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