catch-up london style, #5

i hopped across the pond just over a week ago, and finally have the interwebs at home again. meet the catch-up post, dated for your (my) convenience.

le 6 octobre 2012 (evening)

i’m sick now, battling the flu and other infections. my immune system has finally shut down now that i’m basically settled in, so i’m lying in bed with a hot water bottle, an extra sweater, and a mug of herbal tea at my side. this also marks six days in a row that the baby in the adjoining house is screaming its wee head off. seriously, i’m torn between confronting the parents (not fair, i realize, as the baby may have colic) and just never having children of my own. maybe i’ll just adopt a toddler rather than a newborn. i have the wailin’ jennys on in an attempt to drown it out, but it’s unfortunately not working very well. sigh.

so my day began with a bus ride to highgate to meet up with my friend (find her blog here), which it turns out is right across from jackson's lane, where i saw a physical theatre children’s show four years ago. it’s also home to ripping yarns, a used bookshop that specializes in children’s books, and several cute independent shops. meet my new pillow, which was from souvenir, an independent shop for local handmade gifts.

i haven’t named it yet, but it’s quite cosy, and makes my room feel more like a home oddly.

we checked out a photography exhibit on london gay icons at jackson’s lane after a stop into the bank and a brief lunch at a bakery on the high street (i had ginger beer and split a chocolate pear tart with my friend…the last thing that i ate today). then we walked on until we were out of highgate, and caught a bus to brick lane and shoreditch. i was very quickly losing steam, so we stopped in at the high tea market for coffee and tea (the drink, not the meal). by the time we finished there, it was getting quite late, so we headed back to find buses in our respective directions. i was guaranteed at least an hour and a half travel regardless, so i ended up going all the way to finsbury park to catch a bus home. only two buses, which was my concern, but they took ages regardless. finsbury park is not the most fun place to be once it gets dark, especially when you’re presenting female, alone, and not feeling well. normally i’m fine to act confident in dodgy areas, but that goes out the window once i’m sick. eventually i got sorted and found the bus stop home.

i got back to our high street just as boots (the pharmacy – kind of on par with shoppers) closed. luckily there was another chemist across the street, although i suspect it’s more expensive. didn’t matter, as i didn’t have any other choice at that point. i got what i needed, came home, put on the kettle, and called home to cry a bit and ask about what drugs to take for a potential flu. i’m staying in tonight, and sleeping as soon as my flatmate comes home and i can grab some tylenol from her, and will spend tomorrow indoors as well. good excuse to get some reading done, and perhaps an epsom salt bath. 

catch-up london style, #4

i hopped across the pond just over a week ago, and finally have the interwebs at home again. meet the catch-up post, dated for your (my) convenience.

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. 

catch-up london style, #3

i hopped across the pond just over a week ago, and finally have the interwebs at home again. meet the catch-up post, dated for your (my) convenience.

le 4 octobre 2012

today is hangover day, which is really rather unfortunate. i feel like rubbish, although it’s not even 10am yet, so hopefully i shake it off in a bit. that’s what you get when you never drink and then decide half a bottle of wine and vodka lemonade are a good idea. last night was the lgbt night for the school and they rented out the basement of the village, one of soho’s clubs. it was quite evident whenever we came up for air that the club is more for older gay men, but it was pleasant enough last night. we had an interesting time being the only postgrads at the event – it’s funny how the difference of only two years can be so significant when you’re dealing with people doing their master’s and people who are just starting their first degree.

fun fact – “on the pull” is the british term for “pick up,” so if someone asks, “are you on the pull tonight?” they’re actually asking, “are you looking to pick anyone up tonight?”

i met one of the queens from season four of rupaul’s drag race, which was pretty neat, and funny when she gave me the dirty eye for being canadian. i was up with my friends while they smoked when she walked by, and a couple of gay men i was chatting with recognized her and called her over. she was headed to madame jojo’s to perform at tranny shack, which is an event (hopefully a weekly one).

