Hanging in there

(Insert obligatory apology for long long long break between blog posts here.)

First things first – I’m still in London. Well actually that’s not strictly true. As I write this I’m just outside Reading, on a train to Plymouth for a few days visiting with family. So while I am not, strictly speaking, in London right now, I am still very much more in London than I would be if I were in, say, Winnipeg, if you get my drift.

Oooh. She does not look happy about having her picture taken.

The original plan, for those who remember it from way back in July, was to hang around for six weeks trying to see if the crazy idea of moving over here and finding a job is actually feasible. That is to say, if I could reasonably expect to find enough work to survive without ending up sleeping under a bench in Paddington Station or stocking shelves in a Tesco Express. However, as the days passed it became clear that six weeks is a ridiculously short amount of time in which to restart a career that’s been dormant for a year, on a new continent. It seems that even I – world traveler, insanely popular blogger, and possessor of a now almost infinite supply of anecdotes on which to dine out – even I cannot expect to land on my feet in such a short amount of time in such a big city.

So I’ve extended the plan. I rebooked my return flight for November 1st, and am hoping fervently that I’ll get to rebook one more time and change that flight into the first leg of a trip home for Christmas. (Never mind that the change fees for two rebookings will mean that it would have been cheaper for me to get a one way ticket. We are not thinking about that. Nor are we thinking about the ever-dwindling savings account. Not thinking about that at all. Nope.)

Extending my stay in London meant that I had to find new accommodations, which was not a bad thing at all. You may have detected, in my last few posts, a certain lack of enthusiasm for the neighbourhood and flat where I spent my first six weeks. Willesden Junction was a hard place to love, and living in one tiny, stuffy, somewhat rundown room there only added to the general sense of desperation that attended my days. Yes, it’s true that the decidedly “efficient” size of the flat meant that you could fry an egg from bed, but I knew it was time for a change.

I ended up finding a place that is so perfect I could hardly have managed better if I’d been ordering from a menu. I’ve got a beautiful big bedroom in a shared house in Brixton, which is south of the Thames. (Note to those who only know Brixton from riots and unrest in the eighties – it’s WAY different now. Cleaner, safer, happier and just nicer.) The house is a three story Victorian inhabited by three other people, and it’s all clean white walls and dark wood floors and book cases and comfy furniture.

The gigantic kitchen, looking out onto the tiny but perfect back garden

There’s a washer and dryer, dishwasher, TV, DVD player, and wifi, and my housemates are friendly and welcoming and smart and play Scrabble and do crosswords and are interesting and fun. And to top it all off, it’s actually significantly cheaper that Willesden Junction. Go figure.

My bedroom. It’s about a third bigger than the WJ flat. (In fact, when I finally found a reasonable pub in WJ, there was a projection screen tv on one wall, and I swear that screen was bigger than the WJ flat. And I’m not even exaggerating this time.)

I even have a desk and a small comfy couch. Bliss.

So things on the home front are much improved. Things on the work front have improved too. I actually worked! For money! For a whole week! In two different places! I was asked to fill in at the last minute and ended up working days at one theatre and evenings at another. It made for a really busy week, but it’s a real foot-in-the-door, and I can already tell that it’s earned me not just a few extra pounds to keep the wolf from the door, but, more importantly, some more good contacts that may already be bearing fruit. Things are looking up.

My first day of work necessitated a very very early start, which meant I was walking across the Thames from Embankment (my favourite tube station) while the sun was rising over London. Yup. That’s St. Paul’s Cathedral. Even with all its frustrations, this city is still magic.

I’m impatient for the big break, but I also know I need to be careful and patient. I had drinks this weekend with a friend from the business in Canada, and a local guy who’s been a huge help in getting me connected with a lot of useful people. They were both really impressed with how far I’ve come in such a short time, and cautioned against getting nervous and taking a job that won’t be right in the long run. They think the best thing would be to get short term work in a lot of different places, which will help get me known around town, and give me experience with as many different theatres and people as possible. What I need to be wary of is ending up in a long term, full time job that takes me out of circulation and tucks me away somewhere there’s no chance of meeting new people and advancing my cause. (Like running the stage at St. Snortleby School for Girls, Slough Branch. Steady work, I’m sure, but just kill me now…) In some ways it seems counter-intuitive to reject permanent work in favour of something riskier, but I think it may make sense for the long run.

