Letters from London #2

Well, I was going to get back to posting about Paris today, but I'm still in a bit of a nostalgic mood for London and my early expat days.  (More importantly, I'm feeling very lazy tonight and this is already written, so this is what you're getting...)

November 2000:

1.       Hostel Highlights:

• Imagine, if you will, a pig.  No, not some cute little oinker like the one in "Babe", I'm talking about an enormous, full-grown sow.  Now imagine this pig walks upright, has long, witchy black hair, is wearing a dress made of fishnet and boots with 4" platform heels.  Got that?  Good.  Okay, now imagine that this pig invades your dorm at 3:00 in the morning, turns on the light, stomps around, yells about her bag having been stolen, and proceeds to rummage drunkenly through your belongings.  Boy, living in a hostel is awesome.  I’m so glad I moved to London without knowing anyone, without a job and without a place to live – what a clever, clever decision.  

• Imagine, if you will, the worst snoring you've ever heard and then multiply it by about a thousand.  This guy (who is as big as your average grizzly bear) checked into our dorm last night and I have never in my life heard anything like his snoring.  How can you describe the indescribable?  The closest I can get is to suggest that you imagine the offspring of a wild boar and a vacuum cleaner trying to have sex with an unwilling donkey, while it's playing an out-of-tune saxophone under a blanket of mucus.  

• Imagine, if you will, four pasty, pimply Scottish boys who get up for work at 5:30am (an event which involves all four of their mobile phone alarms going off and their buddy coming to bang loudly on our dorm door) and mill about like a herd of dazed, loud-mouthed Highland cows as they get ready.  I'm now into my third day without sleep and things are about to get ugly, if not downright homicidal.  Every night, we explain to them that this is not their private dorm, and that the other four people who sleep there have paid good money for a bed and that there are a few simple rules of hostel courtesy that should be followed.  Every night, they look shamefaced, mutter "Och, aye, ye're right, sorry" and go to bed, only to repeat their actions in the morning.  So I'm not sure if they're all a) suffering from a rare form of overnight amnesia, b) as thick as pig manure, or c) sadists who would make Vlad the Impaler weep with pride.

2.        A stunning Australian guy I met at the hostel last month came back to town and stayed here just exactly long enough to stomp all over my heart, so that's great news. I was worried that I wouldn't manage to have a doomed romance in London, so I'm really glad that I've been able to check that one off my list.  In fact, I'm going to go out and look for a long black cloak with a hood so that I can mope around the city in the rain like Meryl Streep in "The French Lieutenant's Woman". (I know, "The Australian Mechanical Engineer's Woman" doesn't have quite the same poetic ring to it, but that just can't be helped.)

3.        Londoners are still fascinating me with their behaviour.  They'll line up in an orderly fashion for a mile and a half for just about anything, with the sole exception of the Underground.  As soon as they see a train coming in, they turn into a rabid, snarling, pushing, shoving pack of wolves.  The other day, I was elbowed aside by a little old lady who was a) about 80, b) no bigger than my leg, and c) a nun, of all things!  I swear I'm not making this stuff up.

4.        Despite succumbing to the all-grease, all-fat English diet (which isn't nearly as much fun as I thought it might be), I've lost an astonishing amount of weight so far by the simple expedient of only eating about once a day.  When you live in a hostel that has no kitchen facilities whatsoever, you figure out how to survive on this.  I'm sure the next time I see a vegetable, I'll run away screaming in terror because I won't know what it is.

5.        Fashion: I went to my first really pretentious London bar on the weekend, and I so do not have the right clothes for this town.  Even on the best slutty-clothing day of my life, I would look like an 1850s schoolmarm here.  When I have recovered from my sleep deprivation and my ferocious cold, and when I again resemble something that might once have been human, we'll have to see what can be done about that.

6.        In the "and you thought there were no miracles in modern times" category, here's one that will amaze you:  I, Miss K, am now the proud owner of a brand new, bright, shiny bank account!!!!  It took me a whole month and the next-to-last bank I tried basically accused me of being a money-laundering drug lord because I didn't have three years of British addresses to prove who I was.  Well, of course - money-laundering drug lords often work as temps in their spare time.  Who needs diamonds, yachts, and champagne when you could be typing, filing, and making coffee for people who a) don’t appreciate it and b) think you’re a moron?  Good times!

