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.