So that’s the report from the 11:06 to Plymouth. And I have to say that it’s really really nice to be traveling by train again. A proper train, that is, not a tube train. I’m very much over the whole Underground system. It’s true that it’s generally efficient, except on weekends when random closures for “planned engineering works” can shut down significant chunks of the system, which adds a frustrating level of complication to any journey. And except when there’s a tube strike that leaves one with a 45 minutes walk from Euston Station to the south bank. Or when there’s an unexplained cancellation of service resulting in everyone being ejected from the train at Queens’ Park at midnight on Saturday, leaving one walking all the way to Harrow Road only to turn in the WRONG direction on that road and spend another ten minutes walking back the way one has just come, then realize one’s mistake, causing one to stomp impatiently across the street and wait ages for a bus and get home around 2 am. For instance.

Like I said, it’s still nice to be on a proper train again.

Bucolic but unfocused view from the train. Those little white dots are sheep!

Late-breaking news: This afternoon I’m going back to a scenery shop I visited a few weeks ago to talk to the boss man about an actual job to do actual, full time paid work. It would be short term, but that’s perfect for me right now. Cross all your fingers for me!

Strike One

Too long again, I know. It seems the blogging habit just hasn’t carried over into my post-traveling life. That said, there are a few things to report on.

I had a job interview on Friday – my first real chance at a real job. Up to that point I’d simply been trying to meet as many people as possible in the hopes that eventually something would cross someone’s desk and they might think, “Hmmmm… I wonder if that Canadian woman is still knocking about?” But Friday? Friday was a real interview for a Production Management job with a small company opening a show in late October and then touring 5 different UK venues. It sounded like an interesting gig, the pay was enough to keep me going, and it might have been the foot-in-the-door that I’ve been hoping for. Of course astute GGSRED readers will already suspect, due to my subtle use of phrases like “might have been”, that I did NOT get the job.

Honestly, I was a bit surprised by this. I thought the interview went really really well – I think I asked more questions than they did, and found myself getting a bit excited about finally diving back into work again. Of course there were one or two stumbling blocks. I could tell they were nervous that I don’t have a real web of professional connections here yet, because small companies usually need to draw on every possible resource to get a show running. And there was a question about whether I’d still be here in the new year and into the spring, when they are planning to remount the show for some important festival and tour dates. Ultimately they said this was the reason for their decision – I simply couldn’t guarantee that I’d still be here. Never mind that there’s no guarantee that whoever they did hire won’t jump ship if something better comes along. And also never mind that it would have been simple for me to stretch the truth a bit on this point, something a couple of people have already said I should have done. But I didn’t, and they picked someone else, and I have to tell you that it’s kind of knocked me on my ass.

So it’s been an off few days. Naturally, I’m feeling down about things, and that’s coloured my whole attitude, making me focus on all the things that aren’t working. Yes, I’ve met a lot of people, but that’s slowing down. Also, even though I’m meeting new people at new theatres and production companies, it’s starting to feel a bit like I’m listening to a broken record. Everyone is friendly and helpful, but I keep hearing the same names over and over again, and it feels like I might already have almost reached to the edges of this particular web. If I haven’t already met someone, then I’m waiting for a response to an email or phonecall to them, or waiting to get contact information for them from someone else. There’s a short list of people and theatres that I haven’t tapped yet, but that’s getting smaller. Oh, and it’s now clear that I won’t be getting an interview for the Olympics position that I applied for before I left Canada. Most importantly, no one has yet said those magic four words to me: “When can you start?”

Add to this a growing dissatisfaction with the glories of Willesden Junction, and you’ve got a somewhat toxic mix. The neighbourhood is just sad. Even the local pub is kind of grubby and cheerless, and you know when you can’t find a convivial pub within walking distance in London then you’ve been exceptionally unlucky or unwise in your choice of location. I’m starting to regret my decision to stay at the tiny flat for another three weeks, but at the same time I really didn’t want to deal with the hassle of finding somewhere new, packing up, and moving. Yes, it’s poorly located, expensive and tiny, but I guess now it’s home. In fact, I’ve lived here for more consecutive days than anywhere else since I sold my house all that long time ago. But it does suck the life out of me a bit, and sometimes have to remind myself that in less than an hour I could be just about anywhere in London. LONDON! I really do need to snap out of it and at least enjoy being in the city.

