London!!!

I recall back in the mists of time before life was wierd and before the phrase voulez-vous couchez avec moi ce soir was just something from a song, I wrote some ground rules to the blog that went on to be my lifeline to sanity and my spleen-vent par excellence, one of which clearly stated that I wouldn't be using multiple exclamation marks in any of my postings.

But come on, let's be reasonable about this: this is London!!! 3 exclamation marks. London!!!! 4! There's just no limit to the number of punctuation marks a city of this size, this vibrancy and this sheer paved-with-golditude can sustain. And it's where I live.

It's been 48 hours now since I've been in London and the list of fun things I've done is already long and entertaining, like some kind of joke shop shopping list, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. Where have I been for the last n months? What have I been up to?

Well: teaching (fun, uneventful, reasonably well-paid given that I was living cheaply at my parents' house) and being in loco parentis to 47 internationally foreign children aged between 9 and 13, which included such non-typical-for-a-serious-professional-20-something activities as: Disco (way more fun with 10-year-olds than with 'adults'), midnight fighting (them, not me), rounders, jelly cosumption, tears, tantrums, tiredness (mine, not theirs), Pleasurewood Hills, hugs, hunger (constant, everyone) and happiness for all involved.

I had a great time and was constantly reminding myself that most of my friends were in offices idling away the hours in front of their emails and waiting for the (even less appealing to me at that time) whirl of drinks, flirting and chat that makes up British evening social life. I forged genuine bonds with some of the kids and was very sad when it was time for people to go home (not a dry eye on the coach). Is it something I'd do again? Not sure. The money's great but it did have it's down sides; I'll not to into them now, you can ask me when you see me.

So, here I am. In Hackney, or as it's known round these parts: Cambridge-upon-Thames. It's wierd that virtually everyone I have ever known from Cambridge is now living within a 2-mile radius of me. Wierd but not unpleasant, which brings me nicely round to my first 48 hours in London:

Yesterday I enjoyed the wonder and splendour of Stoke Newington Church Street, my local high-class High Road. It's actually rather wonderful, with cafes and restaurants at every whirl of the capital-crazed eye. Spent the afternoon wandering and eating and drinking and trying to buy things for my new, utterly empty, undecorated and undecorous room.

This was followed by an evening of the highest pleasure and leisure making decorations at my sister's house for the party they're having this weekend. We ate heartily and played with paints, paper of the size that most normal children can only dream of, and pipe cleaners in luminous, furred hues, to be made into butterflies and monkeys by our skilled fingers (I'll try and get some photos of these to post if I can).

Today was mine and my friend's attempt at the obligatory 'London tourist' montage as seen in Friends, Austen Powers and possibly even the Simpsons, where we donned union jack top hats and rode laughing through the sights and sounds of London on the top of a double-decker bus with the Kinks playing Waterloo Sunset on the back seat.

This is of course just metaphore but we did wander through Picadilly Circus, Covent Garden, Hamleys and Carnaby Street in search of nothing in particular, and finding it all quite wonderful. I've been to all these places before of course but it feels oddly different now I know my home is only a bus ride away.

Things felt more manageable, more comprehensible, more like my own back garden somehow. I also bought a giant wall-poster map of London for poring over and assimilating to wow my soon-to-be new pals (whoever they may be) with my own version of 'The Knowledge'.

So, this is all for now. Life and London rolls by outside at a frantic urban pace and will no doubt continue to do so well into the night and, indeed, a good part of tomorrow, but I? I'm going to cook beef sausages, tidy my room and maybe read a book. You can take the boy out of Cambridge but Cambridge out of the boy? That'll take a while longer yet....

Till next time me hearties,
Rob