London Calling...: A funny thing happened on the way to breakfast...

15 January 2007

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.