Then again, to get anywhere requires enduring the tube, which has it’s own stuffy and sweaty brand of cheerlessness. Especially when the escalators in particularly deep stations stop working. Or when there’s a signal failure on the Bakerloo Line on top of a planned closure of the entire Circle Line… not that this scenario happened to me on Saturday night.

At least if I do stay the odds of me ending up in a nicer neighbourhood than Willesden Junstion are so close to 100% that it would be difficult to slip a slice of Tesco Value Pack Streaky Bacon between the two (and I can tell you from experience that Tesco Value Pack Streaky Bacon slices are so thin you could read the Daily Telegraph crossword through one).

This is NOT Willesden Junction. This is the sculpture gallery at the Victoria and Albert Museum, to which I escaped this afternoon. You can tell it’s not Willesden Junction because it’s not full of shuttered shop fronts, internet cafés for making cheap international phone calls, and dollar stores.

And on the positive side (which is a side I’ve had to force myself to remember in the last few days) I still have a solid application in at a great theatre in the West End, and expect to hear something about that this week. And there’s a chance of something at a busy production company, and a faint hint of something else that was really nothing more than an almost-whispered maybe. I know I need to just keep at it, but I do feel like time is running out. My return flight to Winnipeg is on Sept. 13, and if something reasonably solid and encouraging doesn’t happen in the next three weeks, then I’m not sure I can justify changing that flight to a later date and hanging on for a few weeks or months more.

That’s life in London these days, sorry I didn’t choose a cheerier time to finally get another blog post up. At least I can report that I’m now starting to look the right way when crossing the street. This is after I literally ran in front of a bus – double-decker, of course – while on a Hash just after I arrived. I’m getting used to glancing over my right shoulder when I cross the street, but I still get an odd tingling down my whole left side when I’m crossing while looking the “wrong” way. It’s like my body is bracing for the impact it can’t accept is NOT coming.

I’m also starting to get a bit more comfortable with the quirks of language. For instance I say tube (as in London Underground Train), CV (resumé), flat (apartment) and mash (-ed potates). Words I can’t yet say without feeling like a complete fraud? Trousers, as in pants. But this is one I really need to get over because here “pants” means underwear, which means you don’t want to go around casually commenting on people’s pants. Also: quid (pound sterling), spanner (wrench), boot (trunk of car), mate (friend), cheers (thanks) and chemist (drug store). And did you know that in England a “grill” has nothing to do with a BBQ, or with applying intense heat or flame to the underside of food? Nope. Here, a grill is the broiler element in the oven, or anything that applies intense heat from above. It’s upside-down world, I tell ya.

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

The first report from London

Life in London is… good, I think. My tiny short-let flat has turned out to be reasonable, though it’s smaller than it looked in the pictures (All in a chorus now: “I really thought it would be bigger!”). It’s also more run down and grubbier than would be ideal, but it’s certainly not the worst I’ve seen. After a few trips to the Poundstretcher/Dollar Store I was able to supplement the supplied amenities to a point where the place is now functional. (Still, could they not give me more than one bowl? Or a toilet seat that’s actually attached to the toilet bowl?). I was amazed at how much better I felt after I was able to convince the Russian cleaning lady in the stairwell outside my door to allow me five minutes of quality time with her vacuum cleaner. At least now I know that the layer of grunge that’s accumulated since then is all mine. And really, how can you complain too much about a place where leaving the bathroom door open allows you to watch TV while showering?

The view from my window… Ahh, Willesden Junction, thy charms are uncountable.

I’ve been here a week now and have settled in fairly well. The job hunt – my main focus – has been up and down. The first few days were great, mostly because I had several meetings set up before I arrived, the first one on Friday afternoon when I was fresh off the plane and still befuddled with jetlag. Everyone has been polite, friendly, helpful and encouraging; they seem to think that my resumé is good, and agree that I’m approaching this the right way and meeting the right people. And they gave me more names of people to reach out to, and ideas of how to proceed. But it’s also become clear that I’ll really need to pay some dues here – meet the right people and learn the ropes – before I can really be functional and therefore attractive to an employer. I think my best bet is to try and connect with some overworked freelancers who might be looking for assistance, but there’s been nothing on that front so far.

