Week 2 - Settling In

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Monday 19th February

From today we started getting ourselves settled and organising the mundane essentials of living, so the next few days won’t be as eventful as the previous weeks.

Sleeping in a bit, we decided to head down to Clapham High St and do a bit of shopping. We left our room, walked out to the lift where Emma’s bike (well most of it) was locked up and noticed something was missing. Hmmm….what was it….that’s right bike’s have 2 wheels don’t they! Yes, after one night the front wheel had been nicked, even though it was only about 10m from our front door, 4 levels up our building. At least she learnt the valuable lesson that front wheels need to be locked up as well as the frames. The rotten #$*&!*#’s.

First stop down the High St was now the bike shop, where Em picked up a kick-ass lock and a few other trinkets. We scrounged up some free internet at a wifi café to quickly check emails and search for jobs. A quick peruse of some op shops bagged me a spiffy looking black jacket for work for a mere £10 and Em scored a couple of cheap scarves and a nice white jacket for £7. Detouring at Sainbury’s for some dinner ingredients (it was our turn to make dinner) and heading home the day was all but over.


Tuesday 20th February

Emms contribution -

I worked for three days (starting today) at the same school and this job was extremely challenging.

Where do I start?
I was kicked and abused by a girl in year one. I stood in bewilderment, pretending to ignore her and not react. “What have I got myself into?” was running through my head. At this school, I taught three year levels (1,2,4). Keeping control of the students and gaining their attention was a never ending - mighty battle.

In the year one class, I decided to test how long I could let the students work independently. Within 2 seconds of sitting back, almost all of the students were wrestling and jumping over each other. I have never seen anything get out of hand so quickly. As punishment for not listening to the almighty Miss C, the students had to write lines for the rest of the lesson. He, he I had my way in the end.

All of the students were ethnic and most of the girls wore head pieces. They were mostly from a low economic area with parents who have little education. I told my agency that I found it hard to maintain control of the students and there response was “this school is one of our easier schools.” Oh no……..!!!!!


Wednesday 21st February

While Em was getting her shins kicked I was leisurely wandering around Harrods, as I had to pick up my replica mini guitar I’d put on order (it’s a hard life). I headed in, back to the awesome guitar exhibition and took another million photos. As the particular Gibson SG I’d ordered and reserved had already been sold to someone else I had to go to Level 3 to the Audio Visual section to see if they had anymore.

Lucky I did, because they had a bigger selection up there, but I couldn’t choose between the Jimi Hendrix Flying V and the Guns N Roses “Slash” Gibson. There could only be one solution. Leaving the audio section with my two babies I decided to have a gander at all the other floors and was astounded by the endless range and quality of every section of the almighty shop. It wouldn’t take too long to empty your wallet with £10,000 clocks, £4000 fridges and £9000 dressing tables up for sale.

Just as I left Harrods and got out onto the street, I realised I hadn’t paid for the £10 Guitar Exhibition book which documented the exhibition and the history of the electric guitar. I would have gone back to pay for it (honest) but Em had just called me. She was waiting outside our apartment block and as she didn’t have keys yet was relying on me to be home to let her in. Doh! 3 tubes later and 25 minutes, which I swear must be a record, I got back home and let a rather annoyed Em inside.

I had also forgot we had the play “Cabaret” to go to see with Cam & Nat and one of Nat’s friends, so after a quick bite we raced out to Covent Garden to the Lyric Theatre and made it just in time. Being my first London play, I was kept quite entertained. Some of the others found it a bit disappointing (Nat even fell asleep for a bit of it!) but the storyline and occasional full frontal nudity kept me into it. It was a bit of a different take on the original (having just watched it yesterday) but all in all I felt it was worth the £15 and was something different. The one thing I’d say could have been better was the (non-existent) legroom, not good for us 6”+ people.


Thursday 22nd February

While Em was hard at work tackling the anklekickers, today was my day to meet with my personal job recruiter at Michael Page in town. The weather was typically London, wet and gusty, so much so that my umbrella inverted itself and was thoughtfully disposed of. The meeting went well, Amit seemed confident he’d have me a job fairly soon, but it looks like I’m going to have to get a few more recruiters on board to speed things up a bit.

After checking out a cheap second hand bike shop in Elephant & Castle (yes, that’s the name of a suburb) I looked through the Gumtree website and found a nice GT Aggressor mountain bike for £115. I met the guy in Whitechapel (home of the infamous Jack the Ripper murders) and the bike looked brand new and was probably worth double what he was asking. I didn’t ask any questions though; it rode well so I snapped it up for £110. Em rang me again, she was waiting outside the apartments waiting to get in. I was about an hour off getting home, but luckily Cambo was just around the corner. Note to self - get extra keys cut tomorrow!

