was a bit of a shock by comparison. i laughed, flattered, and told him that you do what you have to do, but in the meantime i was going to make a fucking coffee.
by this time on Friday night i'm going to be on a ferry to The Netherlands. when i spoke to her from Inverness, Louise had said that she really wanted to get out of town for the weekend and was considering locations in Spain that she was happy to wander around alone. i suggested that i'd be mad-keen to head to Amsterdam if she'd consider that as an alternative and she went for it, so on Monday night we booked the trip. the system's really quite awesome: for a reasonable fee you get a train from Liverpool St Station to Harwich, transfer to the ferry where you have a sleeper cabin, arrive at the Hook of Holland early in the morning and catch another train to Amsterdam, arriving at 10ish. this means that not only do you not have to be at Gatwick at WTF in the morning, but you don't get to your destination way late at night and have to pay for a hostel, either. maximum use of your weekend time, and actually cheaper than flying (without having to book weeks or months in advance). young Daniel will be there this weekend - he's got a job interview on Friday and will be hanging around until Sunday, so the plan is to get in, drop our crap at the hostel and run rampage for the day. we're both really looking forward to it - it's the first time we've both left London to go to the same place at the same time for a start, so it feels like we're making good on the whole "we'll go explore Europe" idea we came over here with.
in the meantime i'll be continuing to spam pimps with my CV, using every trick i know to get noticed. for some strange reason there's a feeling around our little shared room that there's Progress being made and regardless of the reality of the situation i can't help but make the most of it. one way or another, catching a boat over to the continent for a weekend of depravity screams "adventure" and i'm massively looking forward to it. one thing's for sure - i just know i'm going to wind up eating a whole lot of things i can't pronounce, and that's almost always guaranteed to be entertaining...
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Giving Up part 2 - this i did not expect (but could get used to)...
outside there are fields of white - where the city has gone icy and depressed, out here it still looks pure with a stark beauty that doesn't so much smack you in the eyeballs as sit back with a sherry and a pipe, its tweed jacket belying a hooligan past, the look in its eye asking cynically:
"... and?"
meanwhile i'm sitting here blogging while i look out the window, enjoying the graffiti sprayed on the walls around snowed-in soccer-fields enjoying the novelty of blogging while on public transport. what's that? yes, i KNOW i've been blogging a lot on public transport, but this is different - this is LIVE. somehow i managed to book a 1st-class ticket on the 9:05 to Edinburgh. i can only assume that thetrainline.com blindsided me, or that i clicked on the wrong checkbox, or that this was simply the cheapest fare available for today, and... you know what? fuck it. i have an enormous reclining seat in a cluster of 4 to myself, and all the coffee i can drink while i sit here with a power point and a WiFi connection and fuck you if you think i'm not going to make the most of it.
i was supposed to get some sleep last night - alarms (3 of were set for 6:59, 7:01 and 7:07 this morning, and with 4 and a half hours of sleep behind me i was awake, staring at the faint halo around the curtains and wishing for death. 7:33 and i was moving. 8:09 and i was out the door, Death Cab For Cute providing the now standard soundtrack for my "i'm up too early with too little sleep" experience. tube from Oval to Kings Cross St Pancras (Kings Cross is the city overland and national rail terminal, St Pancras is international) with enough time to collect my tickets and find my train, but not enough to get bored waiting. Kings Cross is a fairly unimpressive yellow-beige brick building notable only for its size and the triskell-motif'd clock. next door, St Pancras is far more impressive with a spire rising above the filth not unlike one of the many churches you see damn near everywhere in London.
of course, what you may be wondering (if you've been following the narrative in recent history) is what the fuck i'm doing in 1st-class on an overland train, and where the fuck am i going? see, i could have explained at the start, but starting there wouldn't have been so fun now, would it?
when last i spoke i mentioned that i was waiting for news from jobs to come in. since then i had another interview for a Team Leader job for a small government advisory commission (which went surprisingly well, thanks), and so i waited. then finally, on Friday afternoon i got news from both sets of pimps - their sympathetic speeches so similar they could have been carbon-copied:
"You did incredibly well at interview. They were really impressed with the way you answered the questions succinctly, they thought you have a great personality for the role, technical skills are right up there and your leadership style would work really well for them. It was a hard decision - it was down between you and one other guy, but in this situation they've decided not to move forward with you, but they really want to consider you for future roles if they come up."
well fuckery - you've got to be fucking kidding. 2nd best is 1st loser, and twice more i've been the best of the rest. i've said before that if the jobs i was in for didn't come through i'd be fucking off into the hinterlands and less than 48 hours later, being a man of my word, i'm on a train heading north at "surprisingly ridiculous"-an-hour and onto my second cup of "better than any airline i've ever been on" coffee.
Friday was not one of my shining moments - i waited and i was sick of waiting and 2 weeks of waiting culminated in one afternoon of failure. i'd spent the day bumming around the flat before heading into Leicester Square for a couple of hours, with plans of cruising the job sites, sorting out some paperwork and hitting the National Portrait Gallery (i walk past it almost every day and had never been in before). i must admit that while i enjoyed the gallery, it would have been nice to have seen more photographic work since i was fishing for ideas on composition in the interests of hopefully improving my own photography. the second call came through while i was on the bus on my way back to base-camp and i managed to not blow out the windows with a scream of rage and despair, (later 1/3 of a bottle of scotch helped wash down the bitter pill of failure) and within 5 minutes of walking in the door i was pulling open the bookmarks i'd saved weeks ago and started getting organised. come Saturday morning i booked the train out of town, and the first two nights in a hostel, while i sipped my morning coffee, then proceeded to spend the rest of the afternoon being shown around Greenwich Park (which has ducks and pigeons and squirrels and deer) by SiJ, then the evening watching Stargate, fixing the music player on my Eee, drying clothes and packing my shoulder bag and backpack.
you might notice that i've not discussed my plans, and the canny amongst you will have worked out that it's because i don't have any. i know where i'm staying tonight and tomorrow. past there i can't really bring myself to give a fuck. i can extend my stay in the hostel, or change if i want. i can find transport to get me to the next town. i've got my passport and access to enough cash to keep me for a year if the urge should strike to do something unexpected. i'm past caring and i'm past comprehension. i don't even know when i'll be back in London - it'll be either when the idea sits right with me, or i get bored of wandering. whichever comes first. in the meantime, i'm Dropping Off The Face Of The Planet with my middle finger raised in one final "fuck you" to anyone bored enough to watch me fall.
were it not for the absurd novelty of having a net connection on the train i'd have been officially Offline from the moment i walked out the door this morning. i'm a fairly well connected lad - being an IT professional and technology enthusiast i live a pretty hifi life. one of my great fantasies of the last couple of years has been to switch off and fuck off into the distance for a while. no phone, no net, just me, my PSD, access to transport and hopefully places i've never been. sure, i've got my Eee with me, but that just means i can write to my heart's content and worry about posting it all later. no email, no Facebook, no phone ringing. hell - if i didn't want to be able to take calls form pimps i'd have turned my fucking phone off and thrown it so hard at the fucking wall it'd have embedded in the plaster (i love this phone - i could do that and it'd probably STILL survive). i've been so tempted to fling the thing into the Thames, and wave goodbye and giggle maniacally as it sinks along with the last of my sanity, but i've managed to fight the urge.
so there you go. 4 months in this country is all it took for me to say "fuck it" and drop out. i expect i'll get back into the swing again when i go back to London, but for the time being i'm past making promises or building expectations. promises can be broken. expectations can be shattered. plans can fail, and i'm sick of the cloud of failure that follows me around as if i was Pig Pen in Peanuts. i've Given Up, Dropped Out and Fucked off. time to see how i go out in the world on my own, outside my comfort zone and reliant on no one, and at some stage eventually i'll even get around to telling you about it. meanwhile, if you don't know how to find me it's because i want it that way. leave a message.