So now I’m in a bit of a lull. I’ve made it through all the meetings I arranged before I arrived, and am now in the process of making contact with the people and companies I learned about in those meetings. That’s been a predictable mixture of unreturned emails, impenetrable voicemail systems and friendly people who would be happy to meet with me but are about to leave on three weeks of holidays. After the initial rush of arriving and getting all that positive feedback things have slowed down a lot, and that’s making it hard to stay positive. I know it’s still early, but it’s hard not to want it all to happen instantly.

In the mean time I’ve been running, wandering around a few areas to try and find where I might want to live, and spending a bit of time being a tourist. What can I say? Old habits die hard, and that’s why I’ve been on three different walking tours since I arrived. I mentioned them back when I hit London last June, but they’re so good I’m mentioning them again: London Walks are fantastic. The guides are incredibly knowledgeable, fun, and friendly and I always come away feeling that was two hours well spent. Also, the selection of walks is incredible – about ten different ones on offer each day. And they all start and end at a tube station, and are utterly reliable – I’ve never shown up and been disappointed. All that for just £8. (Or £6 if you invest £2 in a discount card, which I did.)

Part of Regent's Canal, which I saw on the “Little Venice” walk on Wednesday. The canal also runs through my neighbourhood. It’s much less picturesque there – more backsides of industrial yards and graffiti and fewer million pound flats - but there’s still an even, open towpath alongside the canal which is an excellent place for a run, and only five minutes from my door.

But back to the work situation, or lack thereof, which is what this whole business is mostly about. Here’s a quote from an episode of the original UK version of “The Office”, which I watched last night on the computer. These words resounded in my head like a gong when I heard them:

“It’s better to be at the bottom of a ladder you want to climb, than half way up one you don’t.”

Or is it? That’s the question these days. I knew when I decided to leave my job and travel that I’d be starting over when the trip was finished. But what I pictured at the time was fetching up in some large, convivial Canadian city - maybe Montréal or Vancouver - with a new, exciting, well-paying job and a cache of money to set myself up in reasonably high style. Instead I’ve landed in a pocket-sized worn out studio in an unloved corner of northwest London with a whole lot of resumés in the “Sent” box of my Gmail, and a cache of money that’s dwindling daily. Sometimes this “I’ll regret it if I don’t give it a try” business wears a bit.

What I’m starting to realize is that I need to figure out how far I’m willing to go to make this work. And I’m not just talking about how much money I can afford to spend supporting myself while I’m looking for work. I’m also talking about quality-of-life kind of things like:

• How small a flat could I be happy living in? The room I’m in now is about 10’ 6” x 12’, and I’m pretty sure that’s too small. But how big is big enough? (I think that answer might be “Big enough that you don’t have to fold the bed up every day”.)
• How far outside the centre of the city am I willing to go to live somewhere nice? Conversely, how tiny/grungy/sad a place would I put up with in order to be close?
• Or, am I willing to share a flat? Is having more space, better amenities and a nicer location more important than having complete privacy? It’s pretty common here, even among actual grown-up people, but it’s been a long long time since I lived with roommates. Is it something I need to consider?
  
• And on the work front: How far down the ladder am I willing to go? Would I take work outside theatre to support myself while trying to break in? Actors do this all the time, but I think I’d really struggle with it.
  
• Or if I stay I’m able to get work in theatre, how long can I be happy in an entry-level job, and how long will I have to “pay my dues” before I really feel like I’m doing what I came to do?
  
• And, fundamentally, is this the right thing for me? For my career? For my life? If I spend a year or two or five here in London, what does that mean for my career when I eventually go back to Canada?

I haven’t come to any conclusions yet, but these are the questions I struggle with in between crafting friendly, engaging emails to anyone who might help me get a foot in the door, trawling endless real estate listings, and walking to, waiting for, or sitting on tube trains. (Which is a whole other post. Or possibly a whole other blog.) I’ll try to keep writing about my progress, and to tell you some of the funny, quirky things I’ve already noticed about living in London, because there are a lot. Like why can’t I find any cream for my coffee? There seems to be nothing in between whole milk and pouring cream. And why do I have to flick a switch on the wall behind the stove to power the whole thing up before turning on the individual burners? Should I call a licensed electrician to disconnect the power to the stove when I’m finished, just to be extra cautious?

And now, let me leave you with these profound words, which I’ve already heard so often they now echo in my dreams:

“This is a Bakerloo line train to Elephant & Castle. Please, mind the gap between the train and the platform.”