another fun fact – in the uk, everyone uses the term “tranny.” back home, it’s incredibly offensive. i’m going to have to be careful which words end up slipping into my vocabulary, although given that i automatically cringe whenever i hear someone say “tranny,” i should be okay…

i plan on checking out jojo’s some more. it was all kings and queens in the line (a lot of the kings had terrible facial hair…some of our kings back home could teach them a few tricks). i’m not sure if we have to drag up (re: dress in drag) to get in or not, but we’ll see. and apparently i’m going to love brighton when i go with my flatmate and her friend – it’s much more queer and much less gay (depending on who you’re with, of course).

plans for today are quite loose, but i think i may go to campus to get some more work done, check out the swiss cottage library, and maybe drop into loop london, the major yarn shop (and sister-shop to our loop in halifax). then tonight is the camden pub crawl, which we’re all going to. i’m not drinking tonight…

catch-up london style, #2

i hopped across the pond just over a week ago, and finally have the interwebs at home again. meet the catch-up post, dated for your (my) convenience.

le 3 octobre 2012

today was our registration day, and it was both boring as can be and incredibly exciting. most of our class was there, and we all hung out for lunch afterwards. my laugh has already become infamous (the snort very quickly came out, unsurprisingly), and a classmate has commissioned a cowl. go me :) of course, i’m also extremely low on funds, so i may have to wait to pick up the yarn. sigh. meeting with the estate agent in a short while to finally sign the papers, and i have a student card, which is apparently good for all sorts of discounts.

one of the things i’m most excited about is the library. we have 40,000 books solely about performance right on campus, plus loads of digital material and journals. and another library with 2 million next door to the british museum (we have to go early in the morning to register with them). i picked up one of my reading requirements, but an even more exciting find was “exercises for rebel artists: radical performance pedagogy” by guillermo gomez-pena and roberto sifuentes. i’ll probably hunt down a used copy for myself at some point, but in the meantime, i have a month to get through it.

some interesting things about london that people back home might be interested to know:

-there’s a store called argos, and it’s basically a supply-and-demand design. you walk in, search through a catalogue for things you need (i.e. bedding, toys, furniture…think sears, but in catalogue form). you write down the numbers of items you want, pay for them, and then they’re delivered to you from the back warehouse. it’s bizarre, and kind of brilliant, because you’re less likely to pick up extra crap that you don’t need. on a side note, the flatmate and i are going to ikea on friday. i’m sure the extra crap there will more than make up for argos.

-you can’t get a phone contract without a uk-based bank card. you can’t get a bank card for 7-15 business days after signing up for an account. internet takes 5-7 work days to set up. everything in the uk seems to take ages to sort out, and the country is paranoid about identity theft. it’s all a bit absurd. luckily i have a home address, because otherwise everything would take even longer to sort out. 

catch-up london style, #1

i hopped across the pond just over a week ago, and finally have the interwebs at home again. meet the catch-up post, dated for your (my) convenience.

le 2 octobre 2012

so here i am, in the uk. it’s been a crazy ride, but i’m settling in to my new house. i have bedding now, which is really the most important thing when you’re trying to make a home feel more like one. my flat is beautiful, although we’re finding a number of things that need sorting out (two of the four burners don’t work…). there’s also a very noisy baby in the house adjoining us on my side, which was interesting last night when it was screaming at 10pm. luckily i was so knackered that i just passed out.

my flatmates are truly lovely. we all went out shopping earlier today to sort out house stuff, and last night we ordered pizza, drank wine, and watched a movie. it’s so nice to finally be living in a house situation like those i envied for years (with the exception of the first housemates i had).

finances are going to be iffy for the first few weeks. i set up my bank account yesterday, but nothing clears for a couple of weeks (it can take up to three) and my cards and such arrive in the post in the next two weeks. it’s probably a good thing to be on a very tight budget for the first little while anyway, as i make all my main household purchases. the one thing that’s killing me a wee bit is the food…we’ll see how it goes.  we don’t get internet for about a week, so i’m going to rely on my iphone for now, and write blog posts (like this one) ahead of time. they’ll get published eventually. i’m off again to set up my phone contract, then to check out the library and find some peanut butter. life is always better with peanut butter.

on a side note, the homesickness isn’t too awful yet. some songs make me melancholy, and i felt a strong pang last night before i passed out, but it’s been surprisingly doable. i think a large part of that is the fact that i’m living in london, and that i’m living with lovely people. snail mail will be very much appreciated though…righty-o, i’m off! more updates later.