Textick

1) My Cat

I know this goes without saying, and everybody’s probably so sick of hearing me say it, but man I miss that little guy! With his super warm body and his constant purr. Makes me teary just thinking about his musical, operatic yowl, or his sweet knocking on my bedroom door (always three taps, never one, never two, always three), or the swishing sound of his body as he crawls through the hole in my bedroom’s fly-screen, or that lovely smell of stale, mouldy fish on his breath, or the freckles on the tip of his little kitty-cat nose. Ah Sundance.

2) Multigrain Bread

Growing up, the girl down the road had British parents who always gave her multigrain bread for lunch (with tuna and lettuce in it). As a result, I always thought multigrain bread was a British thing. Alas, it is not. It is so hard to find decent-sized, decent-grained loaves of bread in this country!

3) The Sea Breeze

Yesterday I got a whiff of what felt like a sea breeze. It was warm, friendly, teased the flesh it could reach but didn’t greedily snake through clothing to get at the flesh you were trying to protect. It reminded me of Christmas, and Summer BBQs, and walks through the lakes with my mum. But then it passed, leaving me with nothing more than the sick feeling of nostalgia. Nostalgia is meant to be a sensation of ‘sweet longing,’ but all it does for me is make my stomach tighten and my heart tear ever so slightly.

4) Our Social Group

I’m still feeling a bit socially isolated here, just trying to get my feet on the ground and find a consistent collective. We seem to be forming a nice group with our new housemates, but that’s all still so fresh. I miss our friends back in Perth (in truth, they were James’ friends more than mine, but I’m claiming them for myself for now), who would always be at some pub or another, or doing something social. In London, despite how (sometimes) good public transport is, it can still be so hard to organise a get together. In Perth, if you had a car, you were there. Or maybe this is all reminiscent of those old people who delude themselves by saying things like ‘children respected their elders when I was young.’ So basically I miss having a large group of people to hang out with on a Saturday night.

5) Tuna In Different Flavours

Here you have ‘Coronation Style Dressing’ (eaten only by the most elite of Coronation Street stars), or ‘Tuna in Light Mayonnaise.’ Where’s the Sweet Chilli? Lime and Black Pepper? Tomato and Herb? Some variety please people! Oh yeah, and pumpkin soup. There’s no pumpkin soup here, because apparently it’s ‘peasants food.’ They don’t know what they’re missing!

6) Mandarines

My favourite of the citrus fruits, I can eat kilos upon kilos of mandarins. I’ve bought so called ‘sweet and juicy’ mandarins, and find them weak in flavour and mushy, so I bought standard ‘mandarines,’ only to discover them hard and difficult to segment. They were like tiny, unripe oranges. How can a country this cold be incapable of growing the perfect mandarine? I miss the market garden that used to run out of John Septimus Roe’s old house in Maddington. But then, even if I came home right now, I would still be unsatisfied because the market garden no longer exists.

7) My Spring Birthday

Okay, I haven’t had it yet, so technically I can’t really miss it, but I know I will miss having a Spring birthday. I always loved the fact that it was usually a beautiful blue day on my birthday, with my favourite flowers just beginning to bloom and the tweeting of new life echoing through the garden. I used to love having a BBQ, or doing something outdoorsy (or thinking about doing something outdoorsy). One year I went to Araluen, which was lovely. There’s no Araluen here. But James gets a Spring birthday now (if you can call this Spring. It lasted for one day of blue skies and is back to rain and greyness). I get an Autumn birthday. Maybe I’ll go somewhere with lots of golden leaves and roll around in them. But daffodils are still everywhere, so at least one of us gets to enjoy them for our birthday!

Things I Love (To Make London Sound A Little Less Drab)

1) Off-Licences

Yep, the first thing I love is the cheap, cheap alcohol. And the shops that stay open late so you never run out! They’re looking out for us here, they really are!

2) Squirrels

No matter how often I see them, they still delight me! With their bushy little tails and their scurry-ish ways. Nothing beats the Hyde Park experience though! Apparently foxes got into our rubbish the other night. James and I are planning a stake-out so we can see them for ourselves.

3) The West End

Well, not specifically the West End, but the amount of Theatre here is incredible, and it all attracts big name actors. Christian Slater, Ewan MacGregor, Brooke Shields, et cetera, et cetera. Tonight we’re going to see a Comedy Night with a group of friends (okay, yes, that does contradict my earlier statement of not having a social group here, but since the most important member of that group IS from our Perth group, then I stand by my earlier lamentations). This Comedy Night is fabulous fun. The intention is that a group of first-time stand-up comedians give it all they’ve got and try to last five minutes in front of us, the audience, who are quick to cut them down if they suck. I know it sounds harsh, but sometimes they really do suck, and you can’t help yelling out a few good ‘boos’ as well. There are three judges picked from the audience listen to how loudly the audience is booing, and as soon as all three hold up their red card, the comedian is gonged off stage. But, if the audience is cheering, not booing, then the comedians keep going. If they last five minutes they hear the words ‘Hallelujah!’ played, and they get through to the semi-final. It’s great fun! So we’re doing that tonight, which should be great.

4) Our House

Our house is so neat! The fact that we have an en suite adds so much to the joy. The four of us still seem to be enjoying each other’s company, and Mike is such a great cook that we really have nothing to complain about! I cook as well, but Mike is the real talent in the house! And no, I’m not saying this because I know he reads my blog and I’m trying to convince him to cook dinner forever and ever. Although that would be nice…(just joking; I’m really enjoying cooking for the house. It’s nice and challenging cooking for more than two people!).

5) The Cold Water

It sounds silly, but I love that you never have to chill water here. It’s icy cold straight from the tap! Ah, refreshing!

6) Proximity To Other Countries

For the price of a day’s wage you can be jetting off to all sorts of exotic locations! Britain feels like the centre of the World; nothing is too far away from it! Every travel agencies offers amazing deals to everywhere in Europe, everywhere in America, everywhere in Canada, everywhere in Africa, and so on, so on. The problem is choosing where to go first!

7) Earning Pounds

I’ll admit that accommodation and public transport in London is ludicrously expensive, but everything else really isn’t. Food is cheap, booze is cheap, entertainment is cheap. And once you have an Oyster card, even transport isn’t that astronomical. Once you start earning pounds, you stop thinking in dollars, and once you stop thinking in dollars you realise that everything isn’t that expensive here. Even when you do convert a lot of things cost virtually the same as at home. You can get a nice meal in a decent restaurant here for between £5-10. At home, you’d be lucky to get something under $15. You buy a beer here for £2-3 (for a boutique beer pint), at home you can pay up $8. So it all ends up fairly relative! I’d hate to be holidaying here of course, but seriously, once you start earning pounds it really isn’t as bad as everybody bangs on about.

And that’s me done for now. Things I love and things I miss. Yesterday was Mother’s Day here, so I reminisced about my Mum, and what we did last Mother’s Day (we introduced James’ mum to my parents for the first time!). I do miss my family and Caroline and Sam, but I think that goes without saying, so rather than breaking down in tears over it at my desk, I think I’ll leave my thoughts on that one to their imaginations! Oh, and it’s Daylight Savings here, which was a rude shock on Sunday. I lost an hour of my day and it feels like I’ll never get it back! I know I will when the clocks go back to normal, but until then, I’m hour-less. But enough moaning. Comedy tonight! Yay!

This entry was posted on Monday, March 27th, 2006 at 7:27 am and is filed under Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.