Tuesday 8 April 2008

Loitering in London

Loitering in London

Filed under: London, preparation — kyle @ 5:14 pm

Let’s start on a positive note! The past few weeks have really tested my will to stay in London and save for the next stage of the trip. For the most part, I want to leave now, with less money, and save my sanity. The place where I am staying at the moment (for the month, anyway) is quite unpleasant, my job is not bad, but it is retail, and watching paint drying and grass growing at the same time generally has more entertainment value.

Ah yes, it could be Gorky Park!

Cold, recently

Panorama 1

It’s not all doom and (London) gloom, though. There a few threads of the rope binding me to England still hanging in there. I have met some wonderful people and have had a great offer to share a room and subsequently have cheaper rent and some non-religious, sane human company - something decidedly lacking in my current accomodation. Summer would be a far more agreeable time to cycle through notoriously gloomy Eastern Europe, I’d rather see out the rest of this season from behind a pane of (double-glazed) glass, but I’ll get to the weather in a minute. Last but not definately not least is money, and more precisely lack of it. A convenient roomshare and the job should take care of that little issue as time passes.

Neal's Yard

Area behind ‘Seven Dials’ or ‘Roundabout where seven roads meet’
as I have heard a certain London newcomer call it.

Thankfully, I haven’t been too lonely. I met Sarah, a fantastic girl ‘fresh off the plane’ from Sydney, and we have been hitting the tourist trail, wasting time watching movies, listening to obscure yet terrific bands and searching for a decent shared place to see out the rest of the time here. Her blog is here: (http://proustianproportions.blogspot.com/) but beware, she’ll slap you through the internet if you comment with incorrect grammar! I haven’t got away with being in England and not picking up some local habits scot-free, so I’ll talk of the weather, a undeniably British thing to do - it snowed in Central London on Sunday, quite heavily. Walking the streets, I was beaming from ear to ear the biggest smile I’d had on my face in a long time. Sarah wasn’t too keen on it, though. To my dismay, the next day the heavens were back to their regular dull-grey shroud over London (presumably, God has to store all his clouds somewhere).

Upon reflection

So I will trundle along, for the next three weeks, feeling sorry for myself until I find a new place to live, either with the aforemetioned, or with a Kiwi bloke that is coming back from Italy in a few weeks, whom I’ve convinced to join me on my insane marathon pushie trip - but that’s another story.

Kyle

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