Happy Places...

In this topsy-turvy world, there are two places that, without fail, manage to fill me with happiness. Every single time I enter them. Every. Single. Time. One is a good public library. The other is a good thrift shop. This week I have had a healthy dose of both, and am feeling positively plump with contentment as a result. In fact, I am positively bursting at my pre-loved seams with satisfaction! 

Let’s take them one by one. We’ll start with the one that – in my opinion – wins (by a hair’s breadth). The public library. I’ve joined 3 since arriving in London, all in different boroughs depending on where we lived at the time. Each membership gave me access to a number of libraries in the region, and I did and still do borrow to my heart’s content. All I had to show was something – anything – with my name on it (I used my Australian driver’s license) – and I had a wealth of books and knowledge at my fingertips. No proof of address required. No waiting lists, no references, no interviews or appointments. And, best of all, ABSOLUTELY FREE! I love it. I love it so much. I love spending my Sunday morning wandering about the shelves… it’s a shopping experience like no other – I can choose anything at all, without wondering about how much it costs. If I like the look of it, it’s mine! I’m allowed to put it in my bag and take it home with me, no deposit or paperwork required, and I’m trusted to bring it back when I’m done with it so that someone else can have a turn. I love the people in my local library… people who, just like me, are perfectly happy pottering about, working their way through row after row of books. The library has something for all of us, regardless of our cultural background or our personal interests. I feel a kinship with those people, because although we’ve never met and may never speak to one another, although we all come from different places and live vastly different lives, we have the library in common. These quiet mornings or afternoons spent browsing, pottering, picking up, flicking through, putting back or tucking under one wing to carry home to devour, voraciously, under covers or on couches or buses or trains or wherever our lives take place. The intimacy of knowing the pages I’m turning have been well thumbed by unknown book-lovers before me, that we share that link, is fabulous. It means I have friends I’ve never met.

The other thing I love are thrift shops… charity shops... St Vinnies… call them what you will, a good three quarters of my wardrobe came from London second-hand clothing shops. Now I have to admit here that normally I don’t relish the prospect of clothes shopping… don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind the odd spot of it here and there, under the right circumstances, but in general I can usually think of other things I’d prefer to spend my money on than new clothes. Also, I hate the way the smarmy shop-assistants pounce on me the moment I’m in the door with falsely up-beat greetings, asking me how I am when really I know they couldn’t care less. I ESPECIALLY hate it when there are no mirrors in the changing cubicle so you have to come out into the communal area to see yourself, at which point the shop-assistant can pounce again and let me know just how fabulous and cool I look in whatever crap, ill-fitting, tacky piece of fabric I happen to have talked myself into trying on. (Incidentally, I’m very much aware that much of what I have just written suggests that I am turning into my Dad. I have a theory about this… I believe it’s OK to turn into your parents in some aspects as long as you’re aware of it! It’s when you catch yourself mimicking your parents’ eccentricities unexpectedly that it’s time to worry). (No offence, Dad!). 

Anyway, moving on. Thrift shops have none of that. They usually smell slightly dusty, and the person behind the counter is usually over 55 and willing to smile back if I smile at them, but otherwise perfectly happy to enter into a relationship of mutual ignoring until such times as I decide I need them. There is always a wall lined with a few shelves holding books with faded spines, and a collection of wonderfully random bric-a-brac. Tea cups and milk-jugs, records, ornaments, the occasional teddy bear. Odds and sodds of belts, hats and handbags. The shelves have mismatched hangers, and the clothes that hang on them are soft with wear and make me want to give them a big hug. As I browse through them I don’t have to worry about accidently slipping one off the hanger onto the ground, or snagging fabric with a ring. It’s nice, accessible, friendly shopping. Once again, it’s a curiously intimate experience to slip into an item of clothing that has been worn in by someone else, and to find that it fits perfectly. As I write this I’m wearing a purple silk pencil skirt that I suspect is home-made as it has no label and the inside fastening buttons don’t match. I like to wonder what experiences the person who wore this before me had, and what kind of person she was. Was it something she loved, and would put away tenderly after each wear? Or would she toss it into the corner of the room? If the person who owned it is now dead, as is quite likely with stuff bought at thrift shops, then what kind of memory did she leave behind to the people who knew her, and who would have seen her wearing what is now my purple silk skirt? I’ll never know, and that’s the beauty of it.

My swag...

On Friday of last week I got a little bit carried away and blew £25 in a charity shop in West Hamstead. But I came home with 10 items of pre-loved clothing AND the satisfaction of knowing I was helping a cancer foundation, all without having to dodge pesky sales assistants. Bargain!  

The Ode Less Travelled

This is of no interest to anyone but me, but I just have to share it none the less. A particularly wonderful passage from the book I'm presently reading - 'The Ode Less Travelled', by Stephen Fry. I hope you enjoy this as much as I did:

~~~


Unlike musical notation, paint or clay, language is inside every one of us. For free. We are all proficient at it. We already have the palette, the paints and the instruments. We don't have to go and buy any reserved materials. Poetry is made of the same stuff you are reading now, the same stuff you use to order pizza over the phone, the same stuff you yell at your parents and children, whisper in your lover's ear and shove into an e-mail, text or birthday card. It is common to us all. Is that why we resent being told that there is a technique to its highest expression, poetry? I cannot ski, so I would like to be shown how to. I cannot paint, so I would value some lessons. But I can speak and write, so do not waste my time telling me that I need lessons in poetry, which is, after all, no more than emotional writing, with or without the odd rhyme. Isn't it?

