The Adventures of Amanda: London so far

The flight from London to Dubai (Sat 28th April) was fantastic. I got one of those amazing seats you only dream about when you’ve got crappy economy tickets. It was a window seat. And it had no seats in front of it! I could stretch my legs out as much as I wanted. The night before was a big one – we went out for Greg’s birthday at the Hyatt Dubai overlooking a marina and then later went onto a Shish smoking place on the water (ie, you smoke fruit flavoured stuff through a big long pipe thing). We got home at 3am, I got up at 6am to pack. Hence the good seats on the plane were badly needed – I had several powernaps on the way over.

Steph greeted me at the airport – she seemed to have a hangover equally as bad as mine. Was good to see a familiar face again. We caught the tube from Heathrow to Brixton and filled her in on the whirlwind of events that got me to this point and place in time. I also couldn’t have carried all this stuff by myself as there are many stairs in the tube and I had 4 items of luggage to well - lug. Thanks Steph!

Now no matter how much you read, research, google, fantasize, ask people about a place (I even tried zooming right in on googlemaps), nothing can actually prepare you until you are standing there in person and then it actually becomes reality. I felt like I had landed on another planet. My holiday was over. Reality had resumed. Welcome to Brixton.

As I left the tube station into the main street of Brixton, it was busy with, well, Jamaicans! Coming from a predominantly white population, this was a temporary surprise. I love “people watching” and it’s fascinating watching the people of Brixton. The clothes they wear, the crazy hair braiding, dreads, colours, all the different accents, catching snippets of people’s conversations..

We got back to Steph’s place, and dumped my bags (finally). We headed out and I was given a walking tour of Brixton. We headed over to our new place which we will move into on Tuesday. I can’t *wait* to move in – sleeping on a camper bed with my stuff strewn all over Steph’s floor bedroom floor is ok for a couple of days, but I can’t wait to unpack properly and get myself set up in the new place. It would seem our new place actually has a decent garden. No where as huge as my last backyard, but we do have enough grass to mow! Oh, did I mention everything here is green? The parks are beautiful and huge. And it doesn’t get dark til about 8.30pm. My other observations are - no one wears helmets when cycling, everyone drinks and smokes, there's no such thing as a 100 pound note here (as I disovered when stupidly asking for one at the bank).. oh and www.argos.co.uk is my latest discovery - think cheap and Ikea, but there's nothing on display - just catlogues everywhere, you write down your order and they bring it out from behind closed doors!

Anyway, the only bad thing is, that I’ve had the sniffles as soon as I got here – have to take tissues everywhere with me grr. The weather is nice as it’s heading into Summer here. However, it is still a bit nippy in the morning and evenings. When I go out in the daytime, it’s warm enough still to wear thongs, but still cold enough that I need a jumper or cardy. And if you walk around for a couple of days in your thongs, the bottoms of your feet will go dirty and black (already scrubbed my feet to get rid of it).

The other thing that I’ve rediscovered here is my feet (apart from scrubbing them). In that life with out a car is well interesting and if I want to do absolutely anything or go anywhere, I have to walk. This initially was a mental barrier, but it’s good motivation to get out and discover Brixton (and exercise as well). So today Steph headed off to work and I was left to my own devices. I walked down to my bank and changed my address to the new house. And yes it is a terrace house and because it’s on a corner, we only share one wall with the neighbours. Anyway, after that, I went to an internet café and started applying for jobs. I then went for a walk and found a café that made Chai Lattes – yay! So I relaxed there for a while, and went for another walk through some shops and the markets.

The markets here are fascinating, in that there’s so much fresh fruit, veg, meat and fish – I can’t wait to move into the new place and go to the markets to get fresh food to cook for dinner.. And it’s right around the corner from the tube station as well – so it’s very central. It will take about 5 minutes to walk from our new house to the tube. So after my big morning out, I headed back to Steph’s house when an agency rang me about one of the jobs I’d applied for a few hours previously. Woohoo! They’re forwarding my CV onto the employer – will find out if I get an interview in the next day or so. I then decided it was time for a much deserved powernap…

I headed out again later on to a different internet café – which was crap – my external hard drive wouldn’t connect. Grr. And I had no administrator rights! I’m not going back there. And I can’t find anything that even resembles a computer/electronics store – I want to buy a USB/flash drive. I then headed to the Lounge café/bar which is a cruisy little café and had an early dinner and some fresh juice. One of my favourite songs was playing - You Are My Angel by Massive Attack. And whilst sitting in this café it occurred to me that even though I was miles from home with none of my friends around (as much as I miss them), I was actually content and comfortable sitting there relaxing with my own thoughts. I didn’t feel like some loner / loser sitting by themselves. It actually momentarily felt ok to be by myself. Freaky. There is a flipside to this though - I do like to share my thoughts and get them out of my head – which is why I’m really liking having a blog. Instead of dear diary, it’s hello world!

Anyway, I have found unsecured wireless internet at the new place (yes have moved in now! - see all photos of the new place below, plus photos from last night in Dubai). And thanks Rach and Stu for looking my cat Kiddy - I miss him very much. Enjoy the photos - Manda xox.

A "before I get trashed" photo in Dubai.