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Halter-Topless
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 ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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.
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.
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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