London: Last Ten Days

My last ten days in London were insane. I became the queen of Life Tetris, slotting in the Gilbert and Sullivan Society ball, two floor guests, the Jubilee, Melbourne friends, Borough Market x 3, French musicals, baking, many many many goodbyes, and terrifyingly last-minute packing. It was sad, it was stressful, and it was fun.

The ten day countdown started with two grand occasions: the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, and much more excitingly, the arrival of Sarah, a friend from Dublin. Sarah did much more than simply sleep on a bathmat on my floor. Sarah ate brownies with me in the captain’s quarters of the Golden Hinde, introduced me to The Avengers, held my hand at the London Dungeons, and even ate cupcakes that I accidentally flavoured with soy sauce. 

Sarah and I made a half-hearted effort to engage in Jubilee festivities. At 3pm on Sunday, we decided to wander down to London Bridge and watch the flotilla, only to be turned away by the police due to full audience capacity. Defeated, and daunted by the dreary weather, we took our takeaway noodles back to my kitchen and spent a good couple of hours mocking the BBC commentary. Did you know that the Queen “famously hates beige”?

We did, however, manage to ‘attend’ the Jubilee Concert the next night. My friend Natalie decided to hold her birthday picnic in Hyde Park overlooking one of the giant screens broadcasting the concert from Buckingham Palace. We were briefly rained on, showered with novelty bubbles, plied with picnic food, danced to Elton John (well, I did) and ultimately froze to death. It was great fun. British people turn out to be rather patriotic, especially the ones sporting bowler hats with little Union Jacks on top. 

My first goodbye arrived on Tuesday morning when Sarah left. This was a highly tragic occasion as we’d been having such hilarious fun together. To cheer myself up, I had Polly and Alice around for dinner, after which we watched 10 Things I Hate About You because Polly hadn’t seen it before, and friends don’t let friends behave in such a way.  

On Wednesday, with five days to go, Niki arrived and took up residence on my floor. It was beyond fantastic to catch up with her, Kathy and Edward, all friends from Melbourne, and future travel buddies in Barcelona and the Greek Islands. I saw these three at increasingly random intervals over the next five days as my schedule became more and more hectic. Somewhere in there, Niki and I managed to pop into the British Museum to check out the pilfered Parthenon stuff in preparation for visiting the actual Acropolis.

And then the painful part of my last ten days began in earnest, and I started the devastating process of saying goodbye to my London friends. I farewelled Tori (and family) at Borough Market, Alice at St Ali’s (a suitably Melbournian café near Old Street station), and Vicky from Iolanthe after watching the purple-panted Aussie version of Pirates of Penzance.

On Friday, the goodbyes continued in a fun but heartbreaking stream. Miki and I finally watched Mozart L’Opéra Rock like we’d planned for months on end, which was absolutely amazing. I then went to dinner with Polly and Kyveli at an Italian restaurant in a rather nice area of Chelsea that I’d never visited before. We attempted to attend a philosophy night at the French Institute before giving up and going for drinks and dancing in a bar on the south bank of the Thames.

Saturday was a particularly crazy day, starting with Josh-and-Muney-baking in the morning. It was almost successful baking, too. My last ten days in London were marked by some sort of cooking curse. I spent a good couple of unexpected hours at a last-minute hairdressing appointment. I then dropped into Borough Market for one final farewell before meeting Fiona at Bea’s of Bloomsbury near St Paul’s. It was an absolutely lovely day. The blue sky was clearly designed as a London farewell just for me.

Cara came over for dinner and watched me take down the first few posters from my wall. Several people warned me not to leave packing until the last minute, so I left it until the last midnight. 

Those final hours before midnight were great. Cara and I met up with Niki and Nabila at The Anchor (near London Bridge) for Crabbies. It was when I got back home that the hellishness kicked in. I packed and dissembled feverishly for three and a half hours until I flopped into bed, then woke at 8am and continued the effort, pausing only for a delicious parting brunch with Polly and Kyveli on Bermondsey Street. And then it was back to the packing, and the panicking, and the general manic stressfulness of it all.

Somehow I was only forty-five minutes late meeting Kathy, Niki and Edward. Somehow we made it to London Bridge station in time. Somehow we caught the right plane to Barcelona. The only positives to leaving packing to the absolute last minute were that I got to spend ten full days hanging out with the best people in London and that I was too crazy stressed to be overly despondent about ending my incredible exchange year.

