London Life in the Summertime...

Until now, I've only visited London in the winter or the spring. Summer A whole new world for me.

I'm staying at Paul and Lois's house in Chelmsford, which is a 30 minute ride from Liverpool St Station and almost out in the country. It's quite lovely really ‑ reminiscent of the England conjured up by Enid Blyton and others of her ilk.

Naturally, since arriving here I have shopped, eaten and shopped. With the excahnge rate as it is, I've had the incredibly strange experience of thinking that whatever I am paying for something is a bargain! Things that cost $200 at home cost only $150 here. I've sucessfully filled my previously emaciated suitcase to a more respectable weight of 15 kg rather than the 9.6 it arrived with. The real delight, though, is in escaping the London madness and returning "home" to a little village town.
Chelmsford has a canal ambling through its centre and cobbled streets (of course). It has a much slower pace than London. Paul and Lois's new home has a backyard with two‑tiered grass (the electric lawnmover's cord only reaches four fifths of the length of the lawn). When Lois arrived, we went to see the wedding cake which was made by her aunt, and then returned home where I joined Lois and her friends in the backyard to bask in the warm, gentle european sunshine. Lois, Paul and I then went for a drive to a little lock nearby ‑ houseboats sitting on the river, green algae barely disturbed by the swans, swans barely disturbed by the children, and the grass barely disturbed by the gentle breeze. As my huge piece of carrot and orange cake arrived, the fact that I am on holiday started to sink in.

Paul and I rounded off the evening with beers and games of pool ‑ I won three out of four! I'm not sure how that happened (the word "fluke" springs to mind) but it was a nice change for me to win something. Finally, with the long dusk just settling into darkness at nine o'clock, we went home and to bed.

Day two was a foot‑flattening day of walking and shopping in central London. I dropped into Harrods which left me feeling vaguely unimpressed ‑ except for the food hall which was like the David Jones food hall but a milion times better. According to Paul, a fascinator or hat is essential at a London wedding ‑ I might move to the UK for that reason alone! So I dutifully bought a fascinator (was sorely tempted to buy a $1300 Philip Tracey hat but resisted), before revisiting old favourite haunts (Carnaby Street, Kingly Court, Regent Street) and made my now traditional purchase of earrings in a little Kingly Court boutique. By 5.30, I and my credit card were exhausted and we agreed it was time to go home...apprarently at precicely the same instant that everyone else in Oxford Circus came to the same conclusion. The entrance to the tube station was completely obscured by row after row of patiently waiting Londonites. A station attendant was yelling to the crowd that they must wait before they could enter. It looked like a half hour wait just to get the bottom of the stairs! What was a girl to do?! Well...shop of course! So I wandered some more, until 7.30 when I really had had enough and the tube station was finally clear again. In Chelmsford, I stopped for a meal by the canal where I was served by a particularly disinterested waiter whose smiles (aimed somewhere over my head) were so fake as to be insulting. I tipped him three pennies in the tip jar so it made a noise. (haha)

And now it is today, and here I am in a posh wine bar where I am not entirely welcome, owing to my alone‑ness (table for one? perhaps you can find a seat at the back). As I sip on an Italian wine, it reminds me that whenever I dined alone in Italy ‑ which was often ‑ I was given exceptional service with a side of compliments. "Table for one? Why is such a beautiful woman eating alone?"

London does, however, have its charms ‑ many of which have been weighing down my left arm which is my shopping‑carrying‑arm; the people seem friendlier than other times I've visited. I think perhaps my certainty of where I am going helps ‑ I'm not standing in people's way clinging desperately to a map. Instead I sigh along with the Londoners when soemone dares to STAND on the LEFT of the escalator! Don't they KNOW we need to get to the tube because the next one will take a whole three minutes to arrive and we can't possibly wait that long?

It always surprises me how quickly a city can become familiar. I've spent a total of maybe 7 weeks here over the past decade, and I feel quite at home in this dreary, vibrant, friendly, impatient, contradictory city.