Living in London Town
We've traded a medium-sized, comfortable, friendly Suffolk town for a polluted, crowded, subterranean, and frenetic city - and loving it! But we're getting ahead of ourselves...
After getting back from Prague, Kate joined a dozen locals for a week-long camp organised by the National Trust. It is probably like any other camp you've been on, except it was full of Brits, involved a few hours of gardening each day, and required daily participation in a rite as old as Britain: the building of enormous bonfires. Somehow, Kate was the only camper not to have their fleece catch on fire. Must be that instinctive Aussie bushfire knowledge.
However, returning to Ipswich was not an escape from bonfires, as it was soon Guy Fawkes' night (his real name was Guido, but that's not as cool). We saw another bonfire in Cambridge, when we drove over there to hear King's College Choir sing, and then got close-up to an Ipswich fireworks show in the local mansion's park. Since you can buy fireworks from the corner store, they were going off all week, and if it wasn't so wet this time of year, the whole country would've gone up in smoke.
Then we moved to London using a hired Merc, which broke down as soon as we'd loaded it up, then refused to play or eject our Triple-J CD (some cars have no taste). However, with the assistance of the 24hr breakdown hotline, we got everything down here at last.
Our new flat is near Archway tube station on the Northern Line, send us an email if you'd like our new address. We have four housemates, Maria and Jarques who are Swedish and Sth African respectively, and Di and Phil who are fellow Aussies. Our house is three stories high and we're on the top floor. It's all part of a get fit plan. Yeah.
The social benefits of living in London have started already. We've already been fortunate enough to meet up with several people who were passing through. Briony, from Telstra, was here briefly, between travels in Africa and South Amercia. Toby and Larissa, who have now moved back to Melbourne, stopped in to London on the way. And Andrew's Dad, Lindsay, came to visit for a week, and we got to tourist around with him, check out some local restaurants, and catch up on the Perth family gossip.
Last week Kate started a new job working for Accenture. It is going pretty well, and is much more interesting than the last job she had in Ipswich. There are even two other Australians on her floor. Andrew's still looking for a position, but soon the agents here will get fed up with him calling them, and will have to give him something to get him to stop!
Hope you're all well, sorry for the gap in our updates, we've only just got broadband connected again! Oh, and check out our new pics on the photos page.
- 26th November 2004
|
 |
 |
Do we look like London sophisticates yet? |
|