My love to everyone who made the past ten months so wonderful. Come to Melbourne or else.

London: Iolanthe

It’s hard to believe it, but I’ve already finished my second semester at King’s. The last twelve weeks of lectures have flown by in a blur of readings and French pastries and mooting. I’m more than slightly relieved to get a brief reprieve from the endless law articles before revision starts in earnest. I’ve survived a term of straight law; that’s the main thing.

Despite all I just said, I hardly spent second semester holed up in my room being studious. I was far more likely to be found in a music room on the Strand campus with the Gilbert and Sullivan Society. While rehearsals for Iolanthe started way back in October, things really started ramping up this term. For those of you who somehow missed my shameless Iolanthe promotion during show week, it’s an operetta in which a flock of fairies are pitted against the similarly vacuous House of Lords. Like all good G&S shows, there are romantic tangles and rampant silliness aplenty.

I was Fleta the fairy. I had about five lines and even managed to remember most of them. My time was largely spent tripping hither and thither, skipping across the stage with the rest of my fairy gang.

The week leading up to opening night was fairly rehearsal/pub-heavy. The cast being responsible for all the back-stage business – scenery, costumes, props, etc – we spent a Saturday spray-painting wings and painting boxes tardis-blue. I've a suspicion that my lungs have gone all silver inside, and Heather's, gold. But it was worth it. Our costumes looked great.

(I'm perched at the back like Where's Wally.)

We gave three performances, each one a success. The audience seemed to enjoy themselves, and hardly anyone fell off the back of the stage. Despite incrementally daubing our white tights in glittery body paint, us fairies looked fabulous. The Lords weren’t too shabby either, wafting about in the red cloaks that us girls had slaved over during 'get in'. And if some stitching came undone on stage, I’m sure that had incredibly little to do with my inch-long hemming stitches...

Joining the G&S Society turned out to be one of the best decisions I’ve made during my exchange. There’s no better way of meeting fun, crazy people and getting to know a local pub or five. Thanks to all you G&Sers for helping to make King's amazing. And it isn’t over yet; there’s the Summer Ball to look forward to, after all!

Hail poetry… !

London: Hip Hip Hooray!

The last couple of weeks have been particularly busy and exciting, full of royalty and birthdays and above all cupcakes. I saw The Artist with Iona – wonderful! so funny! bang! – and Kyveli took me to see Chris Addison (Principal Blood from Skins, no less) at the Hammersmith Apollo, also known as the theatre where Ziggy Stardust performed his last show, and where we took sneaky blurry photos before seeing the signs that said doing such would result in eviction.

Oh, and did I mention that I saw the Queen that very same morning? I feel like I might have mentioned this. Seven thousand times. To everyone unfortunate enough to catch my attention. Yup, saw the Queen’s back for a total of eleven seconds after a wait of, oh, forty minutes? Totally worth it for the bragging rights.

This was all a lovely lead up to the main event: my twenty-second birthday. I am now extremely old, and shall commence turning twenty-one every year, just like Mum. I had such amazing fun on my birthday, starting at midnight when a couple of my gorgeous flatmates – and even some randoms, hurray – came and sang at my bedroom door until I realised what the noise was. Festivites continued at 7 bloody am, when I skyped my family (and Shin) back in Melbourne. Mel made me a cake! Just as I demanded!

They ate it while I opened my many airmail packages and felt like the luckiest person in the world. After they’d all buggered off to a restaurant (on my birthday, mind you), I got to skype Hayley and Michelle, who sang me a rather disjointed, cacophonic version of Happy Birthday that I absolutely treasured.

One of the best presents of the day was a text message from Heather which included a video attachment of my entire high school year level wishing me a happy birthday. I may have missed the five-year reunion, but in another way, I didn’t. Which is also largely thanks to the live stream of comments Shin kept texting my way.

After getting hilariously lost in Bloomsbury for an hour, I snapped a quick shot with JBen as per London Birthday Tradition, and raced off to meet friends for coffee.

Of course, once Muney managed to find the right café, I dragged him straight off to another one, and then made Tori come and meet us there. Who said I was a difficult, fickle person? Had a great – albeit brief – time with those two, and then had to duck out to my moral philosophy seminar. I was fifteen minutes fashionably late, and heralded my own arrival with the clang of a wine bottle on my desk. All class, that’s me.

