A funny thing happened on the way to breakfast...
It's Saturday morning, and after being woken up at 6:30am by the TV-instalation guy telling me he was on his way, I was more than a little anxious for my breakfast after he left. The toast was buttered, the coffee brewed, and the final step was heating up the milk for my coffee--a nice little treat I like to do when there's time. The microwave is humming and I'm just about ready to go eat my brekkie in front of the TV for the first time in weeks (I hadn't realized how quiet it is without a TV!), when whir-whir-whir...click...silence. The microwave went off, along with of the electricity! 'Great,' I think to myself, 'NO TV!!!!!' Let's be honest, I have my priorities.
I don't really know the first thing to do, so I got outside to where the landlord told me the switch for the electricity box was. 'CREDIT: £0.00' it flashes. Crap! I had forgotten. In between hearing about the history of my house, he had attempted to explain to me how the electricty works. You don't pay a bill monthly, or even quarterly as is often the custom here, NO this is proper old school, with a bit of a new school twist. In these old houses, you used to have to put pound coins into the electricty box to keep it working. Here it is similar, but instead of pound coins there is a little key with a chip embedded in it. You have to 'top-up' the chip every so often, but I had no idea of just HOW often or when, or how really. Turns out the guy at the liquor store on the corner (cleverly named 'Hair of the Dog') can top it up for me. For cash only. Can you say dodgy? But at least the TV is back on... And in what seems to be a very slow race to set up my flat, below are a couple of pictures of the few rooms I seem to have finished: the bathroom and the living room--well half of the living room anyway--you don't want to see the other half yet! One step at a time, right?
Sunday was a big day in the dark, grey, cold, windy (did I mention grey?) English winter: the sun came out. For approximately 17.5 minutes. It was glorious. I thought I was dreaming! So I did what every self-respecting California princess would do: I donned my sunglasses and trainers and raced out the door and headed down to the river. I snapped a few pics along the way of the neighbo(u)hood. 
On the way to the tube...
View of Fulham from Putney Bridge
Higgledy-Piggledy
Happy new year to all! I am happy to report that I am now the proud resident of a new flat in Fulham, south-west London. It was a trying couple of months towards the end of the year, and I really did think at one point I might be living in a cardboard box, but it all seems to have worked out ok. In fact, here is a picture of the front of my flat, as well as the back garden. Once I get all of the boxes sorted out I'll include some pictures of the actual inside. Built in 1870, the house is the middle one in the photo below, and the whole place was completely renovated a year ago, so it's got all of the old charm and character that was lacking in my Islington shoebox, plus all of the new fixtures and fittings ('all mod cons' as they say). I have the entire ground floor (1.5 bedrooms), including the garden. Above me is a 4-bedroom flat that is occupied by a French family with two little girls. They have no access to the garden...Unlucky!
It is a very nice neighborhood, night and day from my old place. It actually 'feels' like England. I walk down a little lane to get to the tube station, there is a daily street market around the corner, selling fresh fruit and veg, just like on EastEnders, and a pub on either end of my (very short) street. Fulham (now part of Central London) used to be a country suburb when the house was built, and there were fields all around what is now a very bustling area. My house was the home of a stable-keeper, or field-keeper, or something like that. It was far too early in the morning when my new landlord was explaning all of this to me, so I didn't quite catch all of the details.
One of the most interesting and challenging new subjects is my heating. Before I was on the 4th floor of a new-build high rise. I hardly ever had to turn the heat on, and in the summer it was baking. I am now on the ground floor of a 137-year old home, and you can tell! Its absolutely freezing without the heat--a real bone-chilling wet cold you can only seem to get in England. Luckily there are radiators in all of the rooms, and a nice warming towel rack in the bathroom -- the trick is getting them all set right, and not running out of hot water. If I leave them on during the night it gets too hot and if I don't I can't get out of bed in the morning because it is so cold. The furry pink hot water bottle burns my feet, so that isn't a very practical option (although I did try!). After consulting several co-workers, I learned the trick is to set your boiler so that it turns itself on and off depending on your schedule. So now I have it set to turn on at about 7pm, so it's nice and warm when I get home, go off about midnight, and back on again about 5:30am so that it's warmed up by the time I get up. Who'da thunk it??
I have made an attempt to include a Google satellite hybrid map so you can see where the actual flat is. View by clicking here. It takes less than 15 mins to walk to the river, and my new commute (on a double-decker bus) is one of the prettiest I could imagine, routing us through Chelsea, South Kensington, Knightsbridge, Hyde Park and Piccadilly Circus. If you're visiting me, I would say it's a £1.00 well-spent of doing this rather than one of the £20 touristy buses! That's an extra £19 to spend at the pub. The downside is that my journey to work has quadrupled from 15-mins to an hour. Buses aren't so fast... The upside is that I no longer have to spend my commute buried in someone's armpit... Another downside is that it now takes me far longer than the usual 2.5 minutes to get home from an Arsenal match. John and brother Ian couldn't stop chastising me the other night as we waited nearly an hour to queue for the tube, then another 45 minutes home! My new home is right down the street from the Chelsea football ground 'Stamford Bridge', but I am trying to ignore that fact. Because they are evil (sorry, Christine!).
Other than getting the flat sorted (and there has been lots to do!), it has been a fairly sluggish start to 2007. We had to come back to work on the 2nd which seemed just wrong. Apparently 50% of Londoners had a hangover and called in sick. I am not kidding. I was a bit sleepy all week, having become quite comfortable spending the majority of Christmas break lounging in my PJs with Piccadilly, it was difficult to sit at my desk all day and pretend to be professional. My friend Alex stopped by my desk one day last week and asked how I was. I replied that I was feeling a little sleepy and mumbled something or other about wanting to go home. His response was to tell me that I did not seem sleepy to him, but rather 'higgledy piggledy'. No other description could have summed up how I was feeling quite as well. Higgledy Piggledy is my new favourite phrase, and I suggest you all add it to your daily repertoire.
And you know a posting after a trip to Texas would not be complete without a few pictures of miss beautiful herself...