Letters from London #1

Okay, here goes - while I'm still in this nostalgic mood for London, I'm going to share some of my Letters from London with you from time to time.  Blogs didn't really exist when I first moved there in 2000 and I had a lot of friends who wanted to hear about my new life, so these were the mass e-mails I sent around (and I hate mass e-mails, so I tried to make sure mine were fun and colourful).  I haven't read these in years so it's funny for me to look back - ahhh,  I was such a baby expat then...

October 2000: 

1. I had one of the single worst experiences of my life yesterday while trying to open a bank account in London: "No, Miss K, despite the fact that you have every form of identification in existence, a letter from your Canadian bank saying that your accounts are in good order and crammed full of money, and a plane ticket showing that you just arrived yesterday from Canada, we won’t open an account for you if you don't have three month’s worth of utility bills showing your address on it.”  I tried four banks and got the same attitude at all of them.  Hmph.  Great Britain, once a magnificent, globe-spanning empire, now reduced to one tiny island floating in a sea of red tape.

2. I've figured out the reason why you don’t often see a truly obese Londoner, in spite of the all-grease diet.  It's because even if you're the laziest person who ever lived and you take the Underground absolutely everywhere, you still end up walking miles and miles and miles and then more miles of corridors to get anywhere, and don't even get me started on the number of stairs and escalators.

3. I experienced my first London rush hour on the Underground a couple of days ago (an experience also known as "Miss K Goes To Sardinesville") and I've almost recovered from the trauma.  Just don't stand too close to me...

4. Staying at a traveller’s hostel and sleeping in a room with seven other people from different countries can be a rewarding and entertaining cultural experience.  It can also make you wonder if murdering someone in their sleep because you can't take another second of their body odour (which could strip the paint off a Buick, I ain't lying) has any kind of justifiable defence in a court of law.

5. More guys have tried to pick me up here in a week than in Toronto all year.  Hell, throw in last year too.  It's quite something.  It seems that I'm pretty hot stuff, in the parlance of the 18 year old lifeguard/surfer from California who tried to seduce me (without success, in case any dirty-minded folk amongst you were wondering about my moral fibre) the other night.  He was 6'6" and so gorgeous he looked like he should be carved out of marble and placed on a pedestal somewhere in Florence, but alas, I have not become that much of a degenerate.  Yet.

6. The following is going to make you wonder if I've lost what's left of my mind, but I swear it's true.  There is a show at a theatre not far from Trafalgar Square called (wait for it.....are you ready?....I don't think you are.....you'd better sit down.....are you sitting down?.....I don't believe you.....just sit the hell down......okay, fine, when you fall over, you'll only have yourself to blame) "Puppetry of the Penis".  The line above the title is "Two men.  Two dicks.  No pants." The line below the title is "The ancient Australian art of genital origami".  Now pick yourself up off the floor and don't look at me like that, I told you to sit down.  Anyway, not one word of this is a lie, and it leads me to three inescapable conclusions:  a) I will be visiting this theatre with my camera in order to capture this sign for posterity. b) I will be visiting this theatre in order to see the damn show, I don't care what it costs, are you kidding?  Aren't you dying of curiosity? and c) I will most certainly be visiting Australia in the none-too-distant future.  Any country that involves genitalia in their ancient arts is well worth a visit…

7. Men - if you operate in the business world, I have bad news for you - the double-breasted suit with big, bold pinstripes is all the rage here.  Al Capone would be so proud; London looks like Chicago during Prohibition (well, aside from the insane amount of drinking here, of course). Ladies - the colour of the moment is gold. If you go out at night and you don't resemble a chandelier at the Ritz, forget about it. 

8. Hostel Highlights:

  a) Smelly Guy #1 departed our room (alive, I swear), only to be replaced with Smelly Guy #2, an American who had to be in his late fifties but still thought he could get away with being a punk.  You know, I'm not one to judge people.  I'm famed for my fair-mindedness and reluctance to leap to conclusions about my fellow human beings (shush now, it’s true!), but I just have to say this: men who are old enough to be my father really shouldn't be walking around wearing more chains than the ghost of Jacob Marley, and if you've already lost most of your hair, you shouldn't be shaving what's left into weird shapes and dying it purple.  I'm just saying...

  b) The latest comment-worthy denizens of my den are two American girls from, like, the sovereign state of, like, California, who make the cast of Baywatch seem like the Nobel Prize selection panel.  Sigh.  The charm of meeting new people is starting to lose its shiny gleam.