Jan Schreiber in a review of Timothy Steele's Missing Measures, says this of modern verse: "The writing of poetry has been made laughably easy. There are no technical constraints. Knowledge of the tradition is not necessary, nor is a desire to communicate, this having been supplanted in many practitioners by the more urgent desire to express themselves. Even sophistication in the manipulation of syntax is not sought. Poetry, it seems, need no longer be at least as well written as prose."

Personally, I find writing without form, metre or rhyme not ‘laughably easy' but fantastically difficult. If you can do it, good luck to you and farewell, this book is not for you: but a word of warning from W.H. Auden before you go: "The poet who writes ‘free' verse is like Robinson Crusoe on his desert island: he must do all his cooking, laundry and darning for himself. In a few exceptional cases, this manly independence produces something original and impressive, but more often the result is squalor-dirty sheets on the unmade bed and empty bottles on the unswept floor."

Hooray! A hurried (but happy) update

Throw your hands up and rejoice!!! 2 great things happened to us in the last week. For starters, my very handsome, clever and generally gorgeous fellow Marco celebrated his 28th birthday. Happy birthday Marco, and thank you for making even the dullest days sparkle!

28 years young!

Secondly, after almost 3 months of working away quite happily in my job at the London School of Economics, I’ve broken back into the world of publishing! It may have taken me a while, but it was worth the wait because my new title is – wait for it – ‘Managing Editor’ at Macmillan Publishers. Even as I type this, I can barely believe it. I have to confess that it’s never something I would have gone for without encouragement… I applied for the position of Development Editor with Macmillan a fortnight ago, and interviewed with them in their offices at Oxford. (Incidentally, it was also an excuse for my first trip to Oxford, which blew my mind.) They contacted me afterwards to give me the news that they didn’t think I had enough direct teaching experience to take on that role (quite rightly!), but that they were impressed with my organisation and they invited me back to interview for the Managing Editor job. It was a rather harrowing experience and certainly left me with a few grey hairs as I had to prepare and present an editorial task, but it must have gone well because they offered it to me!

Much of this was consumed

So I have a fortnight left at LSE, and then I swing straight into my new role. It’ll be a pretty steep learning curve I’m sure, but I really couldn’t be happier. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

God Save the Queen! (...and all other things British)

This blog entry is to commemorate the fact that Marco and I have just concluded one of the most thoroughly British fortnights we’ve had in our whole 5 months in London. We took part in the Diamond Jubilee festivities with much enthusiasm, not least because we got a 4-day weekend to celebrate…. Hurrah for the Queen! Along with the rest of London, Marco and I decided to brave the foul weather and head to the River Thames to watch the Royal Flotilla. With a lot of jostling and elbowing, we actually managed to get ourselves a prime spot on the top of London Bridge, and I then managed to get the prime spot of all prime spots… and spent most of the afternoon sitting on Marco’s shoulders!

The Royal Barge!!

We got a great view of the royal barge bobbing down the river, and though we were too far away to see the royals themselves, it was none the less an impressive sight to watch thousands of boats floating by. The best thing, though, was the atmosphere – everyone cheering and waving flags with all their might, and Union Jacks fluttering from every surface. The entire city had been decorated for the occasion, and although we got rained on a bit  we enjoyed being part of the crowd, drinking our Vodka and Orange Juice and waving away with the best of them.

The crowds on London Bridge

Oxford Circus decorated for the occasion

The very next weekend, just to carry on the British nature of things, we dolled ourselves up and headed off to watch a game of Polo. Thankfully we had much better weather, and spent a glorious afternoon drowning in sunshine and drinking Pimms. The horses were absolutely beautiful and it was an interesting game to watch, but after the 1st match I turned my attention to the people instead. It was a very swanky and well-dressed crowd – some of the women were stunning and seemed to have longer legs than the horses! But none the less it didn’t differ to many other British sporting events in that it did seem to be a great big booze-a-thon, and by the end of it most people were pretty hammered. At the end of the day, the crowds leaving the field seemed just as boisterous and rowdy as your average Pommy football hooligans – just in better clothing!

Waving at the horsies at the Polo

Other than our occasional outings on weekends, Marco and I are living pretty quietly – keeping our heads down and trying to rebuild some savings, but it is difficult – this is an expensive city, and it feels like we are haemorrhaging money on even the bare essentials! None the less we keep on keeping on – Marco trots off to Oxford Circus every day to his investment bank, and I trot off to the London School of Economics on The Strand. It’s Marco’s birthday in a fortnight, which will be our first UK birthday to celebrate, and I think I’m looking forward to it more than he is! Any excuse for cake and good times J

xxxxxxxx Jenny

Uprooted! But successfully re-rooted...

Well goodness me, what a busy, busy time it has been for us. I hope you’ll forgive the rather huge gap between updates as we’ve really had quite a few huge changes!

For this entry I’ll stick to just the biggest change – we’ve moved house for the second time in 6 weeks! Remember me bragging about how we’d moved into our very own studio flat, and how much I loved it? And how nice it was having our own space again? Well, we lost it – serves me jolly well right for getting big-headed about it all! Despite assuring us time and time again that our lease was renewable, 4 weeks after we moved in we were told that our landlord was planning to renovate our flat, and that we’d have to skedaddle. Not nice news to receive at all. Marco called up our agent demanding an explanation, and he informed us that the landlord had made the decision very recently and that they hadn’t known about his intentions. Suspicious, Marco then called up the actual real-estate office and spoke with our agent’s manager, who told us that they’d known about the renovation plans for over a year!! So we don’t know whether the agent didn’t do his job properly and check, or whether he lied to our faces because he wanted the place filled. Either way, as you can imagine, we were pretty upset.