Raven Out.
"... and?"
meanwhile i'm sitting here blogging while i look out the window, enjoying the graffiti sprayed on the walls around snowed-in soccer-fields enjoying the novelty of blogging while on public transport. what's that? yes, i KNOW i've been blogging a lot on public transport, but this is different - this is LIVE. somehow i managed to book a 1st-class ticket on the 9:05 to Edinburgh. i can only assume that thetrainline.com blindsided me, or that i clicked on the wrong checkbox, or that this was simply the cheapest fare available for today, and... you know what? fuck it. i have an enormous reclining seat in a cluster of 4 to myself, and all the coffee i can drink while i sit here with a power point and a WiFi connection and fuck you if you think i'm not going to make the most of it.
i was supposed to get some sleep last night - alarms (3 of were set for 6:59, 7:01 and 7:07 this morning, and with 4 and a half hours of sleep behind me i was awake, staring at the faint halo around the curtains and wishing for death. 7:33 and i was moving. 8:09 and i was out the door, Death Cab For Cute providing the now standard soundtrack for my "i'm up too early with too little sleep" experience. tube from Oval to Kings Cross St Pancras (Kings Cross is the city overland and national rail terminal, St Pancras is international) with enough time to collect my tickets and find my train, but not enough to get bored waiting. Kings Cross is a fairly unimpressive yellow-beige brick building notable only for its size and the triskell-motif'd clock. next door, St Pancras is far more impressive with a spire rising above the filth not unlike one of the many churches you see damn near everywhere in London.
of course, what you may be wondering (if you've been following the narrative in recent history) is what the fuck i'm doing in 1st-class on an overland train, and where the fuck am i going? see, i could have explained at the start, but starting there wouldn't have been so fun now, would it?
when last i spoke i mentioned that i was waiting for news from jobs to come in. since then i had another interview for a Team Leader job for a small government advisory commission (which went surprisingly well, thanks), and so i waited. then finally, on Friday afternoon i got news from both sets of pimps - their sympathetic speeches so similar they could have been carbon-copied:
"You did incredibly well at interview. They were really impressed with the way you answered the questions succinctly, they thought you have a great personality for the role, technical skills are right up there and your leadership style would work really well for them. It was a hard decision - it was down between you and one other guy, but in this situation they've decided not to move forward with you, but they really want to consider you for future roles if they come up."
well fuckery - you've got to be fucking kidding. 2nd best is 1st loser, and twice more i've been the best of the rest. i've said before that if the jobs i was in for didn't come through i'd be fucking off into the hinterlands and less than 48 hours later, being a man of my word, i'm on a train heading north at "surprisingly ridiculous"-an-hour and onto my second cup of "better than any airline i've ever been on" coffee.
Friday was not one of my shining moments - i waited and i was sick of waiting and 2 weeks of waiting culminated in one afternoon of failure. i'd spent the day bumming around the flat before heading into Leicester Square for a couple of hours, with plans of cruising the job sites, sorting out some paperwork and hitting the National Portrait Gallery (i walk past it almost every day and had never been in before). i must admit that while i enjoyed the gallery, it would have been nice to have seen more photographic work since i was fishing for ideas on composition in the interests of hopefully improving my own photography. the second call came through while i was on the bus on my way back to base-camp and i managed to not blow out the windows with a scream of rage and despair, (later 1/3 of a bottle of scotch helped wash down the bitter pill of failure) and within 5 minutes of walking in the door i was pulling open the bookmarks i'd saved weeks ago and started getting organised. come Saturday morning i booked the train out of town, and the first two nights in a hostel, while i sipped my morning coffee, then proceeded to spend the rest of the afternoon being shown around Greenwich Park (which has ducks and pigeons and squirrels and deer) by SiJ, then the evening watching Stargate, fixing the music player on my Eee, drying clothes and packing my shoulder bag and backpack.
you might notice that i've not discussed my plans, and the canny amongst you will have worked out that it's because i don't have any. i know where i'm staying tonight and tomorrow. past there i can't really bring myself to give a fuck. i can extend my stay in the hostel, or change if i want. i can find transport to get me to the next town. i've got my passport and access to enough cash to keep me for a year if the urge should strike to do something unexpected. i'm past caring and i'm past comprehension. i don't even know when i'll be back in London - it'll be either when the idea sits right with me, or i get bored of wandering. whichever comes first. in the meantime, i'm Dropping Off The Face Of The Planet with my middle finger raised in one final "fuck you" to anyone bored enough to watch me fall.
were it not for the absurd novelty of having a net connection on the train i'd have been officially Offline from the moment i walked out the door this morning. i'm a fairly well connected lad - being an IT professional and technology enthusiast i live a pretty hifi life. one of my great fantasies of the last couple of years has been to switch off and fuck off into the distance for a while. no phone, no net, just me, my PSD, access to transport and hopefully places i've never been. sure, i've got my Eee with me, but that just means i can write to my heart's content and worry about posting it all later. no email, no Facebook, no phone ringing. hell - if i didn't want to be able to take calls form pimps i'd have turned my fucking phone off and thrown it so hard at the fucking wall it'd have embedded in the plaster (i love this phone - i could do that and it'd probably STILL survive). i've been so tempted to fling the thing into the Thames, and wave goodbye and giggle maniacally as it sinks along with the last of my sanity, but i've managed to fight the urge.
so there you go. 4 months in this country is all it took for me to say "fuck it" and drop out. i expect i'll get back into the swing again when i go back to London, but for the time being i'm past making promises or building expectations. promises can be broken. expectations can be shattered. plans can fail, and i'm sick of the cloud of failure that follows me around as if i was Pig Pen in Peanuts. i've Given Up, Dropped Out and Fucked off. time to see how i go out in the world on my own, outside my comfort zone and reliant on no one, and at some stage eventually i'll even get around to telling you about it. meanwhile, if you don't know how to find me it's because i want it that way. leave a message.