"London Calling"

Hey, remember me? Sorry for the long break, but if you haven’t realized it yet, things have pretty much wound down here at GSRED. However, that doesn’t mean things are winding down for my life. Au contraire! In fact, all kinds of interesting stuff is happening, so I thought I should share a little update on what’s been on my mind most since I got back those many weeks ago: What happens next?

I’ve investigated a few different work possibilities, but the one thing that kept cropping up in my mind was… London. I’ve talked before about wanting to work on the London Olympics Opening and Closing Ceremonies, but my keenness for that project is related only partly to the Olympics. It’s also partly just about the idea of living in London. Add to this the fact that nothing particularly exciting has popped up on the Canadian job front, and the obvious advantage that there will never be a time when I’m so uniquely well-positioned to pack up my (now meager) belongings and try out life in another country. So I’m going to give it a whirl.

Most of you will not be surprised to learn that I have A PLAN. I’ve already spent the last several weeks spamming almost everyone I know trying to drum up some contacts in theatre in London. Finally, some of those leads are paying off and I’ve made a several connections with people who sound like they’ll help point me in the right direction. However, all this would be accomplished much more simply if I were actually in London. So, I’m going to London. I’m flying out on July 29 with a ticket whose return date is set for Sept. 13, but can be changed for a reasonable fee to any other date within a 12 month period. If all goes swimmingly and I find a good job and just want to stay and get on with things, I can change my return date to the Christmas holidays. On the other hand if the whole notion turns out to be hopeless waste of time and money I can turn tail and run back to Winnipeg after a few weeks.

Then again, why would I want to leave?

I’ve manage to find a place to stay while I’m there, though that was a bit of a saga in itself. Suffice it to say that if someone on Craiglist is offering a one bedroom flat a five minute walk from Charing Cross Station with a full kitchen, wifi, washer/dryer, and satellite tv for £35/night, the phrase “If it seems to good to be true, it probably is” should spring inevitably to mind. I asked a friend in London to go check it out and he reported that the people at the building say they do not rent through agents and a one bedroom flat goes for £171/night. This discrepancy, coupled with the fact that the agent wanted me to advance 60% of the total cost of the rental as a bank transfer to an account in his name (not even the name of a rental agency!), set off alarm bells so loud that the neighbours were complaining.

And so I find myself with a three week reservation with Shortlet-London.com, who require a mere £60 deposit (payable by Paypal), and who are offering properties whose combination of price, size, location and facilities enjoy a much closer relationship with to reality. Here are a few shots they sent of my London pad:

Full kitchen, including one square foot of eating space.

Ahhh… the old fold-down futon couch/bed. And I thought those days were behind me.

Not shown is the bathroom, window, wardrobe, dresser, tv and wifi (for a reasonable £5/week) – all the mod cons. The flat is right on the border between tube zones two and three in an area that is, shall we say, not exactly Chelsea. But it’s probably the kind of neighbourhood I might actually be able to afford to live in so I might as well get used to it. I’m not saying I’m going to end up in a cold water bedsit in Zone 37 (somewhere on the outskirts of Glasgow), but there are real limits to where I can reasonably expect to end up. It’s probably a good thing that I’m not going to be in the fabulous flat minutes from Trafalgar Square; spending a month there would probably give me a decidedly skewed idea of what life in London would be like. It’s probably also a good thing that I just spent a year making myself comfortable almost anywhere, including tiny, crappy hotel rooms. All I really have to make sure of is that I end up with something better than the Baronie.

(Note to London-mad travelling friends and relative: Yes, if I end up staying I will try to get a flat with enough room for a spare bed. But honestly, it is gob-smackingly expensive over there. I’d love to see you all, but be prepared to get comfy in a hammock slung over the kitchen sink, or, more likely, be presented with a lovingly compiled list of cheap hotels and short-term rental flats in the area. I’m just sayin’.)

