The Weather

I know that I was thoroughly warned about English weather before I came here but I must take a moment to rant.

First off, the weather was freaking fantastic for my first month here. Had a few cold days but mostly was really nice fall weather, sun shining, birds singing (actually it was the strange people that live across the street singing outside at all hours of the morning), you get my drift. Then there were a few days of crappy raininess which was alright. I could handle that. Then it was back to great, sunny gorgeous fall weather. This is what lead me to think that everyone was just exaggerating. Silly people, I thought, English weather is lovely. Maybe they have more grey days than us, but it's wonderful. La di da.

Now?!! Now it's like I live in hell's urinal and all day long we get pissed on. Sometimes it's just a little bit of pee, more of a tinkle than a stream, but that tinkle flows consistently through out the entire day. Throw in the insane wind and suddenly it becomes a lovely light urine blizzard. Other times it's like a stream of drunken pee that just won't stop. And of course, the thing that makes hell even worse: the wind. I think I could handle it if it were just raining or drizzling BUT when you add the wind into the equation it's like someone pinching you and you think 'ouch, ah well, that's not too bad', and then they STAB YOU IN THE EYE.

I have reached the stage where I delay going outside in the morning for as long as possible (making myself late for work regularly) just so that there are at least 15-20 minutes everyday when my hair looks like it's supposed to because AS SOON as I open the door, PFFFTTT, it dies and looks like shit. I spend pretty much every day looking like something that could have been fabulous died a slow and frizzy death on my head. Why not just wear a hat, you ask? Or use an umbrella? Well, I do both. BOTH. But the wind makes my umbrella and my hat useless because it just blows all the rain at me so I end up damp no matter what, except for the very very top of my head. I may just stop doing my hair altogether. Or maybe I'll buy one of those little pocket straighteners and carry it around with me because I just can not handle this any longer.

Last Saturday I ventured out to get my nails done because I had no other time I could go. It had been windy in the morning and rainy, but it seemed to have calmed down so I took my chance and went to catch the bus to Kilburn. As I waited for the bus, the wind picked up again. Not fun. When I got off the bus it started to rain. As I sat getting my nails done, I washed people walking past struggling against the rain, fighting with their umbrellas when they went inside out, holding on to their children and babies lest they fly away. It was insanity. I lingered in the nail shop as long as possible without seeming strange and then prepared myself to head back out. As I waited for the bus, I am fairly certain I saw a small child blow by in the wind calling for its mother. I attempted to use my umbrella but the wind was so strong it broke. So I stood there getting drenched, hanging on to the bus pole for dear life and cursing this blasted urinal in which I live.

My current prayer is that this so called 'winter' in England does not last as long as winter in Canada. I would trade some beautiful snow for this piss anyday. But at least it's not too cold, so I guess there's a 'brightside' to this urinal. Maybe not so much a 'brightside' as a 'less suicide-inducing' side.

Please do not comment on this post about how lovely the weather is in Winnipeg. I know. My mom showed me on Skype, despite my protests. No snow, sun shining, grass still green, all that crap. Lucky bums. Enjoy it while you can because soon you will happily trade your icebox for my urinal.

I'm baaa-aack

Hello people! Sorry for my unplanned absence from the blog. No excuse really aside from the fact that I've been living the boring life for the past two weeks with nothing interesting to report and I've been ashamed. Here I am in London, one of the most exciting cities in the world and I'm being boring! It's so shameful. But I've decided it's time to fess up and just admit that my natural tendency is to be boring. Can't help it. I like to read and watch movies, eat and cook. Not the thrilling stuff of must-read blogs sadly. And when I'm working full time, I become a bit of recluse during the week. My weekends haven't been exciting either. The weather's been terrible so I haven't really done anything much. Work is fun and good. Very busy with Open Evenings and Parents Evenings and such so I've been working late most days. I work, I go home, I eat, I read and I go to sleep. Some days I go shopping after work. Shopping has maybe been the highlight of the past few weeks for me. And this week my goal is to find a nice new winter coat. I want something either black or purple with a high collar and a belt and pockets. Very exciting for me, but for you, not so much.

I feel that since my life is quite boring, I shall start blogging more on the random things that I observe. Like the man on the tube the other day. He was black but his beard was orange. It looked like he may have dyed it but either way, there was just no reasonable explanation I could think of for his beard to be orange. I'm not going to lie, I did stare at him for a while before I realized I was staring and stopped. The tubes are full of strange and sometimes disturbing people. My coworker last week had a man in her tube pull down his pants and pleasure himself (wank off is the British term) on the full tube. He apparently finished, zipped up his pants and then got off the tube like a normal person when he was done. Yup, those are the pleasures of the tube. I have luckily not been scarred for life by witnessing something as horrifying as that but I did have a man stand in front of me, when I was sitting, and make pelvic thrusting movements. That was lovely. I was looking away actually and then noticed the rhythmic movement out of the corner of my eye and turned my head to confirm that yes, that was in fact what he was doing.

Aside from the joys of the tube, yesterday I got to experience another British or London tradition: the fancy dress party. Apparently fancy dress is what they refer to as dressing in costume. And apparently it's quite the normal thing to do. People either have fancy dress parties or they have a fancy dress night where everyone dresses up and then goes out. Fancy dress is generally themed. The fancy dress party I went to last night was Kung Fu themed and people went all out. I didn't know anyone so I didn't feel comfortable taking pictures but it was awesome. I didn't dress up because I only decided to go at the last minute but most people there were dressed up and most of the people dressed up had gone all out. Lots of Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat characters. People do fancy dress for birthdays, bachelor or bachelorette parties or just randomly for fun. I remember this guy at one of the temp jobs I did telling us how him and his friends did a fancy dress as priests in Poland for a bachelor party and then went out to a club and the police got called in and they had to take of their crosses and collars because it was too offensive. So funny but also totally offensive. Next time I get invited to a fancy dress party or night, I'm dressing up...unless it's something offensive.

So that was last night and then today I spent all day cooking. I made sweet&sour meatballs with pasta. And cheese tortellini with chicken in a basil pesto cream sauce. I made baked chicken with tomatoes and onions in a rose sauce and I made beef fried rice. I also bought all the fixings to make nachos for dinner tonight but then I snacked so much on the other foods that I wasn't hungry in the end. I've been trying to do all my cooking on Sundays so that I have food for lunch during the week and sometimes food for supper too. My mistake the past two weeks was to make just one dish for the whole week cause by Wednesday I don't want it anymore and end up eating take away for the rest of the week and throwing out the food I'd made. So this week I made myself a bunch of options to keep things exciting all week long. And I tossed some of the beef fried rice into the freezer so that when I'm lazy and don't cook, I can just heat it up for dinner.