Most people reading this know Marco, and will know that most of the time he is as charming, gentle-hearted and lovely as any person can be. However, what you probably don’t know (unless you’ve had the misfortune to get on his wrong side) is that he can also be terrifying. I don’t mean that he yells and bellows, but he has the ability to speak to the person who wronged him in a completely rational fashion, but so chillingly and scathingly that he usually gets them to admit to their own hopelessness and they end up quivering heaps of apology before him. I watch in awe as it’s an ability I completely lack. Under such circumstances this skill of Marco’s was invaluable, and he pretty much left the real-estate agent in tears and got them to agree to drive us around to hunt for new flats, help us with paperwork, and to waive all the lease-fees and agency-fees that are usually involved in moving. So the outcome of it all is that in spite of it being a huge nuisance, we’re now well settled into our new new flat, and I’m happy to report that it’s truly a step above where we were before. We’re literally just around the corner from our previous apartment, but now on the top floor instead of the ground floor, so we have a beautiful big window and lots of natural light. BUT – I spouted on about how much I liked our previous flat and it was taken away from us! So I won’t make the same mistake again, except to say that although it was a big fat pain in the you-know-where, we’re now thoroughly happily in our new home.

Most importantly, we still have our air mattress and plenty of room for spacious floor dwelling for any Australians who may be headed this way. And I learned an important lesson about real-estate agents in London: that they are incompetent twits and not to be trusted!!!

Toodle-oo,

Jenny xx

Changes are like buses... None for ages, then they all come at once!

Well, isn’t that always the way of it?! Nothing happens for the longest time and I have absolutely zero to write about on this blog, then BOOM! Everything happens at once, and I’m left playing catch up.

The first thing to announce is that Marco and I are now the proud renters of our VERY OWN LONDON APARTMENT!!!! A studio apartment it’s true, but none the less every inch of it is ours and we share it with no one. After such a long time in a freezing cold, damp, shabby house in East Ham where we shared 1 bathroom between 7 people (including an infant), it’s deliciously luxurious to have our own space (though not all that much of it!). Additionally, it’s beautifully furnished and HEATED! A big step up from East Ham, where we had to rug up in our winter jackets every time we wanted to venture away from the bar heater in our bedroom.

Forgive me for being house proud, but the below is a photograph of our new abode. Pretty, isn’t it? We are lucky enough to have a little back patio area as well, and though it’s empty at the moment I have big plans for a herb garden and some flowering pot plants. I never had much of a green thumb in Brisbane (not for want of trying; most of my plants just died slow and bedraggled deaths, no matter how much I watered and fertilised), but perhaps I’ll have better luck here.

But I digress. I was talking about how pretty our lovely little flat is. It may not be new or modern, but it’s light and airy and in a lovely neighbourhood in Zone 2 in the North West with a beautiful small cathedral at the end of our street. To put this in perspective, at our old place in East Ham we had a collection of hobos and junkies that lived under our back steps, and nothing at the end of our street but an impressive selection of 99-pence stores, and joint-smoking, hoodie-wearing hooligans. So we are delighted beyond measure with our little home.

We celebrated our first week in our new place by playing host to our very first London house guest Alex, an American student we met while travelling in Colombia. We had a great time showing him around our London, and his visit culminated in a big day where we hired a car and went and visited Stonehenge and the nearby towns of Bath and Salisbury. It was the first time Marco had seen any of these places either, so it was a very worthwhile outing – particularly as we were blessed with weather that was BEYOND SENSATIONAL.

The other major change to our situation from the last time I wrote is that... drumroll please.... I NOW HAVE A JOB!!!! Not in a publishing company it’s true, but never the less a proper, grown-up job where I get to wear nice clothes and sit at a desk all day, instead of wearing an apron and washing dishes (not to mention ruining my nails). I’m working at the London School of Economics, helping process applicants for their summer school. It’s a nice job with lovely people, and there’s plenty of interesting things to do to pass the time each day. It feels satisfying to be part of the rush of people that swarm through the tube stations every morning, each with a purpose, a place to be, and a plan for the day. Also, the one downside to being in our own place is that there’s no one to share the rent with, so having the extra income coming in has definitely eased the financial strain of being sole rent payers.

And so, as we approach the 4-month mark here in London, I have to say I’m feeling fairly satisfied with where we’re at. We’ve got our own flat, we’ve both got jobs, and we’re gradually beginning to do those frighteningly grown-up things that, although they’re nothing remarkable or impressive on their own, combine to represent a definite re-entry into the world of reality – of work, routine and schedule. Things like buying an ironing-board, and signing up for Sainsbury’s discount cards. The days of living out of backpacks, being constantly on the move and never spending more than a night or two in any one place are well and truly behind us.

Does this make me sad? Yes, I can’t deny it does. But only in part, because I am also remembering the countless things that are wonderful about being settled and grounded. For one, not having to share dormitories with strangers (many of whom smell, or snore, or both). For another, being able to cook our own food and having vaguely predictable bowel-movements again, instead of swinging, pendulum-like, between tremendous diarrhoea and total constipation. Also, it is difficult to feel bored or monotonous in a city like London. There is so much activity, so much bustle and haste that the streets burst with vitality. If I’m feeling lonely, all I have to do is take the tube to Westminster or Tower Hill or anywhere in the West End... I hear every language under the sun, and I know that every person in the thronging crowds has their own story. Then, before I know it, the energy of the city buoys me up again and I find I’m ready and raring to go.

In short, I don’t think monotony is going to be a problem.

