The Top Floor Flat

Whew… so I’ve dropped the journal ball, haven’t I?  Let’s see if I can get a bit caught up.

This last weekend was fantastic.  I was thinking about going out to Bath but I decided that after such a crazy three weeks, it would probably be a good idea to relax at home, get familiar with the neighborhood and do some things around London.  In the end it was a great choice because the plan to go to Bath and the nearby Stonehenge would have been instantly scrapped once I realized that it was Summer Solstace weekend and about ten million hippies and wiccans were going to be doing scary pagan things at Stonehenge.

Instead, on Saturday, I went to the National Portrait Gallery and saw Phantom of the Opera.  Oh wow.  Alright, so first off, the National Portrait Gallery was stunning in itself.  It’s a fabulous building and has, as one might expect, absurd numbers of portraits from every historic style and era all the way up through modern day (there were paintings of Middle Age saints and the pop celebrity who was in yesterday’s gossip rag).  But by far the most impressive to me was the only surviving portrait of the Brontes.  I’m a bit of a Bronte fanatic (Charlotte Bronte write Jane Eyre, among other novels; Emily wrote Wuthering Heights and Anne wrote The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Agnes Grey) and it was so overwhelming to see this portrait.  Their brother, Branwell, painted it and it’s very basic but it was found, years after they all had died, in the closet of the second wife of Charlotte’s husband.  It’s still got the creases from where it was folded up for all that time.

Then I went to the theater where I had gotten last minute tickets for Phantom, which I hadn’t seen since I was 7.  I got the cheapest tickets, and I was seriously in the nosebleed section – I mean, I was a football field’s length away from the stage at least and about 30 metres above it.  I was a little nervous about how it would be but as soon as the play started I forgot how far away I was… that is one of the most stunning musicals of all time in my opinion.  It’s sexy and gorgeous and funny and sad and I absolutely loved it.  Because I hadn’t seen it since I was young, I had forgotten, or never properly understood, a lot of it and I really enjoyed seeing it again.

On Sunday, I took a very slow day to relax and enjoy being in my flat.  My flatmate Ann and I spent a lot of time together just chatting and then she had to go babysit for some family friends and I took a long walk around the neighborhood and good some household supplies I needed.  Unfortunately, the day was a bit of a disaster overall.  I managed to have my debit card frozen (you know… they were fine when I was withdrawing money from an ATM, or shopping at convenience stores but when I bought a bedspread and a mirror, that’s when they decided something was fishy.  I did tell them I was *moving* to England!); destroy 1/3 of my clothing by changing it’s color in the laundry; lose our curtain by leaving the window open during a really high wind; and was forced to throw out a bunch of food that had gone bad.  Oh well, it’s a learning experience and I can’t say I was that upset about it because… well, it’s hard to be upset about anything really since I’m enjoying myself so much.

This is my first full week of work.  Things have been a bit slow the last few days as I have to wait until the new version of the site is live sometime this week before I can start properly promoting it, but I really like the people and it’s been fun getting to know all of the London events scene.  My commute into work is a bit of a trip – I walk about 10 min to the underground station, I take the underground for about half an hour to 40 min, I come out in the downtown financial district of the city where I catch a bus which takes about 15-20 min to get me right to my office.  The bit on the bus is gorgeous and at some point I’ll need to take pictures of the route.  That reminds me that I still need to put pictures from the last few weeks… eek!

Alright, well, I think I’ve been at least partially redeemed for my lack of updates and hopefully I’ll have a chance to post again before this weekend!