Week 3 - Twickenham, Interviews and Museums.

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There has been a lack of updating, I’ve noticed. My getting a job is partly to blame. The other part is probably laziness and a desire to go places and see the UK. Mostly laziness, though. Yes, I am now the proud owner of a great job. I shall get to that at another time (once I’ve waded through the previous month’s goings on). This post is set between the 31st of October and the 9th of November. I’m getting there, I swear.

Thus the story continues. We headed back up to Letchworth on the Saturday for a birthday party. This meant remeeting most of Boo. Once again, this proved to be unproblematic and I didn’t seem to offend anyone at either dinner or drinks afterwards. This seems to be something I do of late. Not offend people. It’s becoming a habit. I must reassess my behaviours.

After a lovely night at home, Emily ventured off to her first day of work. I decided that this was the day to discover the leafy suburb of Twickenham. First thing I noticed was the distinct lack of leaves. there are a few, but not as many as other leafy suburbs like, say, Roseville. Thus, my labelling had failed me. Twickenham, however, is a lovely little place. There is a pub every 50 feet or so, and if you wander down the wrong street, you’ll end up at the Thames. Not a particularly picturesque view of the Thames, but the Thames nonetheless (That picture makes it look a lot better than it is. It’s mostly mud). There’s a lovely little street just off the high street with some nice shops, a few pubs and some restaurants. I imagine it would be even more lovely with people actually on it. However, I have yet to see any. There’s a rugby stadium down the road, Richmond down another and Windsor down yet another (although a bit further away). Twickenham is nice. Challenging it is not. As mentioned before, we live directly behind the police station. However, I’m fairly sure that if we left our front door open, lined up our valuable goods in the foyer and left a sign saying ‘don’t steal our stuff’, we’d be right, regardless of the police station.

I had a job interview the following day. This job interview, after a few weeks, led to a job. Not the job I actually interviewed for, but one that I kind of, sort of, expressed interest in about six months ago. The world works in very mysterious ways. In summary, I am very happy on the job front. More on that later.

After the interview I had a few hours to kill before meeting someone for drinks. I decided that instead of actually planning something to do, I would aimlessly wander around Covent Garden (Theatreland!) and try and find the elusive ‘Dress Circle’ theatre shop. Whilst it took me a mere four hours to actually find it (after giving up and asking someone), I think I managed to pass every single theatre in London. This served two purposes. First, I could see what was currently playing with my own eyes, and two I can now give you directions to anywhere in Central London, as long as I know which theatre it’s closest to. Bugger street names. Say you want to get from Waterloo Bridge to Leicester Square. Simple. Walk towards The Duchess and turn left when you see the Lyceum. Pass the Vaudeville and turn right at the Adelphi. When you see the Arts Theatre turn left. If you’ve hit Leicester Square Theatre, you’ve probably gone too far. Simple, right?

Anyway, I finally found the Dress Circle and fell in love. I also made frantic calls so that people would keep me away from this evil store until I had enough money to support my dirty, filthy habit. To summarise, the Dress Circle has everything to do with theatre. ever. If you can’t find it here, head to the National Theatre shop. If you can’t find it there, give up. It doesn’t really exist.

I made my way to Southwark for drinks late in the afternoon. I foolishly thought that London was a rather small place. I attempted to walk from Covent Garden to Southwark via Waterloo (for some reason). My feet were not happy. However, I did arrive earlier than I needed to and wasn’t going to partake in solo drinking, as I didn’t have any misery to drown. Instead, I decided to have a very quick look in the Tate Modern. Suffice it to say, I was impressed. I was definitely coming back to this rather large and ugly modern art gallery. I did, and therefore will tell you about that in another post. Drinking, food and merriment was had that night. A bit too much of the first, not enough of the second and from what I’m told, enough of the third.

After having the bed delivered (the highlight of the week, really. Not a dull week, just that I’m a bit sad), I decided to finish the week off with some of the more traditional museums. The Natural History Museum was my first call, and so I departed bright and early at midday and head off to see me some dinosaurs.