Besides trawling Craiglist and sending thousands of emails, I’ve also been spending some quality time over at my storage space since I got back to Winnipeg. My goal was to go through most of the boxes, do a bit of an inventory, and repack some items that I could have shipped overseas on short notice. I want to make sure it would be easy to ship just the things I’d really want or need – favourite kitchen knives and utensils, cool weather clothing, artwork - things that would make a place feel like home. This is in the hope that I could avoid either having to come back to sort things out later, or simply having to ship everything over at great expense. Mostly, I want to avoid opening a series of boxes in a too-small flat and uncovering the kind of things that get thrown in at random when you’re hurriedly packing your entire house up on a tight timeline. (“Really? I kept a worn ziploc baggie of twist ties and asparagus elastics? And I just had it shipped 4,000 miles? Fantastic. And thank God I’ve got that twelve pound bench vise. That’ll come in handy when I set up a little workshop in the space between the bathroom sink and the shower stall…”)

You may have detected a note of anxiety about money in this post so far, and I’d be lying it I said that wasn’t a concern. Yes, I just spent $64,000 travelling around the world, and yes, I left a good chunk of money to come home to. But I really didn’t envision having to spend a large percentage of that nest egg on a potential wild goose chase to London. So I’m stressed about money - about how much I have now, how much I might be able to earn if I actually do get a job, and how much it would cost me to live in London. But Karen pointed out something that really helped settle my mind on this issue: I’m not throwing this money away. I’m using it to try and chart the course of my career and life for the foreseeable future. I need to consider this an investment in my future (to use an annoying cliché). (Want some more annoying language? How about this: I need to embrace this change in my life paradigm.) If it doesn’t work out, then in retrospect it may seem like a foolish extravagance, but right now this feels like the kind of thing I’ll regret not doing.

So after a mere 59 days on home soil, I’ll soon be packing a (slightly bigger) bag and bracing myself for another new adventure. It all feels very déjà vu – it seems that not so long ago I was doing the rounds of lunch and coffee and dinner dates saying good bye to people and gathering all the best wishes I could. Now it’s a bit different – much less fanfare, and a whole lot more uncertainty. Last time there was a more-or-less definite schedule – I was pretty sure I’d be back within the year. This time it’s a trifle more open-ended: somewhere between three weeks and forever. All I can say is: stay tuned.

And finally (because there hasn’t been a picture of me for a while, and Rob H is probably getting twitchy) here’s a shot of me at Lake Winnipeg, where I spent a day lounging around my friend Judy’s cottage, pier and deck. Thanks Judy!

Ahhh… a perfect summer day at the lake. Not show: G&Ts that came later.

Parallel Universe

I know it's been a hundred years since I posted; please forgive me. I am at least trying to update the Twitter feed a couple of times a day, since it's quite easy for me to dash off 140 pithy words on my cell phone than it is to find the time to sit and write something as long as a blog post. Please check out the Twitter if you want a more frequent fix of GSRED adventures. In the mean time I'm sure you'd like stories about all the things I've seen and lovely pics of Buckingham Palace and such. Too bad. I will try to upload more pics to Flickr soon, so if it's pictures you want, try there. Instead you get a post with just one largely unrelated picutre, here:

Gratuitous photo of the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace.

England is very much like Canada. Or, I suppose it would be more proper to say Canada is a lot like England since, to be fair, they were here first. I feel quite at home, which makes it that much stranger when I'm confronted by the things that are different. It's like I'm in an episode of "Star Trek" and have been transported to a parallel world where only the smallest things betray my alien-ness. Things like this:

"Two countries, divided by a common language". There are a lot of expressions that are unfamiliar, but still make perfect sense. It's not that the worlds are unknown, they're just used with different frequency. We might say "garbage", here they'd say "rubbish". We both know what the other means, but there's a slight twist. Dish soap is washing-up liquid. A store is a shop. A highway is a dual carriageway. Take-out food is take-away. Dessert is pudding (whether or not it is actually pudding, and don't get me started on the meaning of "pudding", which has decidedly little to do with Jell-o). I could go on and on. Having grown up with English relatives, it seems quite homey (homely) to me, but it's still a few degrees off-course.

Of course there's the obvious: they drive on the left here. It's surprisingly hard to get used to. I'm always second-guessing myself about which way to look when crossing the street. It's easy to say "Just look both ways, you idiot". But if I look both ways, I'm still looking with a North-American trained brain, and my eye automatically checks the far lane looking right and the near lane looking left. I can't help it. In lots of parts of London they actually paint "Look Right" in big letters on the pavement at pedestrian crossings. This helps, but it can't completely overcome 40 years of ingrained instinct. It's especially bad when running, and I'm always looking the wrong way up the street when waiting for a bus.