 Love Jenny xo

Culture Vulture

Marco and I recently celebrated our 3 month anniversary here in London town. And to mark the occasion, I’ve been indulging in several of the rather delectable literary treats this city has to offer. In comparison to Brisbane, the variety of theatre and general entertainment available here is quite mind boggling, and I’ve only just begun to wrap my head around it.

Last week I had the absolute joy of attending a poetry reading at Kings College on the Strand. Not only was it absolutely free, but there were readings from 3 sensational poets AND a plethora of free wine and snacks. Free food always makes events so much better, don’t you agree?! To add to the glitter of the night, I went for drinks in the nearby bar with a collection of friendly people I met in the audience, and we were shortly joined by the poets themselves. So the formal poetry reading was followed by an informal, over-beer chat with the poets. I couldn’t stop smiling.

Additionally, this Thursday I will be trotting off to the Lion & Unicorn theatre, to watch a production of As You Like It, a ticket to which I purchased for a mere £10. Think of that! A solid 3 hours of Shakespeare, for a measly 10 quid! (‘Quid’, by the way, is English for ‘Pound.’ See that? I am picking up the local lingo!).

 And as the icing on the cake, I have purchased myself a ticket to see Stephen Fry perform the role of Malvolio in a production of Twelfth Night. For considerably more than £10, admittedly, but I’m sure it will be worth every penny. As a devoted Fry-o-phile, I think I might go slightly mad watching him in the flesh, strutting about on stage spouting Shakespeare. I think the only thing that could possibly beat it would be watching Stephen Fry perform something by Oscar Wilde. But if that happened, my head could well explode.

And nobody wants that!

Just a quick note...

... to say that living with a 2 year old child has put me off procreating more effectively than any of the high-school scare-sessions we had to sit through.

Good grief... it NEVER shuts up and ALWAYS chucks up!

The day we leave this house and its pint-sized occupant behind will be a happy day indeed.

Over and out.

Project Employment!

If there is one thing that I don’t want this blog to be it is dull. The consequence of this is that I haven’t been posting much lately, as we really haven’t got much to report; we have been living in a kind of perpetual limbo here in East Ham. We eat, sleep, try not to spend money, and once a day I trot off to my sandwich shop to deal with the continual indignities and occasional triumphs of the world of hospitality. (Today, for instance, a customer told me I had the most beautiful smile he’d ever seen, which helped me endure my manager’s putrid breath for the rest of the shift.)

But now, I’m breathlessly excited to report, WE HAVE NEWS!!!

See that? Doesn’t he look sharp, snappy and eminently employable? You’re not alone in thinking so, because as of yesterday Marco ended nearly 2 years of unemployment by landing a job as an associate sales analyst in an asset management firm in the snazziest part of London. Sound impressive? That’s because it is! It has been a torturously long process of phone calls and interviews, but yesterday Marco got the news we’d both been waiting for confirming that he’d been selected for the role from heaven knows how many other applicants.

Sainsbury-brand Vodka... our celebration!

Recession? What recession?! In a country with an unemployment rate of 8.4%, I’m pretty proud of my fellow for landing an awesome job in less than 8 weeks, ON TOP of a nearly 2 year gap in his resume. Marco, you are AWESOME!!

We are 50% of the way there. I am going to stay at the sandwich shop until Marco begins his role (in 3 weeks), and am also working on some freelance editing projects. Come April I will finish up at the sandwich joint and dance on outta there to the next stage of my life.

I’ll let you know what that may be when the time comes. In the meantime, thank you for being interested enough in us to visit my tiny little patch of the internet. I’ll do my best to keep it interesting – mostly this blog is a way for me to share my thoughts and experiences here in the UK in a manner that is somewhat more comprehensive and complete than facebook. Now that we are not moving about constantly I have more time to miss my family and friends back home, especially as there has been a recent flurry of engagements, weddings and pregnancies. So above all else, this is my little link to my old life and my old self. So if you happen to find it an interesting read as well, then that’s an added bonus!

xxx

Sandwiches, Snowballs and Settling In

There is definitely big news to report from old London town – I’m sitting here in our room in East Ham and if I look out the window... what do I see? That’s right.... SNOW!!!

Now, I know that for many of the people we met/stayed with on our travels, snow is a pretty regular and unremarkable part of life (I’m thinking of those of you in Spokane and Siberia!) but for Australians – and Australians from the sunshine state, no less – snow is a big deal. I’ve been to the snowfields in Australia and New Zealand for skiing holidays, but I’d never actually seen snow falling until we were in Tibet in September last year. So when it began to fall last night it was only my second time seeing it come down... and it was even better than in Tibet because we could watch it through the window rather than through the door of a yak-hide tent!

Snowing in High Street

As luck would have it our good friend Ashleigh happened to be with us at the time, so we celebrated our first proper London snowfall by making a late-night trip to Tesco to pick up some vodka, and then had a midnight snowball fight with our Indian flatmates and some other folk in the street. All marvellous fun, and we came indoors covered with snow to warm up with a few screwdrivers. When we woke up this morning, feeling fresh, bright and not at all hung-over, our entire street had turned white. There were icicles hanging from people’s clotheslines, and a thick layer of beautiful snow covering everything. Magic!

Ashleigh and me, post-snowball fight!

Now that we’ve had our first proper cold snap, however, we are really noticing the impact of living in an unheated house. To say it’s freezing would be an understatement! We have a small bar heater in our bedroom which keeps that fairly warm, but any other place in the house feels like Antarctica. The kitchen is so cold that the damp tea-towels I spread out last night didn’t dry – they froze. We see our breath puffing out in clouds whenever we walk into the bathroom, so you can bet that the process of getting undressed to take a shower is expeditious in the extreme. It’s irritating to have to rug up in our big coats every time we want to leave our bedroom, but there’s nothing that can be done about it so we just make the best of it for now, and dream of the day we move into a proper place with heating and working appliances!