In a word, the Natural History Museum is… dull. However, in saying that, I couldn’t shut up about everything I learnt for the next week. In a nutshell, seeing stuffed animals and casts of skeletons doesn’t excite me terribly. There were a few interesting tidbits. The giant tree that they have dissected and placed on a wall and a ceiling is quite cool. Some of the precious stones they have in their collection are sparkly and nice. Apart from that, the only thing worth seeing is the building. The building itself is quite amazing. This purpose made building looks more like a giant cathedral than a museum. It is a beautiful building and a pleasure to walk through. However, this was achieved fairly quickly with nothing much else keeping me interested.

I ventured to the Science Museum the following day with a little hesitation. Basically, I was expecting a less cool version of Canberra’s Questacon. I was correct. It’s not that the Science Museum wasn’t interesting, it was the fact that it was entirely aimed towards people about a third of my age. At least I wasn’t too disappointed. I was expecting this, remember? What I wasn’t expecting was The Listening Post.

The Listening Post is an art installation based on real time, uncensored snippets of text from social networking sites, forums and discussion boards across the internet. It doesn’t sound like much, yet this piece had me captivated for almost an hour. It was interesting, yet also quite poignant and a little sad (in a depressing way. Not a pathetic way). It provides a bit of an insight into society and our behaviours by picking on phrases like ‘i want’ and ‘i like’. It’s very hard to explain, but it is, quite simple, brilliant. It’s toured around the place and I urge you to see it if you’re ever near where it’s playing. It’s running in London till February 21st if you’re interested. I’m sure your not. Fine, I’ll keep it all for myself then.

After having my life suitably enriched, I proceeded to watch tv. For an entire weekend (minus a lovely pub lunch). It was bliss. UK TV is, for lack of another word, brilliant (now we have Virgin TV, which is better. Than anything. Ever.). I couldn’t be arsed to actually expand on that point, but I will link to as many examples as possible.

Next Post: Tate Modern and The Movieum!

Buckingham Palace... meh: Week 2 in the UK

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The following Monday brought the promise of a proper look around the nation’s capital. Em needed to meet her new boss near Trafalgar Square in the morning and we had plans to meet some friends in the evening in Angel. Therefore, that meant a full day of London, some accompanied by a guide, some on my lonesome. The train in wasn’t too bad at all. However, something I failed to mention in my last post is the ridiculous cost of public transport in the UK. Let’s do a comparison, shall we? In Sydney, a rail ticket from Penrith to the city (approx 33 miles) will cost you $14.40 return. A ticket from Letchworth to London (approx 36 miles) will cost you £28 (approx $56). That’s over $50 for a half hour train ride. And locals were wondering why I was shocked…

Anyway, on to the real point of the post. Walking to Trafalgar Square from Leicester Square station gave me my first glimpse of some West End Theatres, something that I was very excited to do ASAP. However, the standard touristing had to get done first. Once Emily was on her way I took a small walk done the Mall (something that English seem to mispronounce every time… they say Mal where the correct pronunciation is somewhere closer to Maul). This short 10 minute walk provided me with a few English firsts: My first London squirrel sighting, my first (of many) losing all sense of direction, my first mistaking a road for a public walkway and similarly my first almost getting run down by a London cabbie. What I was rewarded with at the end of this walk was a lot of tourists. Oh, and a rather large palace. I didn’t stick around long. I thought it was nice to tick Buckingham Palace off the list, but it just wasn’t too exciting standing outside a gate looking at a rather boring building. Sure, the guards wore funny hats, but nothing else that interesting. I took some photos, feeling as if I’d be scalded if I didn’t, and went on my merry way.

