Every day in London (with the exception of yesterday, when I marched and attended a rally against government cuts with half-a-million other people (and which I wrote about at my new culture & politics blog.) begins the same way: without any set plans.
Maybe I drink my tea downstairs, watching BBC News, or maybe I bring my cereal upstairs to eat while I read Victoria Coren's memoir/yet another Angela Carter book/David Foster Wallace's essays. Maybe I'm tempted to stay like that all day, curled up in my pyjamas behind my locked bedroom door; I've always been rather lazy.
But I get up. I shower and dress. I head out into London. I look for work. I look for way to amuse myself while I'm not working.
On the days that the sadness doesn't stay away, I've found that the easiest way to cheer myself up is to head to a well-known tourist destination, and let the crowd swallow me up in its chatter and flow. Even after six months, there is still a thrill at seeing people take pictures of themself in front of Big Ben or Tower Bridge and being able to think I live here. As the song goes, London, you're a lady, and some days I don't know what I'd do without you.
I don't spend much time in museums and galleries right now. I think it's because they're too still, too enclosed; they're definitely too cut off from the beautiful weather London's been having. Instead I'm drawn to Hyde Park, to Portobello or Camden or Borough Markets, to the South Bank, to outdoor spaces fairly bursting with people as Spring hits the city and everyone rushes out from their homes and offices.
It feels a bit like living in the meantime right now. There are no special events, I'm not going to many shows. It's more of a slow, calm, settling-in for the long haul. It's something I'm okay wit. In a lot of ways, I'm more comfortable with myself than I have been in many years.
So I keep carrying on the day-to-day. I think about finally getting my next tattoo. I decide how I'm going to cut my hair. I paint my nails blue and my lips pink, and I contemplate the pros and cons of investing in a pair of floral Docs as the weather takes a turn for the better. I read books, in bed, in parks, on the Tube. I drink, as ever, too much tea. I write, I write, I write...
"Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,
even in the leafless winter,
even in the ashy city.
I am thinking now
of grief, and of getting past it;
I feel my boots
trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart
pumping hard. I want
to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings."
-Mary Oliver, "Starlings In Winter"
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Before I came back to London, I made Nikki a promise. I promised that I would do something fun, something just for me on the Saturday after I got back. It turns out I was too exhausted to do much more than wander ‘round Hammersmith and through a bookstore that day, but the next, true to my word, I headed for Paddington station bright and early and bought a return ticket to Oxford.
The journey from London to Oxford is approximately an hour and a half long. I’d purposely not brought any book or magazine. Just a mix on my iPod and the hope of snagging a window seat, which I managed. On one level, just like every trip I’ve ever taken, my favourite part of the day was the train ride itself. I’m an in-between girl, as I’ve said before, and I adore being in the state of travelling. Trains are especially wonderful to me. This doesn’t usually detract from the destination, though, and Oxford was no different. This Sunday was a spectacularly clear spring day; the sky hung blue and high above the city, so different from the low grey clouds you grow accustomed to in London (and, for that matter, in Victoria in the winter.)
Confession time: ever since I was very little, I have wanted to go to university at Oxford or Cambridge. When I was younger it was usually Oxford I dreamt of, though these days when I contemplate pursuing my academic career, Cambridge also pops up (due in no small part, I must admit, to the reputation of the Cambridge Footlights). But it was Oxford that first captured my imagination, with its dreaming spires and green spaces housed in golden brick, be-corduroyed professors and precocious young things with their books and ink-stains. So it’s no surprise that I’d been yearning to visit since I first arrived in the UK.
Oxford the actual place was both quite like and quite different from my expectations. It’s definitely a student city, with lots of young people and bookshops and cheap places to eat. There are bicycles everywhere, it’s incredible. I hadn’t realized, however, just how tied up with the city the university is - the different colleges and library are actually on the city streets. Maybe I just never paid attention, but I hadn’t been expecting that. Unfortunately, for some reason, none of the colleges were open for visiting that day. I did go to the Bodleian library, though, which was quite cool, not least for the exhibit centred on the Shelleys they’re currently showcasing. It’s a very surreal thing to be able to read the actual letters between Percy and Mary Shelley, and Byron and Keats. (Keats, unsurprisingly, had the most beautiful and legible hand of them all - his were the only letters I could truly read.) All in all, it's a very youthful, very friendly city, and I will probably go back at some point.
(I have pictures to share, but for some reason blogger's not letting me upload them, and I'm tired of fiddling with it for tonight, so I'll edit them into the post in the morning.)
The journey from London to Oxford is approximately an hour and a half long. I’d purposely not brought any book or magazine. Just a mix on my iPod and the hope of snagging a window seat, which I managed. On one level, just like every trip I’ve ever taken, my favourite part of the day was the train ride itself. I’m an in-between girl, as I’ve said before, and I adore being in the state of travelling. Trains are especially wonderful to me. This doesn’t usually detract from the destination, though, and Oxford was no different. This Sunday was a spectacularly clear spring day; the sky hung blue and high above the city, so different from the low grey clouds you grow accustomed to in London (and, for that matter, in Victoria in the winter.)
Confession time: ever since I was very little, I have wanted to go to university at Oxford or Cambridge. When I was younger it was usually Oxford I dreamt of, though these days when I contemplate pursuing my academic career, Cambridge also pops up (due in no small part, I must admit, to the reputation of the Cambridge Footlights). But it was Oxford that first captured my imagination, with its dreaming spires and green spaces housed in golden brick, be-corduroyed professors and precocious young things with their books and ink-stains. So it’s no surprise that I’d been yearning to visit since I first arrived in the UK.
Oxford the actual place was both quite like and quite different from my expectations. It’s definitely a student city, with lots of young people and bookshops and cheap places to eat. There are bicycles everywhere, it’s incredible. I hadn’t realized, however, just how tied up with the city the university is - the different colleges and library are actually on the city streets. Maybe I just never paid attention, but I hadn’t been expecting that. Unfortunately, for some reason, none of the colleges were open for visiting that day. I did go to the Bodleian library, though, which was quite cool, not least for the exhibit centred on the Shelleys they’re currently showcasing. It’s a very surreal thing to be able to read the actual letters between Percy and Mary Shelley, and Byron and Keats. (Keats, unsurprisingly, had the most beautiful and legible hand of them all - his were the only letters I could truly read.) All in all, it's a very youthful, very friendly city, and I will probably go back at some point.
(I have pictures to share, but for some reason blogger's not letting me upload them, and I'm tired of fiddling with it for tonight, so I'll edit them into the post in the morning.)
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