Also, I am constantly walking into doors when attempting to leave buildings. Exterior doors here open in, even on stores (shops) and public buildings. I'm told this is to lessen the chance of a smacking a passer-by with the door if you exit with excessive exuberance. I can't help but think the consequences of that are much less serious than the consequences of being crushed to death between a door that opens in and a mob fleeing a burning building. Obviously the impoliteness of an occasional smack outweighs the fear of burning death here. Generally speaking, the English would rather have their toenails removed with needle-nosed pliers than be perceived to be impolite.

The obviously alien sport here is Cricket, which I won't even attempt to explain. It's vaguely like baseball, except that games can last for up to 5 days and still end in a tie (draw). And even the players stop for a drink every once in a while. Cricket is NOT something that's sorta-different. The sport that I find most intriguing in a parallel universe way is rugby. It's a lot like hockey (ice hockey). It's fast and brutal and exciting. It's played nation-to-nation, and it's played on a recreational level by ordinary guys (blokes). Women even play now, though I'm not sure how recent that innovation is. It reminds me a lot of the rise of women's hockey in Canada, especially since the English Women's rugby team are completely dominating world play right now, just like the Canadian women did when international play for women was first introduce. Rugby's scoring system is bizarre, but not stranger than football (American Football). I'd like to see a game live but (like hockey) it's a winter sport, so there's little chance of that.

I could go on and on, but I've got a life to live here. Suffice it to say that if I was reporting back to the Enterprise, I'd have to say, "It's life Captain, but not as we know it."

Now it's time for a stroll up the High Street, and maybe some sweets and a squosh.

Morning, Day Five

Apologies for not posting more, but frankly I am busy DOING, as opposed to writing about what's already done.

I had a great night out last night, though I'd planned to stay in and do laundry and blog. Instead, I got a last-minute ticket to see the new stage adaptation of "Priscilla Queen of the Desert", and it was fantastic. And a complete contrast to Wednesday night's ""Waiting for Godot" (with Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan!). If I'd had the choice, I would have liked to see Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan in "Priscilla Queen of the Desert", but even the West End has its limits.

I got back to the hostel (which I tend to think of in my head as either "the barracks" or "Stalag Russell Square"... more on hostel living in another post) at about 10:30 and put in a load of laundry. Like everything here, laundry was ferociously expensive. £4 for a wash and £2 for a dry - about $12 in total! Yikes. Still, it's nice to have everything clean.

Yesterday I decided to try a guided tour of the National Gallery - I chose one by a tour company called London Walks, who come highly recommended by Rick Steves. It turned out the be a great choice. We saw only a few paintings, but each one came with a really great commentary so I appreciated each a lot more.

I saw this:

The Arnolfini Portrait, van Eyck

And this:

The Hay Wain, Constable

And this one too, though it was not on my tour. I eavesdropped on another tour to hear a bit about it.

The Ambassadors, Holbein

I even saw one of Van Gogh's Sunflowers, but it wasn't on my tour either, so it didn't really mean much. The moral of this story is: pay for the guided tour!

There is so much in that gallery I couldn't even begin to see it all. In fact, it's abundantly clear that 10 days in London is woefully inadequate, and I'm here longer than I'll be in any other city on the itinerary. It's kind of sad, but also means that I just need to get over the "must-see-everything" compulsion, because that's patently impossible.

My afternoon was spent at the London Transport Museum, which was hot and cold, and cost £10! Today I'm going to take another London Walk focusing on Westminster Abbey, then hope to attend a free lunchtime concert at the church of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields on Trafalgar Square.

London is great, though. I really like it, and have been here long enough that I now mostly remember to look the wrong way when I'm crossing the street. I'm not taking a lot of pictures, partly because it makes me feel self-conscious and touristy, and partly because almost everything is worth taking a picture of. Everywhere I turn there's great architecture, or famous landmarks, or weird, quirky London stuff.

I did have one non-hashing run this week, and made it from the hostel to Regent's Park and back without a map. As I suspected, it's been really hard to fit running in along with everything else. Wednesday's run was fine, though predictably, I missed the turn to get back to the hostel. This is not surprising since streets here change names about every 3 blocks, so the fact that I missed "Greater Whinging Lane" was probably because where I needed to turn it was called "Whipplesnort Road" or "Smack-yer-bollocks Square" or something like that.

Oh, and here's a shot of me, drawing a Canadian flag in coloured chalk on the pavement at Trafalgar Square. There was a couple there getting people to draw their flags for small donation. The day before they'd ended up with the flags of more than 120 different countries.

It was a Bad Hair Day

My flag

I love this place. Ok, off to Westminster Abbey.