Next up was cupcakes with my girls. Having failed to find sufficient room in the intended café, we headed up the road to Covent Garden and found the prettiest, sparkliest, girliest coffee shop in London. I had a crème egg milkshake: amazing. It was really fantastic to catch up with so many wonderful friends all on the same day.

On the way home, Cara and I embarked on an epic quest for poppy seeds, but Tescos and M&S failed to produce results. Very unimpressed. Was much heartened on returning home to find that Shin had sent me tulips! Tulips!

I fetched Polly and we headed to Kyveli’s for dinner, where we met up with another of Kyveli’s friends and made delicious mustard chicken. For dessert, there was lemon and poppy seed cake (minus the poppy seeds). I need some new adjectives, but for now I will simply say: AMAZING.

We drank red wine and rosé (thanks Tori!) and watched The Philadelphia Story, a Katharine Hepburn movie with plenty of romantic twists. Polly and I left for home at around 2pm, wandered the hobo-strewn – oh wait, that was just me – streets of London, eventually managed to find a bus stop, and got in at around 3am.

The perfect birthday.

Since then, I’ve been up to a whole lot of stuff – human rights mooting, risotto in Polly’s kitchen, lots and lots of Gilbert & Sullivan rehearsing (COME SEE IOLANTHE, March 21-23), gourmet pizza at Tori’s, cocktails for Lauren’s birthday, dancing at a retro club event with Tori, and so much more. Yes, parents&Grandma, I’ve somehow found time for studying as well.

In short: having a blast. Love London. Melbourne, move your summery bum up here. And if this won't convince you -

- nothing will.

London: The Masterchef Edition

It’s the end of January, and the third week of my second term is already drawing to a close. It’s almost shocking – a quarter of the term done and dusted! I’m so much more relaxed about everything this semester; I even know where I am most of the time, and how to get where I want to go.

Yes: I am truly becoming a Londoner. I elbow tourists out of my path, I’ve mastered the subtle [violent] art of securing a tube seat, I’ve even located the elusive Reading Room [Dumbledore’s office] in the Maughan library! It is just as circular and book-filled as all accounts led me to believe. Thanks to my transferable London skills, I’m now looking to elbow my way into a Reading Room seat on a regular basis.

I celebrated my return to King’s by making a complete tit of myself with Mel and Lucy, who hung around long enough to share in the shame. Yes – we did the Abbey Road walk across the road. About eight times. If I were a bus, I wouldn’t stop.

Ever since Week One, I’ve made it my personal mission to force all my King’s friends to sample that centrepiece of Australian cuisine: vegemite. All victims have survived thus far. They’ve even pretended to enjoy it, the poor things.

Happy Australia Day.

I went around to Miki’s house last Sunday and watched dvds and ate delicious, delicious food. I would be thoroughly inconsolable about my lack of such food on a regular basis except for the fact that I’ve recently experienced something of a culinary breakthrough. Suddenly I am a Masterchef! King of my own calm kitchen. (And il n’y a pas de anything else.)

It reminds me of my childhood....

Mostly, this food is thanks to the recipe book Grandma gave me for Christmas – but being armed with a bunch of willing co-chefs has certainly helped. Kyveli, Polly and I made some knock-out pad thai that didn’t kill us like we expected it to, and then watched Bridget Jones. I’ve never noticed how much of it is set in Borough Market. And we also spotted the Royal Courts of Justice, which are just across the road from the Strand Campus.

Kyveli’s flat was gorgeous – though Polly and I had to earn our right of entrance by taking the terrifying lift, which seems to have been designed in the Titanic era of iron inner doors that you have to shove aside by hand.

Dessert was another success, when Muney and Josh came around for brownie baking. The boys hadn’t been having much luck in the kitchen, but together, we are an indomitable force.

Zumba: the only thing between me and triumphant obesity. It’s a wonderful London life.

London: Hallelujah

A couple of weeks ago I rediscovered London. It started off on a Friday and featured a good deal of my good friend Zoe. We went to the Charles Dickens museum in Bloomsbury, which is situated in one of his numerous London houses, and contains a lot of interesting Dickensy stuff: portraits, his favourite armchair, first editions of his works, all that sort of thing. This was actually our second attempt at the Dickens museum. First time around, we turned up to find the place closed. It was good to finally get it under our belts.

We followed literature with some art. Having headed down past Holborn to get to the National Gallery, we joined quite the crowd of elderly tourists and took a tour. Very cultured, aren’t we?

