The weather has been nothing if not schizophrenic lately - my Year of Living Optimistically had a short run last week with balmy 15 degree days and blue skies. I may have even worn open-toed shoes. I know. Indeed the East End has been putting on the ritz lately as Spring starts to make itself known. I've discovered to my delight two magnolia trees on my street and am loving the gradual transformation of all the depressingly grey spindly trees, with their arthritic miserable limbs and general lack of joie de vivre, into cheery blossoms of pink and white. It's truly charming - even with the requisite shopping bags strewn throughout...
It's been a hectic couple of weeks trying to get my last essay out of the way - it was beyond excruciating towards the end but now that it is done and my presentation at the Tate Modern yesterday is finito I can finally breathe. And sleep. And at some point I hope re-discover what the floor of my bedroom looks like, covered as it currently is with clothes, piles of paper and other bits of assorted shit.
Apart from a meeting with my tutor next Thursday I am now class-free until the end of April and I am so excited. There are hideous amounts of work to do between now and then but tempered with visits to London from lovely Sydney friends, long weekends in Dorset to look forward to and hopefully a relocation of sorts.
Am biting the bullet tomorrow and giving notice. Have just realised how untenable the situation is going forward and while I'm perfectly content to hide away in my room while I have hours of downloaded television to watch (Yes, I think I can dance Australia....), I don't want to be attempting eating, sleeping, relaxing and dissertation writing all within the confines of a 4x4m bedroom, however tidy it might potentially be again. Am leaping into the unknown a little and looking for a place to live with a friend of a friend of mine. There is distinct possibility that we may end up in a rambling big house in Highgate, near Hampstead Heath and the civilities of charming Crouch End. I'm already having visions of me peddling through North London with a basket on my imaginary bicycle for all the bread sticks and cheeses I'll be buying.
Mmm. Cheese.
Borough Market is seriously the bomb. But yeah, not sure what will happen on the moving front but I'm excited at the thought of discovering a new part of London - and I feel it's a sign of my increasing "proppa" London-ness that I'm condescending to even consider a move to zone 3. I blame the bicycle visions personally. In said visions though the sun is shining and the birds are singing which is really just taking the piss given that the cold has returned with a vengeance, bringing its old friend rain and threatening to snow again next week. Schizophrenic is one word - depressing is another. I even prematurely busted out the sunscreen last week. Sunscreen I might add that I bought here in London and hadn't used before now but I can see why it was a "buy one get one free deal" and it had nothing to do with the virtuous promotion of SPF 50+.
You only have to wear this sunscreen once to realise why they were literally giving it away. It's like wiping craft glue all over your face. Only without the fun drying and peeling off bit.
But speaking of fun (tenuous link if ever there was one....) last night the boy and I went to see Ben Lee in concert at the O2 - the former white elephant that was the Millenium Dome but that's now a pretty major fancypants entertainment venue. I won free tickets last week courtesy of O2 but figure with all the money I throw their way for phone credit, a couple of tickets to a concert is a small means of thanks for my loyalty and exemplary customer qualities.
The only thing that could have topped it would have been waking up this morning and walking out my Bondi front door for a swim like this:
A friend emailed me this photo, from the Aquabumps website. I seriously hope it's someone taking the piss and trying to fob Tahiti off as Bondi - because if that really is Bondi the East End is going to have to do more than sprout cheery cherry blossom trees.
1 comment:
I subscribe to Aquabumps, and can verify that Bondi looks that good from a chopper... just not every day, though.
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