Snow aside, we have a few small successes to report, and life in London is generally much improved since my last blog update. For starters, we’ve had the internet hooked up properly so we can access it from anywhere in our flat, and no longer need to crouch down in a single corner of one room to pick up on the wifi connection. Secondly, I have joined the revolution and now have an iPhone! Second hand, but an iPhone none the less – very kindly donated by Marco’s sister. So I am once again connected to the world and have a phone of my own. However, my main triumph is that I now have not one, but two jobs! Nothing particularly inspiring, but still something to keep the pounds coming in while we get settled. Yep, I’m reverting back to my university days and am back in hospitality! I noticed a ‘staff wanted’ sign in a sandwich shop just down the road from us, enquired, and now work 5 days a week flipping burger patties and frying onions over an industrial fryer, along with the usual coffee-making and epic amounts of cleaning. Not particularly dignified work, perhaps, but the people there are nice and it’s busy so the time goes quickly. Minimum wage, but I can walk there and as such don’t have to fork out money for a tube fare each day, which sweetens the deal considerably. My second job I have not yet started, but it is as a server for a catering company. I will do that in the evenings and on weekends, so it should fit in with the sandwich shop quite well.

Marco has also had some progress on the job-hunting front...  he had an interview last week that he feels went well, and a few more meetings lined up with finance folk for the coming week. So plenty of irons in the fire, and I feel sure something will come of at least one of them – Marco, as most of you know, is one clever cookie!

So all in all it’s been a pretty good fortnight for us, and in spite of the freezing cold weather we’re feeling positive. Best of all, though, is that we’re starting to feel at home here, and that’s really the biggest achievement of all! J

Going Wilde in London

“He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realise.” (Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray).

Oscar Wilde

This is just a very quick update about something that I understand may not be of interest to everyone, but that I found absolutely wonderful. So do bear with me as I indulge myself, or feel free to skip this entry all together!

 I’ve been making use of my free time and have gone on several walking tours of London. They have all been excellent, and – being me – I chose the ones with literary themes. I’ve done three to date – The London of Oscar Wilde, The London of Shakespeare and The London of Charles Dickens. The Oscar Wilde walking tour was easily the best, and run by a phenomenally knowledgeable chap who is one of the chief researchers at the Oscar Wilde Society and really knew his stuff. Also, he was dressed as Oscar Wilde in all his flamboyancy, which added a certain sense of fun to the occasion!

Oscar Wilde, I think, has had more of an influence on me than any other writer, and he holds a very, very special place in my heart. He has certainly had a great impact on my personal writing, and I love his plays, his poetry and his achingly beautiful fairytales equally. I happen to be reading a wonderful biography of him at the moment, and so to be guided through the streets of London and see all the places that I had read about in my book was a truly wonderful experience. We saw various spots where he lived, the florist where he bought his iconic green carnations, the tobacconist where he bought his cigarettes, the spot where he stood trial and was convicted for ‘gross indecency’ (aka homosexuality) and the spot where he was released from prison after his 2 years of hard labour.

My Oscar Wilde biography, by Richard Ellman.
Meticulously researched... if you're at all interested in Wilde, give it a try.

Several years ago I visited Oscar’s grave in Paris, and felt that I had made a connection with the dead man. Now, after taking this walking tour, I feel that I have made a connection with the living man. I admire him hugely, not only for giving us superb works of art like The Importance of Being Earnest and The Picture of Dorian Gray, but also for his courage and strength of character.  So to follow in his footsteps was for me, a tremendously meaningful thing. 

Over and out! J

PS – if you’ve never read anything by Oscar Wilde, do yourself a favour and read this fairy tale, which I consider one of his best. It’s short, and I promise you’ll enjoy it! http://www.artpassions.net/wilde/nightingale.html.

London! The first days...

Well, after 18 months of floating about the most distant corners of the planet, Marco and I have finally got a fixed address again and are more or less settling back into ‘normal’ life. I’m proud to say that it only took us 3 days after arriving in London to find ourselves a little flat and move in... though in our case ‘moving in’ isn’t much of an achievement as all we have are the packs on our backs and a box of stuff we had mailed from home! None the less, it felt excellent to be unpacking for the VERY LAST TIME, putting things in wardrobes and on shelves in a room of our very own, instead of in some grimy hostel dormitory.

As I write, we have been in London for exactly 2 weeks. We have done some serious inter-continental hopping in the last month. We flew from New Delhi in India to Missouri in the USA (reverse culture shock, anyone?!) where we spent a very relaxing fortnight over Christmas with Marco’s family, and from there it was a skip, hop and a jump across the Atlantic Ocean to Heathrow Airport.  We are now living in East London in a very ethnic neighbourhood called East Ham. It’s a predominantly Afro-Islamic community, and we are renting a rather shabby little place above a real estate agency that we share with 4 Indian people, including an 18-month old baby boy. It’s a very old, ramshackling, Dickensian sort of joint that we live in, with tiny narrow staircases and pull-string light switches. Most of it is very cramped, but our room is nice and big and has a pretty little ornamental fireplace in it, so that’s the main thing.

So, with Item 1 (finding a home) ticked off the agenda, we’re now in the early stages of Item 2, which is finding a Job. Not a fun task in a city that was one of the hardest-hit in the global recession! We spend most of our days huddled down with our laptops in the 1 square metre of this apartment that gets wifi internet access, with our bar heater beside us sending out resume after resume, and getting response after response along the following lines:

“Thank you for your interest in this position. You are applicant number 205. We will contact you should you be shortlisted for an interview”.

