Settling In

Hi folks,

Just thought I had better update you on what we have been up to since our feet hit English soil. This is an additional blog for today, as John has given you some light relief with his earlier quirky reflections.

Now - day one. This was a biggie! All went very easily through Heathrow and the tube into the city, in fact, a little too easy as we found out on our arrival at Dolphin Square.

Check in was a nightmare or a slapstick comedy depending on which side of the desk you sat. The bottom line is, that we were presented with a partially furnished flat, which means, basic bed, sofa, table etc. No TV, no microwave, no phone, no cutlery, crockery, toilet rolls…. you name it, it was singularly absent.

No matter, with high motivation levels and a wad full of UK pounds we set our sights on Argos for the hardware and Sainsbury’s for the good stuff like wine and food.

Like nesting birds for two days we flew off collecting all the stuff needed and we now we have transformed this seventh floor basic apartment into a really good place to hang out.

Friday night we decided at the last minute to celebrate all our hard work sorting the flat with a pub-crawl through our old stomping ground in Islington. It was a brilliant night and all the pubs and bars were going off in spectacular fashion. Nothing changes!

As is always the case over the weekend, Transport for London carried out tube track maintenance and in our case, as we only have the Victoria Line running through Pimlico we were forced to stroll to Victoria Station to lock into any other tube services.

So, on Saturday evening we took the opportunity to walk from Pimlico down to the National Theatre along the Lambeth Walk to take in a performance of ‘Travelling Light’. That walk was a bit of an eye-opener, as it appeared that there were just us, maybe a couple of dozen English passer-byes and a hundred thousand Eastern Europeans. The play itself was a hilarious Jewish spoof on the establishment of the movie industry. John and I whispered that we felt like we were at a pre-WWII theatre performance as there were only two non-white faces in the audience and the fashion sense was really retro. We were surrounded by Jewish patrons, who, at every punch line responded vigorously in the manner of Basil Brush’s ‘Boom-boom’ or Alan Parson’s (Steve Cogan) ‘A-Ha’. With my linguistic ears on, I left the playhouse with very strong Russian-Jewish accented phrases creeping into my speech.

Then Sunday was wet and cold, perfect for visiting our daughter Shana’s old work place The Constitution pub in Churton Street, Pimlico. It’s a cosy and convivial pub with the locals eating their Sunday roast and downing this with endless pints of the brown stuff while watching the footy. Of course, a significant number of the men were dressed in their team’s colours, which added to the vibrancy of the mood.

To keep things in balance, we had planned on doing something cultural, like visiting the Tate and catching a recital at St Paul’s later in the afternoon. However we flagged it away in favour of whiling away the afternoon down Oxford Street, a couple of drinks at ‘The Argyll Arms’ and then primed to the point where, when we reached Embankment tube station we felt that old magnetic draw take hold of us to drop into the caverns of ‘Gordon’s Wine Bar’. This place was heaving and was frenetic with activity. As is always the case, there was standing room only and after being squashed up against a gushing, loud-mouthed American lad pulverizing his girlfriends about how wonderful he was I was keen to find another leaning place to drink. This dialogue nearly gave me pub-rage so I leapt upon a recently vacated corner table with relish to escape the gerbil. The young girlfriend looked across at me in a desperate attempt of ‘don’t leave me alone with this East coast plonker’. I let her drown in his sea of verbal diarrhea and continued supping on my French plonk while taking in the new view down into caverns.

That’s it for now…will report back soon.