But wait: there’s more. Saturday brought a free tour of Westminster Abbey (kindly organised by the King’s College Chaplaincy). I’d already visited the Abbey a couple of years back, but it was nice to get back in there and revisit some of my favourite memorial slabs of stone. The tour took us through places inaccessible to the ordinary visitor. We got to stand on the raised altar bit where the Royal Wedding happened, and see where the queen was coronated. She was crowned with her back to the people: brilliant.

Along came Sunday, and with it, the Old Spitalfields Market with Alice and Maddie. Maddie and I struck out for Liverpool Street Station, heading across London Bridge and past the Monument, catching a glimpse of a Harry Potter guided tour and giving semi-informed directions to a lost tourist. The Market itself was top notch, delivering a very nice bundle of Wodehouse books and some pistachio-flavoured Turkish delight.

I left the others to go and meet up with Zoe again, this time at an advent carol service at St Martins in the Fields, the rather impressive-looking church opposite Trafalgar Square. We went expecting to sing carols; instead, we got a fairly powerful sermon from the Archbishop of Canterbury himself. There was lots of talk of hell and judgement, nicely balanced by some wonderful choral singing.

Monday arrived, but my London touristing barely paused for breath. Zoe and I went to 39 Steps, a play based on an Alfred Hitchcock movie. Our restricted view seats turned out to be incredibly worth it when we found ourselves in an otherwise empty row, and we managed to land ourselves an unrestricted view after all. The play itself was great fun – a slap-stick pastiche of the film noir genre, with the fourth wall broken clear through by a very talented cast.

On Tuesday, Maddie, Polly, Kyveli and I headed back to Westminster Abbey to attend a performance of Handel’s Messiah. While we were seated behind the choir, the acoustics were fairly monumental, delivering a full-bodied performance of the Hallelujah Chorus. We even got to sit in the wooden choir stands! It was a fantastic night.

Finally, on Wednesday, after struggling through some more uni work – yes, that all continued as per usual – I went along with Alice and Maddie to a bar to see a band called Foreign Slippers. It was great music, great cider, great times. The perfect end to a rather hectic week of Londoning.

(Do you love the birds? I do. I dragged Zoe out to a very random, very eccentric, very awesome exhibition in Shoreditch, and we did a spot of bird-watching.)

London: In Between Events

Sandwiched in between Ireland, Latvia and Canterbury were quite a few notable events. The first that leaps to mind involves a certain microwave. A certain exploded microwave. A microwave that no longer exists in our flat save for the distant smell of burning.

Okay, so I’m not completely hopeless. I know how to use a microwave. I now know how not to use a microwave. I’d set some bread on to defrost and had returned to my room when I caught a whiff of this awful acrid smell from the kitchen. I ran back to find that the entire kitchen was engulfed in thick impenetrable grey smoke. I panicked. I inhaled a kitchenful of toxic fumes while opening the windows. I ran to reception for advice and was told to try to avoid setting the fire alarms off, and maybe try opening the windows?

So essentially our block reeked of burning for about a week. On the plus side, they replaced our microwave the very next day and I haven’t managed to destroy this one yet. My lungs may be dead inside, but hey, shiny new appliance…

The second exciting event arrived on a Tuesday afternoon when I came home from King’s to find a parcel waiting for me outside my door. Forks! Tiny teddies! Hev sent me amazing wonderful things and it made my day.

And then a third fantastic thing occurred that very night when Maddie and Alice surprised me with tickets to see Matilda, the musical version of Roald Dahl’s novel adapted for stage by Tim Minchin. Brilliant brilliant brilliant! It was absolutely top quality, so much fun, so much Trunchbull. I laughed, I cried, I want to see it again and again. I normally hate kids singing on stage, but I loved all the little kiddie actors in this production. Genius.

So there we go: microwave, teddies, Matilda. Very notable events.

London: We Got The Funk

London’s a great place for celebrating birthdays. I’ve even worked out a birthday route of sorts. I got to help organise two separate birthdays in the space of about a week. As of this moment, I am at least fifty per cent cake. Mmm.

Alice’s birthday first, then! Maddie and I arrived at Alice’s house in the morning and serenaded the birthday girl mid-shower. Maddie had to go off to uni for a couple of hours, so it was up to me to guide Alice through the first of the activities that we’d planned for the day. We got lost, of course. But it was okay, because in getting lost we arrived somewhere much more exciting: the Black Books shop!