So clearly, a very brutal job market indeed! Still, there is nothing to do but keep trying, and I feel sure something will come along before too long. Exactly what that may be I don't know, but something! We keep each other cheerful and proof-read each others’ applications. I have an interview next week for a waitressing job, which I have high hopes for and will at least be some pounds coming in to our brand spankin’ new British bank account! I’m gonna be the best qualified waitress around! J

You can only spend so many hours a day crouched over a laptop sending out CVs so I am also trying to make the most of having so much free time, as I know I’m going to look back on it with envy once I do get employed. I’ve joined the local library and have been doing plenty of running, getting to know the parks and commencing ”Project-Get-Miranda-Kerr’s-Tooshi”. I would love to be doing some proper cooking and baking too, but unfortunately this house is not well stocked in terms of even the most basic kitchen implements, and I don’t want to go buying a whole bunch of new kitchen stuff. It’s honestly bizarre – we moved into this house and there were already 4 people living in it, so with us that makes 6 people in total. And there is no toaster, no kettle, no sharp knives, no tea-towel, no can opener, and exactly 1 plate and cup per person. No cutlery at all, as their Indian heritage means they eat with their fingers. No trays in the oven or griller, meaning the only thing we can really use to cook is the burners on the stove top. But that’s OK really, as we are more or less subsisting on ham and cheese sandwiches anyway. So the 6 of us get by with a single chopping board, a single beat-up fry-pan and a single pot. We had to buy ourselves a cup and plate each, and a can opener.

It’s all rather ridiculously funny, and we’ve made a bit of a game out of it, coming to tell one another when we discover a new thing the flat doesn’t have. Because as much as I’m whinging and whining, it really is nice to have a place to call home again, and not to be unpacking and packing every other day. We’re in a really vibrant neighbourhood with everything we need close by, and all in all it’s quite a fun way to ease back into normal living.

I’m prouder than I can possibly say of us being able to travel around the world for 18 months on entirely our own savings, and after having seen so much real, proper poverty in the world starting from scratch again in London doesn’t really seem so daunting. I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s all a matter of perspective. It would be very easy to get glum and depressed – after all, we’ve finished our trip, we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel of our finances, we’re living in a pretty dingy flat, and we have no real job prospects on the horizon. But I prefer to view it as an exciting new adventure – the kind of thing you read about in books. “I got off the boat with the shirt on my back and 5 pounds in my pocket, and I built a life for myself.” That kind of thing. We have no idea what we’ll be doing next week, and it’s all a big new journey. We have no money and no jobs, but we have each other and we have hope.

Is that too corny for words? Maybe it is but I couldn’t care less – I’m having the time of my life!

 Love you all, and happy Australia day!!!!!!!!!!!!

India Part 2

(Update from Dec 21st, 2011)

First things first – Merry Christmas to you all! Hard to believe that yet another year has gone, and even harder to believe that after 2 months in India, tomorrow is our very last day in this crazy country!

My last update detailed the time we spent in the north of India, where chaos reigned supreme and every day was an ordeal in some way or another. We’ve spent the last month exploring the southern states of the country, and I’m happy to report that it’s been a much calmer experience. There is such a marked difference between the north and the south that it was almost like entering a different country – the people are different in appearance and mannerisms, the food changes and the landscape is infinitely lusher. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that it’s much cleaner in general, though southern India does get points for having less cow crap on the pavements, which is a big bonus for my footwear!

We worked our way down the western coast right to the very southern tip of India, and then back up the eastern coast, so combined with the path we took across the north (as per my previous travelogue) we’ve really done one huge circle around India, and are now more or less back at our starting point in Delhi. Our first stop on the west coast was Arambol Beach in the state of Goa. Goa has a fairly faithful following of dirty, dreadlocked European hippies who go there year after year to rent beach huts, play bongos, shake tambourines and smoke weed so there were definitely plenty of interesting characters floating around. Every sunset the hippiest of the hippies would hold a ceremony on the beach to salute the sun as it set, complete guitars, singing, hula-hooping, fire twirling and tantric yoga ‘omm-ing’.  We rented a small hut just off the beach made of woven palm fronds and tarpaulins, and spent a delicious 10 days doing absolutely nothing at all. Actually, that’s a lie – we did plenty. We rocked in hammocks, read books, swam in the Arabian Sea, drank dangerously cheap cocktails and ate ourselves senseless on freshly-cooked seafood. On one of our more active days we hired a motorbike and explored the other beaches in the area, which was an interesting experience. Until quite recently Goa was a Portuguese settlement, and as such the architecture is very different to the rest of India. Lots of low-slung, single storey villas painted in bright colours (think turquoises and hot pinks) nestled in amongst the lush green of banana trees and coconut palms. It was a very picturesque place to explore.





Just another day in Goa, whizzing past an elephant on our motorbike...

Once we felt we’d really had a good rest and recharged our batteries, we continued to move down the Western coast of India. We spent a little time at Gokarna… another typical Indian beach with white sand, palm trees and the occasional herd of cows wandering along the shore, but didn’t spend much time there as there wasn’t much going on or any infrastructure for tourists. From Gokarna it was (yet another) overnight train journey to the absolutely beautiful little fishing town of Kochi. Kochi stole my heart, and is certainly one of my favourite places in India. We stayed in the area known as Fort Cochin (as the name suggests it’s an old, ruined fortress) and although it was very hot and muggy it was a beautifully verdant place, with more brightly coloured, charming Portuguese and Dutch dwellings. Also it was just bursting with flowers – brilliant hibiscus, huge frangipani and the most vivid bougainvillea I’ve ever seen. Jasmine blossomed along the side of almost every street, so the whole place smelled lovely.