Raven Out.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
my day in the snow...
in the last 24 hours London has had the most snow drop on it that it's experienced in the last 18 years and pretty much everything ground to a halt. it was snowing lightly yesterday when i was on the bus, then while i was in Woolwich it started in earnest, laying a thin layer on everything. out on the balcony at SiJ's place i could see little kids running around, cars sliding down the hill and one poor motorcyclist who seemed desperate to get safely home while his rear end kept sliding out on him.
i headed for the bus fairly early and managed to get back to basecamp without mishap, where it was up to ~2 inches. comparing notes with louise, we looked out the window half an hour later to see it coming down thick and fast, and our reaction was the same: let's go downstairs! rugged up and down in the cold it was beautiful - everything was white, still frozen. no slush yet, traffic hadn't melted any of it yet. we were laughing, jumping around the footpath like children. i jokingly threw a snowball at her and she landed on her arse giggling. we horsed around until i lost feeling in my hands and came back in and watched it out the window for a while before we hit the sack.
it snowed through most of the night and by this morning it was a complete and total debacle out there. 4-6 inches covered everything that'd take it. louise managed to get to work eventually, but TFL canceled every bus route, every overland train and most of the tubes were either suspended or on massively reduced services. i got a call at 10ish advising that my interview for the day had been postponed, which did not impress me, but so many people were unable to get to work that it was almost like an unofficial holiday. London just... stopped. i lay around and checked the news and before too long realised that i had a mission for the day: rug up, go out in it, experience REAL snow and take as many photos as possible.
i cruised Facebook for a while to see if anyone wanted to join in, and suggested that if louise was considering getting out of work early she should hook in and come for the ride. by midday i was getting off the tube (Northern Line was the 2nd-least effected tube line) at Embankment and walking down the north bank of the Thames towards Westminster with my camera going mad. it took me nearly an hour and a half to get from from Westminster to Trafalgar Square to St Martin's-in-the-Fields to Charing Cross Station, partly because i kept stopping to take photos, partly because trudging down icy footpaths was slow going. louise met me near Trafalgar Square and fed me the second half of her sandwich, and we moved on through Admiralty Arch and through the park running alongside The Mall until we eventually reached Buckingham Palace, on through St James' Park and then up to Green Park where we parked ourselves in a pub and had hot chocolate. by the time we'd gone through Leicester Square it was 4:30 and she was getting dizzy spells so i helped her to Leicester Square Station and we headed back, getting in just as it was starting to get dark.
i was incredibly glad i'd dressed appropriately for it - two pairs of socks under my boots which were laced up to the top (by the time we were done in the parks my trousers were soaked to the knees. my feet? toasty and dry. thank you Steel Blue work boots!), singlet, long-sleeved shirt, short-sleeved shirt, coat, gloves, scarf and hat. i'd brought louise her gloves and mittens, as well as my spare hat, and with her boots and ski-jacket she was sorted. when we stopped at The Clarence in Green Park it took quite a while to remove all the layers, and our jackets and scarves etc took up a couch of their own.
it was quite amazing how quiet it was in town - with transport links cut off sod all anyone was getting anywhere, but there were a huge number of people in the parks mucking around, rolling snowmen, throwing snowballs, lads out with their girlfriends, parents playing with their kids... everyone having a lovely time and just simply loving it. the atmosphere was infectious and we spent four-odd hours with the biggest, stupidest grins on our faces. louise commented on it as being the best single day we've had since we got here and i find it hard to disagree too loudly. i wound up taking 240 photos over the course of the day which i'll be culling down a little, but most of them came out really well so it won't be by much. we had the best time, and all it took was a blizzard which ground the entire city to a screeching halt!
meanwhile, i was called in to do some more work tomorrow for Louis Vuitton - they have one computer that refuses to boot and i've negotiated a flat day-rate - no matter how quick i get it done, i get paid for the whole day to make it worth my while. this means i need to be up pretty early to get in there, but i suppose it's worth it... that said, i'm pretty worn out from today so i can see me sleeping well tonight...
i headed for the bus fairly early and managed to get back to basecamp without mishap, where it was up to ~2 inches. comparing notes with louise, we looked out the window half an hour later to see it coming down thick and fast, and our reaction was the same: let's go downstairs! rugged up and down in the cold it was beautiful - everything was white, still frozen. no slush yet, traffic hadn't melted any of it yet. we were laughing, jumping around the footpath like children. i jokingly threw a snowball at her and she landed on her arse giggling. we horsed around until i lost feeling in my hands and came back in and watched it out the window for a while before we hit the sack.
it snowed through most of the night and by this morning it was a complete and total debacle out there. 4-6 inches covered everything that'd take it. louise managed to get to work eventually, but TFL canceled every bus route, every overland train and most of the tubes were either suspended or on massively reduced services. i got a call at 10ish advising that my interview for the day had been postponed, which did not impress me, but so many people were unable to get to work that it was almost like an unofficial holiday. London just... stopped. i lay around and checked the news and before too long realised that i had a mission for the day: rug up, go out in it, experience REAL snow and take as many photos as possible.
i cruised Facebook for a while to see if anyone wanted to join in, and suggested that if louise was considering getting out of work early she should hook in and come for the ride. by midday i was getting off the tube (Northern Line was the 2nd-least effected tube line) at Embankment and walking down the north bank of the Thames towards Westminster with my camera going mad. it took me nearly an hour and a half to get from from Westminster to Trafalgar Square to St Martin's-in-the-Fields to Charing Cross Station, partly because i kept stopping to take photos, partly because trudging down icy footpaths was slow going. louise met me near Trafalgar Square and fed me the second half of her sandwich, and we moved on through Admiralty Arch and through the park running alongside The Mall until we eventually reached Buckingham Palace, on through St James' Park and then up to Green Park where we parked ourselves in a pub and had hot chocolate. by the time we'd gone through Leicester Square it was 4:30 and she was getting dizzy spells so i helped her to Leicester Square Station and we headed back, getting in just as it was starting to get dark.
i was incredibly glad i'd dressed appropriately for it - two pairs of socks under my boots which were laced up to the top (by the time we were done in the parks my trousers were soaked to the knees. my feet? toasty and dry. thank you Steel Blue work boots!), singlet, long-sleeved shirt, short-sleeved shirt, coat, gloves, scarf and hat. i'd brought louise her gloves and mittens, as well as my spare hat, and with her boots and ski-jacket she was sorted. when we stopped at The Clarence in Green Park it took quite a while to remove all the layers, and our jackets and scarves etc took up a couch of their own.
it was quite amazing how quiet it was in town - with transport links cut off sod all anyone was getting anywhere, but there were a huge number of people in the parks mucking around, rolling snowmen, throwing snowballs, lads out with their girlfriends, parents playing with their kids... everyone having a lovely time and just simply loving it. the atmosphere was infectious and we spent four-odd hours with the biggest, stupidest grins on our faces. louise commented on it as being the best single day we've had since we got here and i find it hard to disagree too loudly. i wound up taking 240 photos over the course of the day which i'll be culling down a little, but most of them came out really well so it won't be by much. we had the best time, and all it took was a blizzard which ground the entire city to a screeching halt!
meanwhile, i was called in to do some more work tomorrow for Louis Vuitton - they have one computer that refuses to boot and i've negotiated a flat day-rate - no matter how quick i get it done, i get paid for the whole day to make it worth my while. this means i need to be up pretty early to get in there, but i suppose it's worth it... that said, i'm pretty worn out from today so i can see me sleeping well tonight...
