le 6 octobre 2012
i’m a sleepy pup this morning, although i did finally get
about nine hours of sleep last night. clearly i need to play more catch-up
though. it’s a lazy morning, with both flatmates gone and time to kill before
heading to highgate to meet up with a friend. i’m spending it catching up on
blog entries and reading for school. i’m reading a terribly boring history book
right now, which i hope to have finished by monday.
yesterday was a long day. after returning home about half
one in the morning from candy bar (didn’t take me long to go to the infamous
queer lady hangout ha), i was up early to run a couple of errands before
getting to campus for an international student lecture. it was, thankfully and
surprisingly, not nearly as painful as i’d expected. then i went to senate
house library with a couple of classmates to get our membership cards. we were
starving before we even got there, and took about forty-five minutes to sort
out a proper fish and chips shop. they’re not all that common in london, it
turns out. don’t get them at a pub. the quality won’t be as good and you’ll pay
an arm and a leg. we got directions from some working men at a pub, who
directed us down what turned out to be a very lovely route to an old fish and
chips shop. you know the one, where you get a huge slab of battered fish and
loads of fries wrapped in paper and with a wee wooden fork. it was well worth
the hunt – the food was delicious. we ate in a park and realized we’d made a
full circle, which was rather convenient for busing back home for me.
by the time i finally got home, it was 5pm and raining, but
my flatmate and i were determined to go to ikea. it was an ordeal to get there
and back for sure. bloody parking lots and highway crossings. i was also quite
low on funds, but budgeting won out in the end and i came home with almost
everything on my list for under thirty quid, plus a letter tray for my desk. my
ocd will appreciate that once classes get underway. we went to the nearby tesco
express to grab supper (mediocre ravioli in my case), then came home to watch
“away we go”, which is my favourite movie. it was a nice end to a long day.
***
so a brief rundown of how i ended up at candy bar (which has
a reality tv show about its re-opening, for those of you who care…also, the
owner is even cuter in real life): we’d decided to go to the camden pub crawl,
which was a slightly dubious decision given our experience as the only
postgrads at the lgbt event the night before. we skipped the first pub because
it was so early, and joined up with everyone at the elephant’s head. nice, but
pricey, and no drink deals for the crawl. after about forty minutes there, we
were told to move on to the next pub. we all piled out onto the street, and
before we knew it, the 18-year-olds had split into two groups and were chanting
at each other across the road. we made an executive decision to ditch and head
to soho. our friend knew the musician playing at candy bar, amity (she’s quite
good, although she thought she knew me…i’ve no idea how), so we managed to get
in. the show was in the basement, which is where we stayed for the next three
hours. the dj afterwards wasn’t great, but there were some entertaining people
dancing. i saw an absurd number of dopplegangers to friends back home. clearly,
queers don’t look very different regardless of where you go. i definitely
preferred the thirty-somethings to the baby queers – less posturing, more
confidence. as usual, i was somewhere between femme and butch, so i think i
confused a good number of people. there seems to be a more traditional divide
here, although i’m sure i just need to do more hunting for more queers, less
gays. brighton is apparently brilliant for that. i think part of it is that,
while candy bar isn’t exclusive, it is definitely more geared towards lesbians.
i saw more boys than bois, which was interesting.
my flatmate and i decided to head home early, while our
other flatmate and her friend stayed behind to dance more. something that we
discovered in a very unfortunate way – when you live in an orthodox jewish
neighbourhood, and there aren’t any pubs nearby, you can also bet there won’t
be any greasy food options at 1am when you’re heading home from a night out.
yup. that sucked. we did manage to grab vegetarian sausage pastries from a
bakery, but really, who wants a bakery when you’re craving poutine? definitely
missing halifax in that regard, as well as others. the homesickness hasn’t been
bad, which is nice. i can’t wait to get my phone and internet sorted next week
though. i feel disconnected.
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