Raw spices for sale in Fort Cochin

Also, it was in Kochi that we really started noticing churches for the first time, most of which were very quaint with tall white steeples, but some of which were grand enough to be called cathedrals. It’s nice to see that there seems to be relative religious harmony in such a small town, with the churches, Hindu temples, Islamic mosques and even a Jewish synagogue all actively existing more or less on top of one another.

Being a fishing town, Kochi had huge and very distinctive fishing nets strung up along the water’s edge. Each net is suspended by a system of curved coconut tree trunks bent to shape, and it takes 4-5 Indian men to operate them and get them up or down. Each evening the nets are emptied and swarms of fishing boats return to shore, and the day’s catch is set out in the nightly fish markets. We quickly learned that the cheapest way to eat was to go to the markets and buy a fish ourselves, and then take it to a restaurant and ask them to cook it for us, rather than buying from the restaurant directly. All in all it was a very pretty place that had authentic Indian charm without the typical Indian hassle.

From Kochi we took a local bus still further south to the nearby town of Alappuzha. By this time we were a long, long way south, and really starting to notice the hot and muggy weather (not to mention the mosquitoes). Alappuzha was nowhere near as picturesque or charming as Kochi but had the great advantage of being situated on a vast lake that has a complex system of backwater canals, many of which are lined with tiny rural villages. A popular tourist activity in Alappuzha is to charter a houseboat and spend a few nights out on the large lake, but as that was a bit out of our price range we opted instead to rent a little longboat. In hindsight I’m actually very pleased that we did, as it meant we got to go up some really narrow canals and explore the backwaters much more thoroughly than we would have been able to in a large houseboat. We spent an afternoon gently puttering up and down the intricate maze of waterways. As well as lots of beautiful lush greenery (think coconut palms, hibiscus plants and banana trees) we passed many, many tiny little villages, all of which are completely cut off from the mainland and can only be reached by small punted canoes. We saw plenty of local village people –women in saris squatting by the water’s edge washing their pots, young kids playing in the water, and the men adjusting their fishing nets. It must be a really amazing life to be born in a place so cut off from the rest of the world, and so dependent on the water for everything. The houses/huts were of varying standards – some were beautiful villas, and others were little more than mud brick shacks. Again, there was a healthy mix of small Christian chapels, Hindu temples and Islamic mosques to cater to the varied religious needs of the villagers.

Boating through the backwaters of Kerala

Unfortunately we got a little bit trapped in Alappuzha, as there was some political unrest while we were there and the whole city went on strike, meaning that none of the local businesses were open and for some time we were unable to book any onward passage. A bit of a shame as aside from the backwaters, the town itself didn’t have much to offer and it would have been nice to get stuck in a somewhat more scenic spot, but these things can’t be helped and we just read our books and chilled out at our hostel.  

Alappuzha was our last stop on the western coast of India, and from there we crossed the very bottom of the country at its narrow southern tip with a 16 hour bus ride, and began working our way back up the eastern coast. As we were beginning to run short of time we didn’t explore the eastern coast quite as thoroughly as the western coast, but we began at the city of Pondicherry – for those of you who have read Yann Martel’s fabulous novel ‘The Life of Pi’, you may recall that this is the city that the character Pi hails from (please forgive a nerdy side reference that only my uni pals will appreciate!). An old French settlement, it was a charming little seaside town that seemed a world apart from the rest of India – wide, leafy boulevards with luxurious French cafes selling pastries, croissants, real coffee and mouth-watering cakes.  Although it is on the sea it didn’t have any beaches, so instead we spent our time strolling through the boulevards, enjoying the large (and remarkably clean) city parks, and sitting in cafes indulging in decadent food and real coffee.  

From Pondicherry, we took a deep, deep breath and boarded a 3^rd class, non-air-conditioned train for the 33 hour journey to Calcutta (which nowadays is actually called Kolkata, but I think Calcutta sounds much more romantic J). The train journey itself, however, was not at all romantic. I think I described in my previous travelogue just how repugnant the lower class Indian trains are – plastic sleeper bunks that are generously coated with generations’ worth of grime and the leftover hair oil and toe jam of countless Indian passengers. There was also an absolute menagerie of mice, cockroaches and at least one rat that ran about below the sleeper bunks amongst the luggage, probably having a lovely time feasting on the food scraps that had dropped over the miles.

Also, to make matters worse, for long and complicated reasons that I won’t go into here Marco ended up being assigned a sleeper bunk right at the opposite end of the carriage to mine, so I ended up sharing my section with 7 Indian men, one of whom misjudged his timing and (thinking I was asleep) freely slid his hands inside my sleeping bag. What he did get was a shock and a string of obscenities  that would make a sailor blush, but as I’m sure you can imagine it wasn’t at all nice to then have to sleep so close to him.



The crowded streets of Calcutta

 Anyway – exhausted and drained we finally staggered off the train at Calcutta after a day and a half’s travel, arriving at the convenient time of 1am. We then had to go through the rigmarole of getting ourselves to the cheap end of town – no easy feat at that hour of the night, but we managed it in the end – only to discover that not a single hostel, dormitory or guesthouse seemed to have a bed available for less than $25 a night, which is hugely out of our price range (and by Indian standards might as well be the Hilton). So there we were – stranded in the dead of night with all our baggage in a new city with nowhere to go and the street-dwellers all looking at us curiously. A nasty situation and we were just on the verge of panic when eventually, eventually, we spotted a European guy coming out of a corrugated iron gateway. It had no signage or anything to indicate it had accommodation, but we were desperate so we went in regardless. And hip hooray – we got a room for under $5!!! It’s was a mean and awful place with crumbling walls and bedbugs aplenty, but we were so knackered after the train ride and grateful to be off the streets that we slept like logs in spite of it all.

