Tag: london living

Sweater organiser

It’s the little things that excite me. The latest thing to bring me great joy has been the purchase of a sweater organiser from the Futon Company.

I was originally going to buy a shoe organiser to stop me from tripping over the twenty pairs of shoes that I’ve managed to accumulate in England (few, compared to what I have in Melbourne). When I realised for an extra £2 I could buy the twice-as-big sweater organiser, I did so. I figured I could store both bigger and more shoes in a sweater organiser.

Once I hung the organiser up in my wardrobe, a change of heart led me to put clothes into the organiser. This freed up wardrobe floor space for a pile of shoes. I am very happy! Only Frequently Worn Shoes are out in the bedroom now.

Look how organised it is! And it’s still like that, weeks later. That’s how you know that an organiser works!

No matter how little I put on the shelves, the organiser still arches at the top. It pains me. It looks like it’s being stretched.

Absent army

Stepping out of the Tube train onto the platform of my usual station, I was surprised to see a clear plastic garbage bag taped to the wall. It was filled with free newspapers, the most common detritus of the Underground. I saw another taped bag ten metres along the corridor.

One of the quirks of the Underground is that there are no bins — not a single one. I found this out early on in my Tube career when, suffering severe sniffles, I couldn’t find a bin to dispose my mass of used tissues.

It’s because of terrorism. Even before 9/11 and 7/7, since the 1970s the Underground has been under attack from groups like the IRA. Bins are potentially handy places to hide bombs, I guess.

Even without bins, you’d be surprised at how clean Underground stations are. I don’t remember any litter in stations, except for occasional newspapers. Each station is patrolled by an army of cleaning staff, picking up papers and bottles, mopping up pavement pizza…

As I climbed up the escalators, an announcement on the PA system explained the taped up rubbish bags.

‘Attention! There are no cleaning staff at the station today. Please take all your litter with you, including free newspapers.’

I expect that by the end of the day, the station looked like a landfill.

Credit with training wheels

I’ve been trying to get a credit card for a while. I need it to do things like book taxis, buy theatre tickets, train tickets, and plane tickets.

The first time I was rejected, I assumed it was because I was a student with no income.

The second time, I thought it was because I had a basic account with the pitiful Solo debit card. As I’ve mentioned before, banks give this kind of card to people they don’t trust. So as soon as I could, I upgraded to a normal current account.

The third time I was rejected, I was told that it was because I needed to have my current account for at least four months.

The fourth time I was rejected, I discovered that, actually, banks don’t give people credit cards until they’ve lived in the UK for two or three years. Great! Months and months more to wait until I can book taxis, buy theatre, train and plane tickets.

Then my friend Bettina told me about a credit card for people with bad credit histories. In fact, I have a perfect credit history — it’s just not long enough in this country.

I applied for the card last week and it arrived today. Eagerly, I ripped open the envelope, ignored the card and scanned the letter. I have a credit limit of £260 (about AUD530). It’s a whole £10 above the minimum credit limit they offer, how lucky am I!

Well, at least it’s enough for a taxi ride!

Pangea Day

Today, I volunteered at Pangea Day, ‘a global event bringing the world together through film’. I surveyed people about how they travelled to the London event. We will use this information to work out the carbon footprint of Pangea Day in London and Los Angeles.

The films were great, really thoughtful and often funny. The hosts and speakers were a little bit too earnest for my taste. My favourite part of the evening was at the very end, when percussionists all around the world played to the same rhythm. We had video feeds with drummers from USA, Rwanda, Egypt, India, and other places, as well as Planet Drum live on stage in London. I was dancing on our picnic rug.

Watch all the films here. One of my favourites is Elevator Music. My friend George recommends More, which I didn’t get to see because I was surveying people.





Tube tally

Last week, wracked by neck pain, the only thing I could do was sit on a couch and count Tube stations. Damjan had said that he thought there were around 200. This, in my opinion, was a gross overestimate.

To prove it, I got out an Underground map and started crossing them off. I took bets. My vote was for 112 stations. Neo guessed 100. Damian was more ambitious at 140.

I took a broad view of what a ‘station’ was. Anything on the Tube map was fair game, so I ended up counting stations on the Overground and Docklands Light Rail, as well as those on the temporarily closed East London line. I excluded the recently decomissioned Shoreditch station and included the new station at Heathrow Terminal 5.

Very quickly, the tally steamed past our paltry estimates. Even Damjan’s ‘gross overestimate’ was left in the dust trail of my black pen, as shown below.


The answer is… 344! To me it seems like a massive number. Who would have thought?

The wind changed

When I left work today, it was windy. For a long moment, I was disoriented… and instinctively happy.

I worked it out; the wind was warm. I felt like I was in Melbourne.

I haven’t had warm air blown into my face for a long time. Wind in the UK and Germany makes me shrink into my coat, hunch into my scarf, pull down my furry hat.

Somehow, Melbourne wind had found its way to London.

Bulk buy

A few weeks ago, I discovered that since the Great Fire of London in 1666, Covent Garden (my favourite part of London) had been the most important wholesale food market in the UK. By the 1960s, Covent Garden was choked by gridlock due to lorries trying to get in and out of the market. So in 1974, the market was picked up and moved to south-west London.

From Wikipedia:

New Covent Garden Market is a wholesale fruit, vegetable and flower market, known as ‘London’s Larder’, located in Nine Elms between Vauxhall and Battersea, South West London. Covering a site of 56 acres (227,000 m²), it contains approximately 250 fruit, vegetable and flower companies.

The Market is run by a government agency, the Covent Garden Market Authority, set up in 1961 and charged with modernising and overseeing the administration of the vegetable market which was considered strategically important as a wholesale food and flower market, providing ingredients for London’s restaurants, schools, prisons, hospitals and other mass caterers.