A particular highlight was our discovery of a book called In Defence of Beards.

We then made our way to the University College of London, which, incidentally, looks much like I’d imagined King’s would. The campus is basically beautiful, set right in the heart of Bloomsbury with marble facades and grass and Jeremy Bentham’s corpse, which was obviously the reason we’d come. Jeremy Bentham was some loony English social reformer and the ‘spiritual founder’ of UCL. His will stipulated that he was to be stuffed and mounted on display in UCL, much like Lenin and Mao. Unlike Lenin and Mao, his head was pinched by a bunch of King’s students at one stage and booted around as a makeshift football. It now resides in a locked case in the UCL basement.

In retaliation, some UCL students stole the King’s mascot lion and buried him in cement save for his tail – but I don’t think the lion’s on display.

Apparently the UCL staff wheel Jeremy out on formal occasions and set him a place at dinner. Amazing, these Brits.

After the Bentham birthday adventure, we headed into Covent Garden and met Maddie at a nifty vegetarian restaurant for lunch. We then wandered through Soho, found a great comics shop, did coffee in a place with vaulting equipment instead of tables, and then ended the day at a charming sort of cocktail pub.

And then it was Maddie’s birthday. Once we’d wandered through Bloomsbury to this really nice French patisserie, I reworked my Alice-birthday steps and took her to the Black Books shop in the next street and then to Jeremy Bentham. I think we’ve established a birthday tradition of paying one’s respects to the crazy headless dead guy at UCL.

We then caught a bus to Piccadilly Circus, where we visited St James Church and eventually met Alice at the foot of the Eros statue. Having dropped them off at a rather fancy restaurant for lunch, I headed over to King’s for a criminology lecture. See, Mum, I haven’t completely forgotten my studies!

We met up again in Hampstead at this fantastic café that served the most delicious chilli hot chocolate in London [she says with limited experience]. I got a free umbrella out of it, and Maddie and Alice almost got free coffees as they forgot to pay, and had to dash back from the tube station to do so.

Next we took the tube to Soho for steamed buns in Chinatown, which weren’t nearly as good as Box Hill pork buns. Then we wandered over to Ain’t Nothing But, this squashy, fabulous blues bar, where we saw a band of the following description:

"Robert Hokum is 'a funky spanking of the blues'."

Yes. He was.

So in short, those were two of the best days I’ve had in London. And if your birthday’s coming up and you’re in London, Jeremy Bentham and I will show you a funky spanking time.

London: Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese

The heatwave has come and gone. London’s right back to its usual behaviour according to the locals. Still, it hasn’t rained much and it’s not quite coat weather yet, so I’m still fairly impressed with outdoor conditions so far. Haven’t invested in a snuggie or onesie yet but I’m tempted.

The first highlight of the week came when I met up with Lauren MacDonald for a movie in Kensington. It was great – Jane Eyre started about half an hour after the advertised time, so we didn’t miss anything despite getting there late.

Lauren gave me heaps of advice about where to travel, leading directly to my booking a trip to Ireland at the start of November! Fiddle-dee-dee!

I enjoyed one final picnic before the heatwave ended – a five-hour affair in Russell Square, with lovely people and masses of food and lots of conversation. Russell Square is one of my favourite London squares. It has these beautiful flowers and arch-covered pathways, and it’s really close to the ominously towering library that Orwell based his Ministry of Truth on. Apparently as a King’s student I could join that library. Tempting.

Russell Square is also very near the British Museum, which I still haven’t got around to visiting. I’ve also neglected the National Gallery, the Tower of London, the Museum of London and the entirety of East London. There’s just too much to do! I’ll have to clear out a few weekends.

Friday night was heaps of fun. A bunch of us – including Christina, fresh from France – went out to Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, the best-named pub on Fleet Street. It was rebuilt in 1667 post-Great Fire.

Christina and I struggled to find the others when we first got there. We went upstairs, downstairs, and downstairs again, in and out of little rabbit-warren-type spaces, until I finally got my phone out and called. It was a fabulous night of Steves and Scottish-Scotts, of dead dogs and mojitos on the kitchen floor.

Saturday was great, what with a free tour of St Paul’s Cathedral and meeting up with Christina and Leila in Soho. It was fantastic spending time and eating pudding with those two.

Mmm… pudding.

Note to self: learn how to make summer pudding.