Getting home was a bit of a mission, not being able to take it on the tube meant I had to go home via Waterloo and Clapham junction (the busiest station in the UK with about 20 tracks) but made it home by about 8pm, making Emma very jealous with my new set of wheels (she had picked up another front wheel for £20 by now).


Friday 23rd February

Today was more of the same ol’ thing. I went down to “The Pavement” café to scab their free wireless internet as we’re still waiting to have it connected at home. March 9th they’re saying now before we can get it! Its funny how you get an English girl when you call sales but when you call customer service you get an Indian. Hmmm.

After a spot of checking for jobs, replying to emails, a spot of shopping and other miscellaneous tasks, Em got home and we decided to go for a ride from home to Westminster. Surprisingly it only took about 30 minutes. We rode up to the Tower Bridge and then headed back home along the Thames which looked very different at night with all the reflections of the colourful lights everywhere. We pass a car dealership on the way home and I have to stop and drool at a nice new red Ferrari Enzo sitting pretty in the showroom. Sports and luxury cars are everywhere over here, Audi TT’s seem to be like Commodores, Porsche’s are commonplace, even new Ferrari’s and the odd Lamborghini will be seen (and heard) once every couple of days.

The traffic is a bit different to Perth, people seem to edge out onto the road when they want to turn onto a bigger road, eventually someone has to let them in as they’re pretty well cutting them off. Buses, which were once very handy, arriving at bus stops about once every 2-3 minutes, have become a pain in the bum when on the treadly. They pull right over to the kerb when stopping, so, you either get stuck behind them or have to risk pulling out to the right and overtaking them.

Some of the intersections can be very confusing as well, with roads going everywhere, 6 exit roundabouts and traffic lights that are hard to see. Worst of all though is the scarcity of street signs, (they are fixed to buildings over here instead of on poles) which may be alright for a local but when you’re just starting to find your way round, can be very frustrating when you ride down a road for a km or so without seeing one. Anyway I’m starting to sound like a Pom now so I’ll stop ranting before you log off.


Saturday 24th February

Just a bit of pottering around Clapham on the agenda today. A bit of food shopping and a spot of internet café surfing (they know me pretty well by now) before riding over to Clapham Junction (which is about 3 kms away) for some more clothes shopping. DVD at night went well with Cambo’s famous risotto made with fresh ingredients from the Brixton Markets. An early night was needed, tomorrow was Sunday…..and would be my first visit to (The) Church.


Sunday 25th February

Today would show how diverse London could be for me and Em. Whilst Emma would be attending a London fashion week catwalk parade and promotion day, Cambo and I would be attending The Church, a place that’s been getting Aussies, Kiwi’s and South Africans blind since 1979. In fact Kylee tells me her and her best mate Ange would go to the same Sunday session about 15 years ago (and getting up to no good I’d wager) when she was working and living in London. Some things never change I guess.

After a short wait in line, Cambo saw a couple of his sister-in-law Brooke’s crazy German friends, so we jumped the cue just as 12 midday struck and we all flowed in. Straight to the bar for us and, as is tradition in The Church, we bought 3 drinks at a time, put them into a big plastic bag and tied it around our belt so we had an hour or so of drinks at the ready. Some people came dressed up in their finest attire - we spotted a couple of alfoil heads, a penguin, a gangster, a guy dressed up as a can of Spam and a group of Little Miss girls amongst others.

The place was getting chockers and going off before the host, a fat English potty mouth, drove out onto stage on a minibike, before smoking it up and dumping it on stage. He was hilarious and had the crowd singing and getting into the atmosphere. Drinking games commenced shortly after with a beer relay pitting Aussies vs Kiwi’s vs South Africans vs Brazilians. The Aussies did alright with an all girl team, just missing out on the final with the all boy Brazilians pipping them at the post. A couple of gear-getter-offerers of either gender appeared up on stage during the 4 hour sesh and a jolly good time was had by all.

As the day was still quite young though, we felt almost obligated to continue on at the next stop on the way home - The Shepard’s Bush Walkabout, the traditional follow up pub to The Church. I had to have a Snakebite or 2, as you do and even met up with the Spam Man himself, who was devouring a 4 pint mug of the sweet red lager. About 9pm, Cambo and I had decided to head on home as we’d had our share. We picked up some food supplies from a little deli / shop that can clear plastic walls all the way around it as you walk in and you’d have to point to what you want and get the shopkeeper to get it for you. I’d say he must have been ripped off a few times before so went the whole hog.

Emma said the fashion week event wasn’t too bad but was a bit overrated, lots of adverts & promos but was just like a big shop really with a few catwalks every now and then.

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