Calcutta was actually a really nice city and we both enjoyed it. It was the former capital British capital during the period of colonisation, and as such has some really lovely, albeit somewhat shabby, European architecture and grandiose streets. In spite of its slightly decayed appearance it had a very bustling and cosmopolitan atmosphere that actually reminded me quite strongly of New York, especially with all the yellow and black taxi cabs. The marketplaces and bazaars got very hectic and crowded in the evenings though, and trying to walk down the streets became a real ordeal at times. We visited the aptly named Victoria Memorial – a colossal domed structure set amid immaculately manicured parklands that contained marble statues of various Brits of note. Inside the monument itself was a moderately interesting museum documenting the history of the British colonisation of India. It’s obviously maintained by the English (we confirmed this by checking the names on the board of contributors and benefactors) and it’s interesting to see the phrasing and language used in the exhibits, highlighting the European ‘civilisation’ that brought ‘enlightenment’ to Indian savagery. Ahhh, the echoes of imperialism at its finest!



The iconic Victoria Monument in Calcutta

Calcutta, though pleasant in many ways, did have a lot of poverty – every night the pavement was littered with people sleeping wrapped in newspaper, and homeless street kids were a real issue. It was difficult to walk anywhere without being accosted by groups of them who’d latch onto us with their grubby little hands and refuse to let go, hollering “Rupee, ruppppeeeeee!!!!” None of them seemed to be more than 6 or 7 years old so it’s quite heartbreaking to see because with such a start in life, it’s hard to imagine that any of them have much of a future before them other than begging or petty crime. It doesn’t seem fair that they’re destined for such a cruelly hard and short life from such a young age. There was also a plethora of hand-drawn rickshaws. We’ve taken plenty of motorised rickshaws during our travels, and even some bicycle-pulled ones, but a rickshaw that’s actually got a person between the shafts pulling it? It doesn’t seem right at all. We’d see them quite often: an Indian man (usually painfully thin) either bare footed or with worn out thongs running along amidst the traffic pulling a cart on which sat 2 or 3 overweight ladies, if not an entire family. It posed a real moral dilemma for me – on the one hand there is something so degrading about it that I wanted to shun them altogether, but on the other hand those rickshaw pullers are among the poorest of the poor, and so to give them business is also a kindness. We did not end up riding in one, but I will not forget the sight of it any time soon.

From Calcutta we headed to Delhi on our very last Indian train journey. This time it was meant to be a 26 hour journey, but due to countless unexplained delays it ended up taking closer to 40 hours! So we were exhausted when we finally made it, and I’ve never been so relieved to get off a train in my life. We’ve only been here a day so far and have only explored Old Delhi – we’ve yet to make it to New Delhi (that’s on the agenda for tomorrow). From what we’ve seen so far it seems to be quite a dingy city, with a lot of noise and traffic but not as much of the redeeming culture and colour of Calcutta or the other Indian cities we’ve visited. To be fair it does boast an impressive fortress, and we also visited the largest mosque in India which was rather spectacular… it can hold up to 25,000 prostrate worshippers and is a regular riot of minarets, dainty scalloped archways and carved white marble. Tomorrow we plan to explore New Delhi, which is more or less the area the Brits built during the period of colonisation, and apparently has a very different feel to the rest of the city, so I may have a more favourable impression after exploring that area.  

Indian streetfood - so delicious

There are so many images of India that are going to stay with me vividly, and of all the countries we’ve visited on this journey it is, without doubt, the one that has made the deepest and most lasting impression on me. It’s certainly made me realise the extent to which the things I worry and fret about are ‘first world problems’, and that compared to so many of the people we have encountered I live a life of unparalleled wealth, privilege, freedom and boundless luxury. Even that bed-bug ridden hostel I complained about earlier would have been the equivalent of a 5 star hotel to any of those people sleeping outside on the pavements of Calcutta. What Marco and I carelessly spend on a single meal could easily be the monthly income of the shoe-shine man who crouches on the street corner with his polish and brushes, hoping for business. And really it’s nothing but sheer, dumb luck that I was born in Brisbane in Australia instead of one of those same street kids, in which case I would have been the one crying “rupee, rupee” and running after foreigners. There are things about this country that have exasperated me to tears – the sickness, the lascivious staring men, the rip-off artists, the noise and pollution – but it has undoubtedly made me feel luckier than I ever thought possible, and taught me some lessons I won’t easily forget.

Well, that’s it for now. It’s hard to believe that in just a few short hours we’ll be on a plane leaving the beauty and bedlam of India behind us, heading back to civilisation… hot showers, functioning toilets, fixed prices and orderly traffic. We’ve been in developing countries for such a long time now that I feel sure there’s going to be some reverse culture shock but I must admit I’m looking forward to having some creature comforts again (I literally cannot remember the last time I had a hot shower). We have some serious inter-continental hopping ahead of us in the next few weeks: we fly to the USA to spend Christmas with Marco’s family in Missouri, and then it’s onto London to begin our assault on the UK.

A big Merry Christmas to you all, wherever you may be, and I hope that you have a relaxing and happy break over the holidays. Christmas time makes me miss my family and friends even more than usual, so whatever you’re doing for the occasion know that we’re thinking of you and sending lots of love.