2 posts tagged “thames”
Fine. It's been a while but I have been insanely busy.
As a result I'm adding a third, oddly popular, 'impressions' post. It's Sunday afternoon and James has wandered off to M&S to get dinner (tuna salad and more scotch) so while he's out of the house I am forcing myself to post.
Forcing myself because a column in today's Observer freaked me out a little. In particular the lines "Every time something did happen, Mark got a column out of it and in essence made it seem as if it had all happened to him..."
Now, James is less of a self-centric, attention seeking, shrill, awesome show pony than I am and I wonder if my keeping of a record (largely for my own enjoyment) of our move to London does the same thing to him?
Whatever. I'm not going to bring it up. He can start his own blog. I'll just mention him more often from now on.
Haywards Heath
Caught up with Phil down in Hayward's Heath last weekend. This represented my first trip out of London and whilst it was great to catch up I just don't think it was far enough away to be interesting.
Phil's workplace is actually in the owner's large farm house just outside of town. That was probably the highlight. A working English farm! With trees and green grass and other vaguely New Zealandish things.
Tate Modern
Okay, so it was only the gift shop. That's all we had time for as I had a job interview to completely bomb later in the day.
But still. It was awesome. This is where all your Christmas gifts will be purchased. They might actually be the one gift just sent to heaps of people.
Thames Walk
The day of the bombed interview improved greatly as we dined in Borough and then walked along the Thames to tower bridge.
Once across the bridge we walked back up the Thames past the tower -and traitor's gate. Traitor's gate really struck me. Because we've been so busy we haven't really done anything remotely fun so this was the first place I could point at something and say "ooh! I know things that happened here!"
The Queen
Wednesday was a day of many interviews. The first one was outside London in Surrey (see below) which necessitated catching a national rail train from Victoria.
As usual I got us into the station preposterously early on a rainy Wednesday morning.
We actually hadn't seen Buckingham Palace yet and it was just around the corner so I figured a little looky-looing would kill some time.
Off we trot through the sea of black umbrellas (it looks just like London! Oh, wait).
I'm anxious about how wet I am getting as I have to look presentable for my several interviews. And then as we walked along the side of the palace to the main gates I started thinking about the Queen and the troubles with her leaky roof and not having enough money to repair it.
And then I started to feel a little bit of sympathy regarding the roof issue.
Think about it:
If there was another government building in Britain where an 82 year old, female war veteran was forced to live (it's not like she can leave) with a leaky roof then there would be a red top uproar. Surely the money can be found in a country as over-taxed as this one.
It was in the middle of these noble, lofty thoughts that the footpath beside the palace collapsed under me and my right leg sank up past my shin in filthy, muddy, rain water. I'm pretty sure the large flagstone was somehow floating on it -that's how gross it was.
My noble thoughts vanish.
Screw the roof! Fix the frikking footpath!!
Surrey
Ah, Surrey. Now forever associated in my head with maths. Here's why:
The string of un-awesome interviews continued. For this one I actually had to leave London and sit an aptitude test.
Here's something I learned from the test:
I can no longer do long division.
Seriously. It's impossible. I can work it out in my head almost instantly, which means I can't actually 'show working'. I have completely forgotten long division.
Other than that, the interview was for a great job that I hope to get called back on -assuming my maths scores aren't too dismal.
Note the actual job will be based in London (thank god).
Ikea
I thought I would be happy to finally have access to this soul-destroying, planet-destroying, multi-dimensional brain trap again.
I mean, we managed to furnish our entire room (and I mean furnish) for 212 pounds... It looks like an ikea commercial.
But Family Guy said it best when they said ikea had won the contract to rebuild Iraq... It's almost like you can't live up to your own furniture's brand promise:
Wine
Getting used to the wine thing is proving difficult. It's laid out in the supermarket by region/country rather than by variety because of the frog custom of doing the exact same thing.
Which is fine except that I only really know Bordeaux and.... 'other'.
Now, I want to be "about" French wine in the same was I was "about" NZ wine when living there... And Australian wine before that.
So not twenty four hours ago I was whining to anyone who would listen (James, Abbie, flatmates) that I need some kind of Idiot's/Beginners/Women's Weekly guide to being aspirational middle class by only buying French wine in supermarkets and still thinking that I will get an adequate understanding of it book -and that this book does not exist.
When Lo!
Guardian to the rescue with this handy series of booklet inserts about just that! It's probably even a bit handy on the other side of the world.
There's some Antipodean stuff in there, as well, but I can just ignore that.
If you're seventy.
But this is what the iphone thought of it:
We had to take the overland to get there. Worst. Train ride. Ever.
The police had to stop the train twice on the way back because of assaults. And the train kept stopping in the middle of nowhere because there was another train broken down ahead of us they were shunting. Of course, in my head I was picturing two cartoon characters on a railroad handcart.
In other (some might say "real") news, I have a job interview for a viral video company tomorrow. I'm a little bit excited about it.