Monday, February 2, 2009
gourmet while you wait...
after a freezing start to the year the weather went mild, giving London a couple of weeks of comparatively warm weather. my scarf and gloves got stowed and i went out for a few days without a couple of my regular layers, then just as suddenly the weather went "psych!" like a 13 year old in an american sit-com and went fucking freezing again, with a brief moment of snow again as i was waking up this morning.
i'm blogging on the bus again, heading out on the hour-trip to Woolwich to help an english girl make lammingtons, and beg the use of her bath (the hot water at my place being barely enough to wash the dishes, let alone run a hot bath. i'll not complain - it's a good time to sit, look out the window and reflect on the last few days.
yesterday, after a month or so of meaning to, louise and i finally wandered out to the Borough Market off near London Bridge - absurdly packed and full of gourmet food (Ondine, pay attention!). you want a whole, unbutchered hare or pheasant? check. cheeses made in some farm's back shed, sliced off a 20kg wheel? got it. wild boar sausages, venison jerky, ostrich burgers? just keep your eyes open (the ostrich burger was really very good - that i can vouch for). 13 different kinds of olives, extra virgin olive oil, infused with a chunk of truffle... hell - whole black truffles stored in a jar on a bed of wild rice (£46 for one the size of a toddler's fist). organic bakers (selling brownies of the sort that chocaholic's dreams are made of), organic cheese and yogurt, organic coffee... fuck - think of it and some fucker's selling an organic one. it was great to wander and snack and taste and smell... well, as much as we could smell over the pervasive fumes of mulled wine which seemed to be a requirement. the application process for a stall must be:
"Good morning, what will you be selling then?"
We specialise in Jersey and Guensey organic raw sheep's milk cheese.
"Ah, we can always do with another stall selling that... wait... I don't see anything on your application form about selling mulled wine."
Well, no - it's not something we really do at Ben's Bovine Botherer's Farms...
"Oh no, we can't be having with that. EVERYBODY's got to sell mulled wine in winter, otherwise no one'll be able to tell it's English! The nerve of some people. You'll never fit in. Out!"
But...
"OUT!"
as we wandered we picked up some cheese, bread, some fresh apples and other odds and ends before heading back to base-camp for the evening and having cheese and cold-cuts for tea and watched movies until we were sick of the idea.
we'd have gotten in earlier, in part, had i not been out so late the night before. my resolve to Not Drink Too Much was tested hugely by the free booze at the Ruby Blue Lounge and one of the saffas (South Africans) who declared me to be his new favourite drinking buddy, but i managed to stop at 7 (or at least, that's the point i was at when the tab ran out). a good time was had - a big bunch of drunken IT Professionals in a classy venue with various girlfriends and wives trying not to look so uncomfortable. i managed to narrowly skirt a conversation that started with the line "You see, the idea that everything started from nothing, which exploded, and that after billions of years we've learned to walk and talk, is harder for me to believe than that God made it all in 7 days," but the rest of it was pretty damn jovial. i tried to leave at 9ish, but was dragged back in. i tried to make a move at 10:30 but was prevented. 11:30 and i finally excaped, walking Cathy (one of staff) to her bus stop since it was right next to mine. when i got in louise was still feeling a bit sick, but looked much better than she had for the week previous.
it's been a slow week, as i've discussed previously. i'm about ready to shoot people - if they could just tell me that i don't have the godsdamned jobs i'd be able to go and do something productive. you know, like Scotland (ok, i don't know how productive Scotland is or isn't, but doing Scotland would be in my book). each day that goes by drags while i wait and try not too piss off the pimps by badgering them too much. maybe i'll just do a spur-of-the-moment trip to Oxford or something in the meantime - where i can go and see and be back from in a day. something that doesn't involve sitting around the house in my tracky-daks.
meanwhile, i should probably pay attention to where this bus is going now so that i don't wind up in Plumstead.
i'm blogging on the bus again, heading out on the hour-trip to Woolwich to help an english girl make lammingtons, and beg the use of her bath (the hot water at my place being barely enough to wash the dishes, let alone run a hot bath. i'll not complain - it's a good time to sit, look out the window and reflect on the last few days.
yesterday, after a month or so of meaning to, louise and i finally wandered out to the Borough Market off near London Bridge - absurdly packed and full of gourmet food (Ondine, pay attention!). you want a whole, unbutchered hare or pheasant? check. cheeses made in some farm's back shed, sliced off a 20kg wheel? got it. wild boar sausages, venison jerky, ostrich burgers? just keep your eyes open (the ostrich burger was really very good - that i can vouch for). 13 different kinds of olives, extra virgin olive oil, infused with a chunk of truffle... hell - whole black truffles stored in a jar on a bed of wild rice (£46 for one the size of a toddler's fist). organic bakers (selling brownies of the sort that chocaholic's dreams are made of), organic cheese and yogurt, organic coffee... fuck - think of it and some fucker's selling an organic one. it was great to wander and snack and taste and smell... well, as much as we could smell over the pervasive fumes of mulled wine which seemed to be a requirement. the application process for a stall must be:
"Good morning, what will you be selling then?"
We specialise in Jersey and Guensey organic raw sheep's milk cheese.
"Ah, we can always do with another stall selling that... wait... I don't see anything on your application form about selling mulled wine."
Well, no - it's not something we really do at Ben's Bovine Botherer's Farms...
"Oh no, we can't be having with that. EVERYBODY's got to sell mulled wine in winter, otherwise no one'll be able to tell it's English! The nerve of some people. You'll never fit in. Out!"
But...
"OUT!"
as we wandered we picked up some cheese, bread, some fresh apples and other odds and ends before heading back to base-camp for the evening and having cheese and cold-cuts for tea and watched movies until we were sick of the idea.
we'd have gotten in earlier, in part, had i not been out so late the night before. my resolve to Not Drink Too Much was tested hugely by the free booze at the Ruby Blue Lounge and one of the saffas (South Africans) who declared me to be his new favourite drinking buddy, but i managed to stop at 7 (or at least, that's the point i was at when the tab ran out). a good time was had - a big bunch of drunken IT Professionals in a classy venue with various girlfriends and wives trying not to look so uncomfortable. i managed to narrowly skirt a conversation that started with the line "You see, the idea that everything started from nothing, which exploded, and that after billions of years we've learned to walk and talk, is harder for me to believe than that God made it all in 7 days," but the rest of it was pretty damn jovial. i tried to leave at 9ish, but was dragged back in. i tried to make a move at 10:30 but was prevented. 11:30 and i finally excaped, walking Cathy (one of staff) to her bus stop since it was right next to mine. when i got in louise was still feeling a bit sick, but looked much better than she had for the week previous.
