The flight arrived on time, my bag arrived on time, my eSIM worked straightaway. EVERYONE SPOKE ENGLISH. I bought an Oyster card, I found the train, I got off at the right station. Google maps took me to my front door without being a dick. The code worked. None of these things can be taken for granted when travelling.
Then I opened the door and walked into a closet.
Okay, I knew it wasn’t going to be big. And okay, Japan and Spain spoiled me. Each of my apartments in Osaka and Madrid were, well, large. Double beds, separate kitchen, fridge AND freezer. An outdoor area. Bathrooms with space to turn around. And while neither were cheap, they cost a wee bit less than this place. But Madrid and Osaka are not central London.
I didn’t need luxury – just somewhere in which I could sleep, wash, and feed myself. I searched and compared and calculated and number-crunched and google-mapped for weeks before settling on this place: a tidy little studio in Hammersmith with a kitchenette, bathroom, and washing machine. Good reviews. Right on the tube line. Walking distance to Portobello Rd.
Well, they lied about the washing machine. The place is the size of a telephone box – there’s no fucking way a washing machine would fit. Inexplicably, there IS a coffee pod machine, which takes up a good quarter of the Lilliputian bench. The electronic hotplate takes up the other three quarters, and turns itself with a triumphant BEEP on if I place so much as a fork upon it. The matchbox-sized fridge holds maybe four or five items, all of which cheerily tumble out every time I open the door. My bed is one stride from the kitchen, one stride from the bathroom. My pillow is right next to the only window, which is about 100m from the Central train line, which runs every minute, every day, 24 hours a day. I am sleeping/not sleeping with an eye mask and ear plugs. I can just about see the title of the book a passenger is reading when I’m sitting on the can.
The price of this luxury? A mere $NZ160 a night.
BUT. London!
Okay, I didn’t choose this mousehole so that I could laze about in comfort. I wanted to be central, and central I fucking am. And this is not my first time in London – I’ve been here three or four times before – and I know how damn large it is, and how long it takes to get from one place to the next. It was the mousehole or nothing.
In the past ten days, I have:
– been to Portobello Rd twice
– had a traditional English roast
– SEEN THE LION KING!!
– SEEN CIRQUE DU SOLEIL!!
– eaten pie and mash with peas
– shopped at Lidl and Sainsburys and Tescos and Morrisons MOTHER OF GOD THERE ARE SO MANY SUPERMARKETS HERE WHY DON’T WE HAVE MORE SUPERMARKETS IN NEW ZEALAND FFS
– been to Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square, Pall Mall, Buckingham Palace, Hyde Park, and all the other places on the Monopoly board
– had many-many beers/wines at Wetherspoons
– talked utter rubbish at every checkout operator/security guard/ticket agent/shop assistant/people standing in the queue next to me simply because I CAN TALK TO PEOPLE
– seen a robin
– seen a fox!
– heard foxes… engaging in… erm, salacious behaviour
– run the Thames Path and dodged dogs and dog owners and dog turds
– tried most of the reduced-to-clear items in Tescos/Sainsburys
– tossed most of the reduced-to-clear items in Tescos/Sainsburys
– tried most of the 99p alcopops in Tescos/Sainsburys
– rolled my eyes at all the twats doing selfies in Camden/Tower Bridge/Portobello/Buckingham Palace/Piccadilly Circus/everyfuckingwhere
Honestly? I love this place. I love it. This is where I could live, where I want to live, where I feel I should be.
Alright, the weather is shit. Like, brain-dead-ingly shit. Today was particularly bad: pissing wet, cold, and grey, which is shit weather in any city, but precipitation is 100% amplified in London. Like a snowglobe of gloom. And it must be said that Londoners have no fucking concept of umbrella etiquette.
(nor do Aucklanders, it must be said).
BUT. London. The most diverse city in the world (YES it is – go on and google it). Walk down Uxbridge Road and you’ll hear seven different langages and see a dozen different cuisines all within five minutes: Carribbean, Polish, Algerian, Lebanese, Ethiopian, Turkish, Nepalese, Pakistani, Somali, Chinese, Italian, Arabic, Jamaican… you get the idea. Shepherd’s Bush market has papaya, injera, cappuccino, avocado, dim sums, ox legs, cod heads. You could eat food from a different country every day for a year on this street and still not get through them all. Where else in the world can you do that?
It will be hard to come back to New Zealand, that tiny blister on the arse-end of the universe, where spinach is five times the price and boomers want everyone to speak English and it takes twelve goddam hours to get to another country (Australia doesn’t count). I mean, I’m looking forward to my family, and to sheets that aren’t polyester and a neighbour that isn’t a train, and to water that doesn’t turn my hair to straw and … I can’t think of anything else.
But leave I must – for now, anyway.
a woman wanders 