Halter-Topless

[x_los]

When you wake up too early on a mild English August morning that pretty much fails at evoking the whole 'summer' concept, you assume that it will get better by the afternoon. That it will 'warm up,' inevitably. You are deeply mistaken, and that cute halter top will turn out to be a horrible choice, rivaled only by the concept of Ugg Boots. Not only will the mist spittling out of the Trafalgar Square fountain (walking around it is like engaging in conversation with someone pretty and interesting who just can't help moistening you with saliva the whole time) make you rather chilly, no one else in the entire town will be wearing a halter. Not a native, not a tourist, /no one/. At first, perhaps you try to carry this off with confidence: sky blue halter serves them right, dowdy Londoners, whole town hasn't had sex since sometime in the mid Seventies. But the attempts of the man barking for the tour bus company to hit on you will make you feel cheap and whorish, and eventually, after sucking up the soupy remnants of your pride, you will make your own Long March back to Honslow, tired from jet lag and irked from the pitfalls of fashion miscalcuation, to have a bitter, fitful kip on the sofa before changing and charging out all over again to meet aralias at Leister Square at 6:15 to look at action figures in Forbidden Planet. Like the dork you so are.

So: National Gallery taken in, Westminster district walked, houses of parliament observed at close range, and Westminster Abbey viewed by not entered because 12 £. Also: £ key option discovered, courtesy of aforementioned Brit.

Parliament really is lovely close up--like the inside-out Gothic ribcage of some massive animal. Big Ben seems smaller close up, but then Notre Dame did as well--something about their importance implies a scale that's rarely easy for the dimensions of a real building to measure up to.

The amount of reading one can accomplish on the tube is phenomenal. The price of the tube, even with Oyster Card to ease the way, is less so, but it's clearly the most convenient option, so there we are, 8£ (yes, I'll overuse that key until I'm disenchanted with it, thanks) poorer and 105 pages of Season of Migration to the North richer.

I thought I remembered just where booksellers' row was from last time, but apparently no: though quite proud of own ability to navigate the tube without huge hassles. Apparently I've retained the barest traces of vestigial knowledge of the London's geography.

Yesterday, excepting a disquieting encounter with customs and enough queues to make me think I'd have a panic attack in the close, thick, recycled air of an Air India cabin just waaaaaiting for disembarkation after a session of taxi-ing so long I could well have watched the movie Taxi during it, was fabulous. aralias and I went rowing on the Thames in Richmond, and she got to show me up terribly in the process, though by the end I think I was doing a bit better with it that I was initially. Turns out proper rowing is nothing like canoing, though. I got real salt and vinegar crisps that don't taste of nothing, unlike their American cousins (and whatever happened to that play, after the assassination?), we got chips and ate them in a park--and though American fries are fine by me, these are kind of immeasurably better, I know not why. Warm and thick and salty.

Her flatmate and flatemate's manfriend and we all went out to get curry. Curry turns out to be quite different from the brief jabs at Indian food I've tried back home, and it was all really good, but thus far a little impenetrable to me. It's like listening to a genre of music you know nothing about: it all sounds too similar for your ear to distinguish between good or bad examples of those genres. I know I like the whole mode, but I still don't know what dishes I really enjoy, how to tell good curry from bad, etc.

And turns out I am a bizarre sad person who'd never seen When Harry Met Sally, which is a shame because it is 1] and classic and 2] deserves such a reputation, which I found out last night. A movie that aged well, and possibly the only time I've really found Meg Ryan charming. Carrie Fisher was particularly fun, and the entire thing was just totally sweet and enjoyable.

Also was exposed for the first time to QI, which is ring-led by Stephen Fry and asks pannelists to provide the most amusing or interesting responses to difficult, obscure questions, instead of obvious, commonly believed yet incorrect ones. Catfish taste with their whole bodies: they ARE a giant tongue. Ponder that one whilst I 'disco nap,' as Gay Daddy would have it.

Comments

[aralias.livejournal.com]

so weird reading an LJ post from you... about events i was there for. really surprisingly strange.

see you later!

[x-los.livejournal.com]

Well, we can't have freaky long distance mind control via computer any more, so here we are instead. I'm budgeting 'like an hour-ish' to get down to LxL (ahaha, febble math joke to myself) from here--too optimistic?

[aralias.livejournal.com]

nope, should be fine, assuming you leave sort of now-ish.

[pinkfriction.livejournal.com]

It is horribly grey here at the moment isn't it. Glad you are enjoying your time in London though.

(btw the £ sign goes £x this way round :D)

[x-los.livejournal.com]

Yeah, this is far too insufficiently Augusty. And thanks for the not on currency, I can never recall which way 'round is right.