it's been a slow week, as i've discussed previously. i'm about ready to shoot people - if they could just tell me that i don't have the godsdamned jobs i'd be able to go and do something productive. you know, like Scotland (ok, i don't know how productive Scotland is or isn't, but doing Scotland would be in my book). each day that goes by drags while i wait and try not too piss off the pimps by badgering them too much. maybe i'll just do a spur-of-the-moment trip to Oxford or something in the meantime - where i can go and see and be back from in a day. something that doesn't involve sitting around the house in my tracky-daks.
meanwhile, i should probably pay attention to where this bus is going now so that i don't wind up in Plumstead.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
i am Schrodinger's Cat...
i'm quietly freaking out right now. back before the end of last year i had a meeting with a pimp to discuss a contract for a housing company out in West London. it looked ok - money wasn't awesome, but acceptable. he thought i was going to be a great fit so i went for it. days passed, other interviews came and went, i did a couple of short contracts and the year ended with no news. game on after NY and i got word that the job was still live, but they'd decided to take it Perm. this generally means that i'm out of the running because no fucker in this town wants to look at a Working Holiday Maker for a perm job, so: shit. wait, what? they're still keen on me? well fuckery. fine by me!
days became weeks and they were taking their sweet fucking time with it, then suddenly they want me for a phone-interview. no problem, i say. the pimp sends me a cheat-sheet with some useful info and i take the call in the kitchen with my laptop in front of me and all my notes spread out. i hit it long, straight and into the crowd for a clean 6. i'm up for a second-round, face-to-face interview, which is confirmed the following week. i'm in there early, looking smart, and i spend the next hour Making An Impression - i've got the answers, i get on with the guys, we joke, we laugh, it's fucking textbook. technical skills? spot on. business process and procedure? i could re-write their books for them. personality and integration? don't even ask. i AM this fucking job. when will they have a decision made? end of the day they'll be in touch with my pimp. i'm fucking stoked.
the day ends and my phone's not rung. the next day's Friday and i'm pacing back and forth in the office in Leicester Square. phone rings at 6PM saying that they love me, they want me, they've already written off everyone but me and some other guy (there are 2 roles going, so i'm not stressed at this), and it's likely he won't accept an offer anyway since he won't take the cash they're offering. awesome. so What The Fuck? they had a candidate reschedule to the following Tuesday and they want to ponder some stuff over the weekend. ok, ok. Tuesday. i'll know Tuesday.
today's fucking Tuesday. i dived on my phone both times it rang to hear the wrong voices from the wrong agencies talking about other jobs. i play it cool and score a send-down (my CV's going in front of the client) for something i don't give a fuck about, but will take if offered since any backup is good. where the fuck is my pimp? i'm climbing the fucking walls here!
basically, this job is next-to fucking perfect. if it were in Central it'd be a dream. we're talking a modern infrastructure which needs a few upgrades, in a team which is rebuilding itself and needs fresh ideas on how to move forward from a hands-on techie who likes to get in and dirty. technology i know and more i want to play with, no sandpits to dance around which means everyone plays with everything. bunch of decent-seeming blokes working to make their world better and a slot for someone who wants to spend the next 18-24 months kicking arse and taking names, and they're offering £40-45k for the priviledge. this sitting at the top of my CV and i'm writing my own ticket - 2 years to ride out the bear market and the sort of role that makes pimps wet themselves. 2 years to get thoroughly sick of London, or not. 2 years to make some cash and work out what the next 10 have in store.
that's what's sitting in my head at the moment while i sit here in a box waiting to know whether i live or die. will the lid open to see me liberated with a golden ticket, or is the isotope going to decay and release the poison that prevents me from ever seeing daylight? i can't see outside the fucking box and my fingernails are stuck to the walls where i've tried to claw my way out. because i'll tell you what: i'm getting really fucking sick of this. this is the one. this is the job. this is the tipping point. if my phone rings tomorrow morning and i get a "i've got some bad news for you," i'm booking a train ticket to Scotland and going backpacking. i've got it all planned... in as much as i'm making a plan. i'll get to Edinburgh, wander around until i'm sick of the idea then find my way to Inverness (probably) for a few days, before moving on to Glasgow (maybe) and then back to London (unless somewhere else interesting blips on my radar). no idea how i'll get around but i know there'll be options. part of the adventure is working it out as i go along and running without a schedule. louise is working, and taking time off when she's not sure as to her future wouldn't be the best move for her (it's looking really good for her in this job, but there's still that uncertainty), but that doesn't stop her from meeting me up for a weekender somewhere - keep up the "travelling together" idea we always discussed before we got on that 'plane.
when i get back here i'll put another week or two into job-hunting again... if i've got the heart for it. as soon as i'm sick of it again i'm thinking Ireland, in the same style as Scotland. i've got the cash to do it. being loathe to spend more than absolutely necessary has meant that my slush-fund is healthy. the short-contracts i've covered have paid enough to keep me in rent, food and entertainment for the month and this has been a huge stress-relief.
of course, if the gods see fit to smile upon this damned soul then i'm looking at weekenders and a bit of settling in. maybe go for those music lessons i've been thinking about starting for far too long now? maybe find a nicer place to live with room for visitors? put some cash together and try to convince a couple of persons to come and pay me a visit and see some of this town? either way things go down i have an idea of how to move forward and that in itself has put a real spring in my step in the last few days. even failure has is opportunities. once again, Chinese New Year is going to be my marker for the end and the beginning. as much as i've long-considered Hope to be a tortuous whore of a feeling, i seem to have some at the moment so for the time being i'm going to go with it.
one way or another i seem to be entering a period of Change. i was flicking through my photo collection with someone or other and they commented that i've pretty much not changed much in the last 5... 6 years? the clothes change as they wear out, but they're still black and similar. the goatee's as it has been for over 10 years now. the pony-tail grew out and stuck for more than 6 so far. am i still thinking the same, "running over the same old ground, year after year"? have i been standing still while the world moves around me? maybe i'm overdue for some re-evaluation and re-consideration. what else should i be Giving Up while i'm in the process of a Slash & Burn? the process has been becoming attractive the more i start to think about it and the results? well, we'll just have to see, won't we?
days became weeks and they were taking their sweet fucking time with it, then suddenly they want me for a phone-interview. no problem, i say. the pimp sends me a cheat-sheet with some useful info and i take the call in the kitchen with my laptop in front of me and all my notes spread out. i hit it long, straight and into the crowd for a clean 6. i'm up for a second-round, face-to-face interview, which is confirmed the following week. i'm in there early, looking smart, and i spend the next hour Making An Impression - i've got the answers, i get on with the guys, we joke, we laugh, it's fucking textbook. technical skills? spot on. business process and procedure? i could re-write their books for them. personality and integration? don't even ask. i AM this fucking job. when will they have a decision made? end of the day they'll be in touch with my pimp. i'm fucking stoked.