Emily’s instructions were to either go toward Westminster or to go toward Buckingham Palace. Seeing as I still had an hour to spare I decided to rock the boat and tick Westminster off at the same time. Westminster Hall, unlike Buckingham Palace, is an extremely impressive building. Not only does it provide one of London’s most recognizable tourist attractions (The Westminster Clock Tower, also known as Big Ben, which coincidentally doesn’t actually refer to the Tower but the Bells inside the tower), it also stands across the road from the equally stunning Westminster Abbey. Both buildings are architecturally beautiful and the ornamentation is stunning. In addition, Westminster Hall is guarded by heavily armed police. Being from Australia, I have never seen this and it took me slightly aback. It’s probably why one particularly friendly policeman nodded at me and said ‘mornin’, after I stopped mid stride and stood transfixed by the large assault rifle he was holding. It just seemed slightly… surreal. Anyway, the buildings were pretty.

After this I made my way back up to meet Emily. I seemed to pass every single parliamentary or government building on the way back, including Downing St. I was very disappointed. It looked nothing like Little Britain.

We then made our way through Covent Garden (or ‘Theatreland’ as the street signs say) and jumped on a tube to head to the V&A. The V&A is Emily’s favourite museum, and upon visiting most other museums and galleries throughout London, I have to agree.  The Victoria and Albert Museum exists to showcase culture. Therefore, the galleries consist of fashion, jewellery, furniture, paintings and drawings, architecture and performance, amongst many more. The first gallery we visited was the fashion (not my choice) and I was quite surprised to see period dress standing next to a 2005 Dior outfit. Basically, the museum collects pieces of culture and then displays it. The result is a fantastically eclectic collection. Also, they have a theatre and performance section, which completely sold me. Filled with costumes, set designs, props and memorabilia, I almost wet myself walking through here. Also, they have a dress up section, which amused the inner 5 year olds for about 20 minutes. In the end, the greatest things I got out of the V&A visit were a kick ass monogram, a lesson on how to tie a cravat (step one: fail, step two: ask Emily to do it for you) and a stomach ache from the giant meringue I devoured.

Then we met Emily’s friends and drank. The lesson I learnt that night was that 5 pints is not the same as 5 schooners.

After acquiring phones on Tuesday and getting stung by bees and watching Fantastic Mr. Fox on Wednesday (I love the fact that some movies are released here MONTHS before Australia), we made our way to Birmingham on Thursday with Em’s parents for an antiques fair. I would like to say that shenanigans followed, but unfortunately it was an extremely tame day. We walked around, Em spent some money, I decided that I wanted to buy a Mini and a grandfather clock, we learnt about suffragette pieces and then jumped back into the car and went home. A rather pleasant day out.

On Friday it was raining. Surprisingly, this hadn’t actually happened since I had arrived. So therefore, Murphy’s Law states that the day where we move our belongings from Letchworth to Twickenham it rains. Actually, it only really rained during the portion of the activity that required us to be outside: packing the car and driving there. Also, the UK does a different kind of rain to everywhere else…

In Australia it rains. Water falls from the sky and it falls on you and you get a bit wet. Sounds simple. The UK has this kind of rain. However, it has another kind of rain. This is the kind of rain where you look outside and think ‘that’s not too heavy, I can handle that!’ However, when you walk outside you realise you have made an awful mistake. Within 10 seconds this so called ‘rain’ has covered you from head to toe in water, managing to get inside your clothes, shoes and possibly underwear. It’s kind of like the napalm of rain.

Suffice it to say that I got wet. That day we managed to travel a road called the North Circular (also known to some as the 7th circle of hell) a total of three times that day. However, as Em wasn’t convinced that my license was valid in the UK, I did all of it from the passenger seat. Some would think that this would make the trip slightly better. Those people would be wrong. I, who had been in the country for a week was the ‘navigator’. As a result, we managed to stay on the North Circular a little longer than planned, missing our turn off… twice. Anyway, after getting IKEAd up, we managed to head home to our new house in Twickenham. A bottle (or two) of champagne later we called moving in quits and retired to a lovely blow up mattress. Clearly, our trip to IKEA wasn’t actually that successful.

Next Post: A birthday in Letchworth, My first interview and some wandering around London.