Easing into it.

I finally crawled into bed at about midnight after a very nice evening with the London Hash House Harriers. Woke up when Alessandro's alarm went off at 9am, and rolled down for the free breakfast in the hostel common room - toast and cornflakes. They also had cornflakes and toast. Or toast and toast. However, it was free, and enough to get me going.

Went down to Westminster bridge to do a little Rick Steves walking tour from there up to Trafalgar Square, expecting to have a quietish little walk. Of course the place was crawling with tourists, which I was stupidly surprised by. Ironically, I've realized I am really not fond of tourists. They crowd all over the place and take pictures and are loud. Naturally I am NOT a tourist. I am, er, a TRAVELER.

Traveler Pam and the Houses of Parliament

I took a quick video I took of my 360 degree view from Westminster bridge, about which I tweeted this morning, but either Flickr or Firefox does not like me today, so you don't get the video. Instead, here are some more shots of today:

Big Ben!

Horse Guard on Whitehall

Cecil's Court, off Charing Cross Road, full of neat book shops

Greek carvings at the British Museum. Apparently most Greeks of this era had no heads.

So I had a walk, and a picnic lunch, and I took a brief turn through the British Museum, but I will definitely be going back. Like I said, I'm easing into it. Now I'm off for another night of hashing, this time in The City. Tomorrow night, a show.

Kim, Rick and A1C Knox

I'm here! I'm in London! And it's been a really long day - I was up at 4:30am MDT to call Fed Ex about my UK passport, and it's now 12:45 GMT, so that's 26.25 hours so far, and it'll probably be about 36 hours by the time I hit the sack tonight. I slept on the plane more than I expected to, but I'm still in a bit of a fog.

For those of you who weren't following the blow-by-blow on Twitter, (at goseeruneatdrnk, or in the sidebar over there --->) I got word on Friday that my UK passport had FINALLY arrived in Winnipeg, and it was put in a Fed Ex for Saturday delivery to me in Calgary. On Saturday morning I tracked it online and discovered it was scheduled for delivery on Monday, June 15... too late. I phoned Fed Ex and it turns out there was some kind of confusion about whether it had been marked for Saturday delivery or not. It was still in Winnipeg, and not due to arrive in Calgary until about midnight on Saturday; my flight was scheduled to leave at 9:30am on Sunday.

I have to hand it to Fed Ex - I told them the package contained my passport, and I was leaving the country on Sunday, and they made it happen. The service rep I talked to put me in touch with Kim at the Calgary Depot, and Kim got in touch with a manager, and the manager left instructions for the ramp crew. These are the guys who work the overnight shift loading and unloading planes. He asked them to rifle through the Winnipeg container and find my envelope, and then asked that one of them hand-deliver it to me at my sister's house on his way home from work.

And so it was that I met Rick from the night shift, who wasn't even a delivery guy. He knocked quietly on the door at 5:10 am and got a hug and a big thank you in exchange for this:

My UK passport and original citizenship certificate, with appropriate product placement.

So I got on the plane in Calgary, and I spent a long layover in Chicago killing time and Skyping. The London flight left on time, and I ended up sitting next to a young woman in the American Air Force. We chatted a bit over dinner and it turns out that her day was just as exciting and momentous as mine. Airman First Class Knox, 18 years old, was on her way to her first duty assignment since completing basic and technical training. She was heading for a 2-year deployment at Lakenheath. And, it was her first trip out of the country. I said, "And I thought I was having a big day!"

I slept more than I expected to on the plane, which was good. And then as we began our approach to London I finally started to get excited about this whole thing. So A1C Knox and I looked out the window and said things like, "It's so green!", and "The cars look like they're going backwards", and generally enjoyed the moment. It was nice to have someone to share with.

Customs in London was a complete non-event with the precious EU passport. Instead of waiting in the line of about 50 people in one of those cattle-pen kind of set-ups, I waited in a line of... oh wait, there was NO LINE. I breezed up to a waiting customs official, handed over my shiny new passport, and was through in about 20 seconds. I think I will really like this dual-citizenship thing.

There will be more later, but for now I think I'll post this so everyone knows I'm here, safe and content. The hostel is, not surprisingly, somewhat dingier than pictured, and my room is an absolute sauna. However, I'm about two blocks from the British Museum so can I really complain? Perhaps I'll stroll over there now.

Rosetta Stone, anyone?