the day ends and my phone's not rung. the next day's Friday and i'm pacing back and forth in the office in Leicester Square. phone rings at 6PM saying that they love me, they want me, they've already written off everyone but me and some other guy (there are 2 roles going, so i'm not stressed at this), and it's likely he won't accept an offer anyway since he won't take the cash they're offering. awesome. so What The Fuck? they had a candidate reschedule to the following Tuesday and they want to ponder some stuff over the weekend. ok, ok. Tuesday. i'll know Tuesday.
today's fucking Tuesday. i dived on my phone both times it rang to hear the wrong voices from the wrong agencies talking about other jobs. i play it cool and score a send-down (my CV's going in front of the client) for something i don't give a fuck about, but will take if offered since any backup is good. where the fuck is my pimp? i'm climbing the fucking walls here!
basically, this job is next-to fucking perfect. if it were in Central it'd be a dream. we're talking a modern infrastructure which needs a few upgrades, in a team which is rebuilding itself and needs fresh ideas on how to move forward from a hands-on techie who likes to get in and dirty. technology i know and more i want to play with, no sandpits to dance around which means everyone plays with everything. bunch of decent-seeming blokes working to make their world better and a slot for someone who wants to spend the next 18-24 months kicking arse and taking names, and they're offering £40-45k for the priviledge. this sitting at the top of my CV and i'm writing my own ticket - 2 years to ride out the bear market and the sort of role that makes pimps wet themselves. 2 years to get thoroughly sick of London, or not. 2 years to make some cash and work out what the next 10 have in store.
that's what's sitting in my head at the moment while i sit here in a box waiting to know whether i live or die. will the lid open to see me liberated with a golden ticket, or is the isotope going to decay and release the poison that prevents me from ever seeing daylight? i can't see outside the fucking box and my fingernails are stuck to the walls where i've tried to claw my way out. because i'll tell you what: i'm getting really fucking sick of this. this is the one. this is the job. this is the tipping point. if my phone rings tomorrow morning and i get a "i've got some bad news for you," i'm booking a train ticket to Scotland and going backpacking. i've got it all planned... in as much as i'm making a plan. i'll get to Edinburgh, wander around until i'm sick of the idea then find my way to Inverness (probably) for a few days, before moving on to Glasgow (maybe) and then back to London (unless somewhere else interesting blips on my radar). no idea how i'll get around but i know there'll be options. part of the adventure is working it out as i go along and running without a schedule. louise is working, and taking time off when she's not sure as to her future wouldn't be the best move for her (it's looking really good for her in this job, but there's still that uncertainty), but that doesn't stop her from meeting me up for a weekender somewhere - keep up the "travelling together" idea we always discussed before we got on that 'plane.
when i get back here i'll put another week or two into job-hunting again... if i've got the heart for it. as soon as i'm sick of it again i'm thinking Ireland, in the same style as Scotland. i've got the cash to do it. being loathe to spend more than absolutely necessary has meant that my slush-fund is healthy. the short-contracts i've covered have paid enough to keep me in rent, food and entertainment for the month and this has been a huge stress-relief.
of course, if the gods see fit to smile upon this damned soul then i'm looking at weekenders and a bit of settling in. maybe go for those music lessons i've been thinking about starting for far too long now? maybe find a nicer place to live with room for visitors? put some cash together and try to convince a couple of persons to come and pay me a visit and see some of this town? either way things go down i have an idea of how to move forward and that in itself has put a real spring in my step in the last few days. even failure has is opportunities. once again, Chinese New Year is going to be my marker for the end and the beginning. as much as i've long-considered Hope to be a tortuous whore of a feeling, i seem to have some at the moment so for the time being i'm going to go with it.
one way or another i seem to be entering a period of Change. i was flicking through my photo collection with someone or other and they commented that i've pretty much not changed much in the last 5... 6 years? the clothes change as they wear out, but they're still black and similar. the goatee's as it has been for over 10 years now. the pony-tail grew out and stuck for more than 6 so far. am i still thinking the same, "running over the same old ground, year after year"? have i been standing still while the world moves around me? maybe i'm overdue for some re-evaluation and re-consideration. what else should i be Giving Up while i'm in the process of a Slash & Burn? the process has been becoming attractive the more i start to think about it and the results? well, we'll just have to see, won't we?
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
my liver looked up and screamed "save me!", and i looked down and whispered "no"...
i've heard more than a few times people claiming that London's got a drinking problem. i never really gave it too much credence to be honest, until i was having a conversation with... um... someone - i forget whom, could have been anyone - who was saying that because you've got a strong reliance on public transport and so (relatively) few people drive, it's really easy to sink pint after pint because you don't have to drive home. certainly, there are plenty of places to get a drink in the city... in just about every area i've been in so far. it hasn't helped that "going out for a drink" has become one of my main passtimes since i came here. it's the social aspect. you meet up with some people, you find a pub or a bar and you sit around over a few beers.
friday night i was out for tea with Cam's Vegan Meetup group and where did we go afterwards? the second-nearest pub (the nearest was too full) for a few beers. saturday night? out with louise to meet up with some of her friends. we met at a pub. then headed for a house-party. then another pub. sunday? pub, then a Walkabout.
i was supposed to be going to a movie session at Adnan's on Saturday, but cancelled at the last minute. there were a couple of reasons for this, but primary of them was thus: louise and i had a rough-patch leading up to NYE. we've sorted the worst of oyur shit out and are not getting along great again, so when she invited me to come and hang with her friends i thought that in the interest of better relations i really should go along for the ride. it was a good night which ended in a rowdy pub in Chiswick which was having a pre-pre-Australia Day party. we went pretty hard, which was dumb, but fun, although we still got back to base-camp at a reasonable hour.
why was having a big night Saturday dumb? because we both knew that Sunday was going to be fucking stupid. Australia Day was something we'd been looking forward to for ages. this year it was on a Monday which would have got in the way of having a particularly huge time, but the Walkabouts (an Australian-themed bar chain i'd managed to avoid until now) were doing it big on the Sunday to compensate. we had a plan to start in Covent Garden, meet some people, then head for the big Walkabout in Temple, on the Thames Embankment. get back to base Saturday night, get a late-night burger into us then get some sleep and be ready for a Big Fucking Day.
great plan, right?
i woke up in the morning to the sound of Louise throwing up into a plastic bag because the bathroom was occupied. she'd been ok the night before, but come morning and she was NOT in a good way. i went over, donated a hair-lacky to the cause (i've always got 3 in my hair which means there's always one i can spare) and rubbed her back until she was done and went back to bed to lie down. after waking up a bit i popped downstairs and picked her up some chips, a couple of small baguettes and some hommus - bread to settle the stomach, hommus because it's light and easy to keep down. she ate, felt a bit better, advised that she was good to go and we made our move into town.