I was very excited to read this because the New Covent Garden Market is within walking distance of my house. I sent an email to ask whether or not I could do my grocery shopping there.

I got a reply the next morning. The answer was essentially: ‘Only if you want to buy fruit and veg by the pallet-load’!

China in London

We had planned to have a good time on the Chinese New Year weekend in London. Damjan and I met up with Jon and Pey at Covent Garden on Saturday morning. Covent Garden is my favourite part of London. Only a few days ago, while watching the historical crime series City of Vice, I found out that Covent Garden was a seedy hotspot of brothels in the 1750s.

These days, it’s a centre for shopping, performing arts (the Royal Opera House borders the piazza) and street theatre. As Damjan likes to say, ‘It’s the only place where I’ve ever heard opera busking!’

Wikipedia says, ‘Today Covent Garden is the only part of London licensed for street entertainment with performers having to undertake auditions for the Market’s management and representatives of the performers’ union and signing up to timetabled slots.’

I do my hiphop dance lessons at Covent Garden. Damjan and I also have a favourite restaurant here called Food For Thought.

We took Pey and Jon around Covent Garden, then through Chinatown, which was gearing up for Sunday’s major Chinese New Year celebration. We then went to Trafalgar Square, which was also being tarted up for CNY. After popping into the National Gallery to see van Gough’s Sunflowers (I can’t see why this painting is so famous), we went to St James’s Park. The flag was flying over Buckingham Palace so the Queen was home.

Our London day tour ended with ice cream at Hyde Park and a home-cooked meal at my home.

The next day, Damjan and I took on 中国在伦敦 (China in London) celebrations in earnest, despite being warned about how crowded it would be. We started with lunch in Chinatown with Debra and John (Debra is a workmate of mine). For dessert, we bought opportunistically-overpriced Chinese pastries being sold on the main Chinatown drag.

Because shimmying through the CNY crowd was so tiring, we ducked into a French café, where I had my favourite French treat, mille fueille. It was the third one I have ever eaten (well, I’ve only ever eaten half of each so it was my 1.5th).

Rested, we battled through to Trafalgar Square, where we watched a rather strange Chinese/Western crossover band perform. After taking another break (in St James’s Park), we visited Hamley’s, the most famous toy store in London. It is six storeys of toys.

After dinner at Tuk Tuk in Soho (the present day red light district), Damjan and I ran to the station so that he could catch his train home.

Setting the tone for the weekend, we listened to this fellow play the Chinese pipes (if you’re reading, mum, what is this?) while waiting for Pey and Jon to arrive.

These street performers are very good at sucking in crowds. It’s always a ‘full house’.

Covent Garden is where the first Punch and Judy puppet show was performed, as recorded by the famous blogger diaryist, Samuel Pepys.

One of the gates to Chinatown. For a really big city, London has a disappointingly small Chinatown.

Here they are setting up Trafalgar Square for the party.

We wondered whether or not the lanterns get reused every year. I doubt it. Cathay Pacific probably had to pay a lot to sponsor the lanterns.

I feel a kinship with any woman in a high vis vest.

And here are the fruits of their labour — a packed out Trafalgar Square.

That’s Nelson’s Column. I believe it to be out of proportion to anything you might use as a reference in its surrounds. So it has to be said: Is someone compensating for something?

Going up

For two weeks, I had been trying to go to the bank. I needed to change my account and apply for a mini cash ISA (which is a high yield savings account with tax-free interest). I popped into the bank mid-afternoon on Monday and found myself in a queue.

‘Hi!’ a customer service person said. ‘What can we help you with today?’

‘I usually see Scott,’ I said, naming the customer manager who had opened my Gold account. ‘Is he available?’

‘Yes, he is. But there will be a fifteen to twenty minute wait.’

Certain that she was understating the waiting time, I said, ‘I’ll come back another time. When’s the least busiest time at the bank?’

‘Before 11 in the morning,’ was the reply. She added, ‘If you want to see Scott, you need to come in this week. He’s changing jobs. Friday’s his last day.’

I intended to go to get to the bank the following day but insane deadlines chained me to my desk all of Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

On Friday morning, as I dozed in the Tube carriage, I thought ‘Right. Today’s my last chance. I don’t want to go through the hassle of breaking in another bank person.’

I got off at my stop and headed to the lift. I was the first one in so I moved right down to the end. I was quickly surrounded by other commuters. Despite the crowd, travelling in a Tube station lift is the only guaranteed 45 seconds of silence you will get in the middle of London.

I was all ready to be silent when I looked to my right and jumped up with a start.

‘Scott!’ It was my account manager.

‘Hello!’ he said, obviously recognising me but not remembering my name.

‘Uh. I’m coming to see you this morning,’ I said.

‘Oh! Good. Well, it’s my last day, you know.’

‘Yes, I do, they told me. Congratulations on the new job.’

‘I’m very happy, yes, it’s a promotion. I’ll be closer to home, so I won’t need to take the Tube anymore, it’ll be just a 30 minute bus trip to work after today.’

‘That’s good…’ I murmured.

‘…And it’s more of a client management role, more responsbilities. I wasn’t keen on managing a team, I don’t want to deal with HR problems so this is perfect. It’s almost an extra £5000 a year, too.’

‘Wow, that’s worked out well, then…’

‘Yeah, I’ve been at my current branch for a quite a while now so it’s probably a good time to move on, it makes sense…’

We reached the ground floor. Our fellow silent lift travellers had probably been listening to the entire story of Scott’s career progress.

‘Great,’ I said. ‘I’ll probably see you later this morning!’

‘Bye!’

Going up (version 1)