[blinkidybah.livejournal.com]

It's $x here! You're just wrong xP

[blinkidybah.livejournal.com]

PS IT'S A LOVELY 79 AND PARTIALLY SUNNY HERE AND HAS BEEN SINCE YOU LEFT.

[marah-sarie.livejournal.com]

"you assume that it will get better by the afternoon. That it will 'warm up,' inevitably."

...I am tempted to laugh, but I have been assuming the same thing for the last two and a half months. Sure, it's been cold and rainy pretty much every day for the last several weeks, but TODAY will be different! It has to warm up and be summer, eventually!

And then it is 15 and rainy, AGAIN.

London has way better weather than we do up here, though, so hopefully it will be nicer for the rest of your trip. Um, fingers crossed. :)

[x-los.livejournal.com]

Boo. It's nearly the turn of September and seems to show no inclination towards a riotous last hurrah at the moment.

I actually generally like London's climate, but I definitely didn't get the 'things we do not wear in the capitol' memo before embarrassing myself.

It's really odd that I've been to a whole host of countries, inc. Britain four times now, and /never/ Scotland. I mean, it's attached. It's right there. Compared to Am. distances between cities, the drive up is paltry. Seriously I should go sometime

[gritsinmisery.livejournal.com]

Oh shit, I thought I warned you about London weather. My bad. Let me guess -- I complained about how it immediately drops to 40 F the first of September, and not at all about how it never gets above 70 F even in the "dead" of August. (That's about 5 C and 20 C, for those of you that don't translate.) I never, ever wore shorts the year I was there, and only one balmy August afternoon did I wear a sleeveless sweater, but I swore never again.

But, it sounds like your touring was brilliant. And b/c Hubs is anti-curry (and survived living in Surrey for a year!) I'm clueless about it too b/c we never went out (or took-away) Indian. I like curry, and tikki masala, and various other Indian stuffs, but I don't know good from bad myself. I do know what homemade tastes like, thanks to a lady who was in our Mums and Tots group and sold various stuff a couple of times a year. (Boggles the mind -- those "tots" are now a junior and a senior in high school.)

Do post again before you start your long trek down the Med.

And don't forget that a dozen other countries use dollars too, so now that you're the international type you need to put 'US' in front of the '$' when you're talking about home currency.

[x-los.livejournal.com]

Well, I mean, it is like, my fourth time over, but somehow I'd previously missed the bulletin on how, unlike back home, whatever an August morning may be an August afternoon is sultry as an old whore, this is not the case in London.

It's odd that it's pretty different from what Indian food we get at home: not a 'tandori chicken' to be had anywhere on the menu.

Shall!

Aaaaaah, yes, forgot we didn't own the word. x_x

[sanestlunatic.livejournal.com]

British weather still beats the Midwest in August (though we were having alarmingly mild weather when I left). Though I am decidedly a cold-weather sort of girl. And it isn't nearly as rainy as everybody says it is.

[x-los.livejournal.com]

Yeah, didn't rain once the whole week I was there!

[sanestlunatic.livejournal.com]

Yeah, uh, a month in Scotland has made me change my position on this OH GOD STOP RAINING.

[x-los.livejournal.com]

Ahaha, *lives in the Negev Desert now, where Rainy Season is like a month, and even then not a proper monsoon: enjoys ur pain*

[sanestlunatic.livejournal.com]

I think the weather waits until I go 'hm, this looks like a good time to set foot outdoors.' OH WELL, it is still not as bad as when I was slogging through several inches of water on a certain poorly-drained campus that shall remain unnamed.

[heather-macleod.livejournal.com]

My sympathies... what an incredibly awkward experience.

I swear I first saw When Harry Met Sally in your mom's basement.... you were probably asleep by the point Sallie convinced me to watch a Meg Ryan movie, though. Maybe she's good in it because it was before she became a walking romantic cliché?

[x-los.livejournal.com]

Such as I am so hilariously prone to.

Oh man, I think I was, b/c I have no memory of it? Then again between this and basement phone sex I apparently DON'T REMEMBER HIGH SCHOOL AT ALL. And yes, in a neurotic 'oh, actually interesting acting, well done there' way, she IS good. And sadly now re: the cliche thing, she isn't. Like, at all. I mean you, Kate and Leopold.

[heather-macleod.livejournal.com]

Not remembering high school is completely acceptable. Preferable, even. How's Kibbutzin' it?

Speaking of your Jewishness, Nick wanted me to share this with you:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/9/18/154949/845/101/602982