we started easy - louise with a coke and me with a beer which i sipped. Alison, on her last day in town before flying out, and her friend Anna met us up and we footed it down to Temple to meet up with Daniel and his crew. when we got there it was Australian flags and accents as far as the eye could see, good music and a great vibe. i migrated to Snakebites and louise onto Vodka+Redbulls really fast. i honestly don't have a blow-by-blow for you, and you don't need one. as the hours ticked past we went round after round after round. we got to know Daniel's mates. Cam showed up and joined the fun for a while before heading off. louise made a stealthy escape not long before Allison and Anna, and Laura got in somewhere around 8:30ish. by this time i'd been drinking solidly for about 5 hours and Daniel and i had started swiping unattended drinks rather than heading to the bar. i found out later that she helped me to the tube station ("what are friends for?" she said later when i thanked her) and i seemed to have made it home ok from there, although i must have tripped over something somewhere because i'd grazed my knee - i didn't remember. what's that? i didn't menion eating anywhere in there? that would be because i forgot to, for the entire day. shit, you say? shit indeed.
i'll tell you what though - it was a GREAT day. still, i've made the executive decision that after 2 bouts of memory-loss in a month it's time to slow down and i've taken myself off the booze in any real way for the next little while. it IS way too easy to be drinking here. of course, that was going to happen on Australia Day regardless, but it's a habit i'll nipping in the bud here and now. i've been trying to steer my social events towards cafe's rather than bars for the last little while now in the theory that this will reduce my alcohol consumption some and this has been good so far, but i can see a serious shift towards diet-coke in my future. not that i have any intention of giving up booze wholesale, but a limit of 3 pints to an evening may be a good idea instead of the... um... i lost count at 8 or 9 on Sunday. hmm...
friday night i was out for tea with Cam's Vegan Meetup group and where did we go afterwards? the second-nearest pub (the nearest was too full) for a few beers. saturday night? out with louise to meet up with some of her friends. we met at a pub. then headed for a house-party. then another pub. sunday? pub, then a Walkabout.
i was supposed to be going to a movie session at Adnan's on Saturday, but cancelled at the last minute. there were a couple of reasons for this, but primary of them was thus: louise and i had a rough-patch leading up to NYE. we've sorted the worst of oyur shit out and are not getting along great again, so when she invited me to come and hang with her friends i thought that in the interest of better relations i really should go along for the ride. it was a good night which ended in a rowdy pub in Chiswick which was having a pre-pre-Australia Day party. we went pretty hard, which was dumb, but fun, although we still got back to base-camp at a reasonable hour.
why was having a big night Saturday dumb? because we both knew that Sunday was going to be fucking stupid. Australia Day was something we'd been looking forward to for ages. this year it was on a Monday which would have got in the way of having a particularly huge time, but the Walkabouts (an Australian-themed bar chain i'd managed to avoid until now) were doing it big on the Sunday to compensate. we had a plan to start in Covent Garden, meet some people, then head for the big Walkabout in Temple, on the Thames Embankment. get back to base Saturday night, get a late-night burger into us then get some sleep and be ready for a Big Fucking Day.
great plan, right?
i woke up in the morning to the sound of Louise throwing up into a plastic bag because the bathroom was occupied. she'd been ok the night before, but come morning and she was NOT in a good way. i went over, donated a hair-lacky to the cause (i've always got 3 in my hair which means there's always one i can spare) and rubbed her back until she was done and went back to bed to lie down. after waking up a bit i popped downstairs and picked her up some chips, a couple of small baguettes and some hommus - bread to settle the stomach, hommus because it's light and easy to keep down. she ate, felt a bit better, advised that she was good to go and we made our move into town.
we started easy - louise with a coke and me with a beer which i sipped. Alison, on her last day in town before flying out, and her friend Anna met us up and we footed it down to Temple to meet up with Daniel and his crew. when we got there it was Australian flags and accents as far as the eye could see, good music and a great vibe. i migrated to Snakebites and louise onto Vodka+Redbulls really fast. i honestly don't have a blow-by-blow for you, and you don't need one. as the hours ticked past we went round after round after round. we got to know Daniel's mates. Cam showed up and joined the fun for a while before heading off. louise made a stealthy escape not long before Allison and Anna, and Laura got in somewhere around 8:30ish. by this time i'd been drinking solidly for about 5 hours and Daniel and i had started swiping unattended drinks rather than heading to the bar. i found out later that she helped me to the tube station ("what are friends for?" she said later when i thanked her) and i seemed to have made it home ok from there, although i must have tripped over something somewhere because i'd grazed my knee - i didn't remember. what's that? i didn't menion eating anywhere in there? that would be because i forgot to, for the entire day. shit, you say? shit indeed.
i'll tell you what though - it was a GREAT day. still, i've made the executive decision that after 2 bouts of memory-loss in a month it's time to slow down and i've taken myself off the booze in any real way for the next little while. it IS way too easy to be drinking here. of course, that was going to happen on Australia Day regardless, but it's a habit i'll nipping in the bud here and now. i've been trying to steer my social events towards cafe's rather than bars for the last little while now in the theory that this will reduce my alcohol consumption some and this has been good so far, but i can see a serious shift towards diet-coke in my future. not that i have any intention of giving up booze wholesale, but a limit of 3 pints to an evening may be a good idea instead of the... um... i lost count at 8 or 9 on Sunday. hmm...
Monday, January 19, 2009
joy in motion...
the thought hit me while i was chatting online like a fast-acting poison from a shakespearean play - in through my ear and infecting my head. it was an old memory, and old hobby i've not indulged in for far too long. i knew i could still do it. the muscle-memory remains, but i'm so out of practice i knew i'd be rusty. fuck it. now i wanted back in, so i did a quick search online and found out that the only store in the UK that hasn't gone purely online was up in Camden Lock Market so i got dressed and bolted for the tube.
2 hours later i was in a park i'd found in Holborn back when i had one of my first job interviews called Lincoln Inn Fields, spinning my newly-acquired poi around my head like a madman, listening to a playlist i'd constructed on the go playing fast beats off my PSD. i can still do it, but at the same time i've lost it. the moves are there but the art of stringing them together with grace will take a while to come back to me. i kept tangling the strings together on the complicated changes, but i wasn't caring. i started slow, moving pattern into pattern until i was warmed up, waited for Less Talk More Rokk to come on, pretended i was performing again and went off.
and by fuck it felt good - the buzz from cranking some dance music loud and slipping into the groove. play, adjust the strings, play, adjust some more until the length was right for the low tricks and play some more until my arms turned to jelly. i used to be able to spin for hours before i got tired - it's just muscles i've not used like that for years. i kept playing, trying out some patterns i'd never got around to perfecting back in the day, smacking myself in the face and avoiding hitting small children and dogs, until a grizzled old guy gruffly moved me along so he could lock the gates. the idea of parks that CLOSE is a little foreign to me, but it's not my park so who am i to argue?
i hit the street and wandered east towards Leicester Square until i found a Costa on the southern (less fashionable) end of Regent St to sink some caffeine - it came out in a soup-mug with two handles it's so fucking big - so that i could do some writing while i waited for Laura to finish shopping before we meet up for a drink or food or something.
there's a park across the road from base-camp - an old cemetery-turned-children's playground next to the church, but it's grassy and i'm thinking that would be an ideal spot to get some practice in and exercise when i'm feeling stiff and sore. i'll build my arms back up to strength and with any luck my knees will continue to behave. i'd forgotten how good it felt to jump around and weave patterns in the air. give me movement and bloodflow, give me speed and grace, give me fire and peace. give me back a little of what i used to love and memories of when my car smelled permanently of kerosene, from back in the days when my world used to burn and spin...
2 hours later i was in a park i'd found in Holborn back when i had one of my first job interviews called Lincoln Inn Fields, spinning my newly-acquired poi around my head like a madman, listening to a playlist i'd constructed on the go playing fast beats off my PSD. i can still do it, but at the same time i've lost it. the moves are there but the art of stringing them together with grace will take a while to come back to me. i kept tangling the strings together on the complicated changes, but i wasn't caring. i started slow, moving pattern into pattern until i was warmed up, waited for Less Talk More Rokk to come on, pretended i was performing again and went off.
and by fuck it felt good - the buzz from cranking some dance music loud and slipping into the groove. play, adjust the strings, play, adjust some more until the length was right for the low tricks and play some more until my arms turned to jelly. i used to be able to spin for hours before i got tired - it's just muscles i've not used like that for years. i kept playing, trying out some patterns i'd never got around to perfecting back in the day, smacking myself in the face and avoiding hitting small children and dogs, until a grizzled old guy gruffly moved me along so he could lock the gates. the idea of parks that CLOSE is a little foreign to me, but it's not my park so who am i to argue?
i hit the street and wandered east towards Leicester Square until i found a Costa on the southern (less fashionable) end of Regent St to sink some caffeine - it came out in a soup-mug with two handles it's so fucking big - so that i could do some writing while i waited for Laura to finish shopping before we meet up for a drink or food or something.
there's a park across the road from base-camp - an old cemetery-turned-children's playground next to the church, but it's grassy and i'm thinking that would be an ideal spot to get some practice in and exercise when i'm feeling stiff and sore. i'll build my arms back up to strength and with any luck my knees will continue to behave. i'd forgotten how good it felt to jump around and weave patterns in the air. give me movement and bloodflow, give me speed and grace, give me fire and peace. give me back a little of what i used to love and memories of when my car smelled permanently of kerosene, from back in the days when my world used to burn and spin...
Sunday, January 18, 2009
this is not the shopping experience you were looking for...
today, after hearing about it more than a few times, i was a recipient of the Argos Experience. Argos is probably best described as all the joys of catalogue-shopping, but with the added agravation of having to actually leave the house. the way it works is thus: you head into the store and walk up to one of the desks upon which there is a catalogue, a terminal and a notepad. you flick through the catalogue and find what you want. today, for me, it was a doona. every item has a unique 7-digit code which you can punch into the terminal to see if the store has one in stock. odds are they don't have it, but there are a range if similar items you can try. once you've found one that fits the bill and which the terminal says they have you write the code down on a piece of paper and take it to a cashier and pay for it. once paid you're furnished with an order number which you take to a third desk where the pickers find the thing and give it to you. simple? sure. why not.
i was more than a little irritated before i even walked into the store. i'd been out to Primark (purveyors of all things cheap and nasty) a couple of days prior and picked up bed linen to replace the stuff i'd been kindly loaned by louise's cousin way back when we first moved into base-camp a couple of months ago. i'd just been paid for the first time, and sorting that out has been high on my agenda. unfortunately i ran afoul of a) the fucking bullshit customer service you get in cheap-arse stores and b) the British aversion to the cold, which is why they had only 2 weights in doonas: Really Fucking Warm and Survive A Nuclear Winter. these weights are designated by TOG ratings. i now know that 15 is as high as it goes and i wish i'd been wiser prior to purchase otherwise i'd have walked the hell out of the fucking store instead of grabbing the last queen-size TOG 13.5 doona they had in stock. que a couple of days later once i'd washed the doona cover (i like to wash these things before i use them) and tried to sleep under the damn thing. last night i woke up every half hour or so in a sweat, overheating and boiling in my skin. this morning's trip to Borough Markets was set aside and instead louise and i walked into Brixton.
it was a beautiful day today - warm (by comparison to lately) with a sunny sky, so i took the opportunity to wear short-sleeves and get some sun on my pasty skin. we checked a few things out in Brixton before entering Argos and by this time what little sanity i had left after the night before was wearing thin. after flicking through the catalogue and trying the codes for anything cheap that fit the bill (i'd figured on getting a TOG 7.5 doona on the theory there was no way i could overheat under something described as "summer" weight) and finding that anything that fit my needs was "not in stock" i was so frustrated i was about ready to take my head in my hands, tear my face off and stick it to the wall. fuck it. i picked the cheapest, close-enough option and paid for it before waiting at the pick-up area while pushy motherfuckers waved their tickets at the harried staff. through great fortitude i managed to not drop anyone to their knees and beat their brains out on the counter before i was handed my item and bolted for the door.
i hate to say that this was a fair indication of my day thereafter, but i'll save that for another post...
i was more than a little irritated before i even walked into the store. i'd been out to Primark (purveyors of all things cheap and nasty) a couple of days prior and picked up bed linen to replace the stuff i'd been kindly loaned by louise's cousin way back when we first moved into base-camp a couple of months ago. i'd just been paid for the first time, and sorting that out has been high on my agenda. unfortunately i ran afoul of a) the fucking bullshit customer service you get in cheap-arse stores and b) the British aversion to the cold, which is why they had only 2 weights in doonas: Really Fucking Warm and Survive A Nuclear Winter. these weights are designated by TOG ratings. i now know that 15 is as high as it goes and i wish i'd been wiser prior to purchase otherwise i'd have walked the hell out of the fucking store instead of grabbing the last queen-size TOG 13.5 doona they had in stock. que a couple of days later once i'd washed the doona cover (i like to wash these things before i use them) and tried to sleep under the damn thing. last night i woke up every half hour or so in a sweat, overheating and boiling in my skin. this morning's trip to Borough Markets was set aside and instead louise and i walked into Brixton.
it was a beautiful day today - warm (by comparison to lately) with a sunny sky, so i took the opportunity to wear short-sleeves and get some sun on my pasty skin. we checked a few things out in Brixton before entering Argos and by this time what little sanity i had left after the night before was wearing thin. after flicking through the catalogue and trying the codes for anything cheap that fit the bill (i'd figured on getting a TOG 7.5 doona on the theory there was no way i could overheat under something described as "summer" weight) and finding that anything that fit my needs was "not in stock" i was so frustrated i was about ready to take my head in my hands, tear my face off and stick it to the wall. fuck it. i picked the cheapest, close-enough option and paid for it before waiting at the pick-up area while pushy motherfuckers waved their tickets at the harried staff. through great fortitude i managed to not drop anyone to their knees and beat their brains out on the counter before i was handed my item and bolted for the door.
i hate to say that this was a fair indication of my day thereafter, but i'll save that for another post...
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