Oxford Street: A First

I’m barely awake… The late hours have been adding up, and my day was quite exhausting anyway. Basically, I spent some hours at BUNAC making phone calls, sending emails, and signing up for flatmate-finding websites. Around 2:30 I decided to seize what I had left of the day and go shopping. I went to Primark, on Oxford St., as per a fellow BUNAC-er’s suggestion a few days ago. It was huge, it had a lot of great stuff, and it was definitely well priced. The only thing wrong with it was the huge lines to the fitting rooms & checkouts. And I still hadn’t figured out the UK version of my shoe size. I also got Abby a birthday present at Borders, on the same street. (Side-note: I can’t believe there are THREE H&M stores on Oxford Street, and all well within a mile of each other. I like H&M, I really do, but do they really need three?!)

Getting home was more of an issue than it should have been… It began with taking the normal route from Blackfriar to St. Albans, only this time the end of the line wasn’t in St. Albans. I was alternating reading my new book (just got it from Borders – Dead Funny) and the free papers they’re always thrusting in your face in London (they’re really quite good for variety), and I was listening to my iPod. Thank goodness Gill called me after I passed Luton, or else I wouldn’t have noticed it any different. I would have been in for a surprise when I reached Bedford! But, I did go to Bedford. The only way to correct it was to get off and take an opposing train. By the time I was in Bedford, my phone had just run completely out of minutes (£10 really doesn’t get you too far, apparently), so I had to borrow a stranger’s for a minute to give Gill an update. I wound up taking a Luton-bound train to Harlington, and then from Harlington to St. Albans. Between stations, I was shivering on a bench, almost entirely on my own (I spotted some shadowy figure at a bench on the other side of the tracks once… and eventually some girl in a black trench and dress shoes crossed my path); I fiddled with my phone’s camera and read my new book to pass the half-hour that kept me there until the next train. I admit I wasn’t comfortable at all, but I’m mostly sorry that I inconvenienced Gill & Kevin to that extent… Gill had waited at the station for a half-hour during the original time I was to have arrived, and Kevin drove to the station to meet me when I was finally off the train in St. Albans.

So that’s the short version of my day. There actually was quite a lot more wandering about London around Oxford Street, but I’m going to slump over my computer any minute if I don’t get to bed.

Ditched by the Bus

(Another late bedtime… Ugh.)

The bus to St. Albans’ station ditched me today – it was just me and a kid there, and I got up and was just at the curb, but it kept going anyway. The next bus was in two hours, so it really wasn’t worth the wait. I took a walk around the area for the first time; mainly, I saw the beautiful 12th century church (St. Paul’s, I think) with its crumbly, askew headstones in the churchyard (didn’t walk inside, though) and the more obvious features of country-life – namely horses & fields. I even nibbled a few wild blackberries along the footbath.

Then, I spent a few hours making phone calls, sending emails, and filling out more applications back at the house. Gill came home and then dropped me off in St. Albans so I could do some shopping, mainly because I was still on the lookout for grey dress-pants. It was faintly drizzly for the most part, but not too cold for the coat I was wearing. I bought a lamb & mint Cornish pasty from a shop and ate it under an old 14th century clock tower while the rain sprinkled all over me, but it wasn’t enough to bother me. After that, I explored the St. Alban’s Abbey – which was so very massive and full of elaborate medieval stonework. It took me a while, but I saw the whole thing. St. Alban himself was even there (his relics, anyway); I left a donation and lit a candle at his grave.

It took me far too long to find H&M – even though Abby had shown me last Saturday. Somehow I’d gotten it in my head that it was in a completely different direction, and as a result I spent a lot of time wandering up and down the high street, and on obscure little roads. The rain started to come down pretty heavily just then. When I finally did find it, I didn’t find the pants. But, I found a nice grey woolly hat that I liked – albeit too late to keep my head dry. But I wore it after anyway, because disguised the fact that I looked like a drowned rat. (I also stopped at Boots for some bathroom things – face wash, cotton balls… that sort of thing.)

Gill picked me up at 4:15, and after she made some pasta for Poppy, she took Abby to her yoga class and I watched Poppy for a while. Most of the time, I just made sure she ate, and then we played some games. We played Connect Four and Guess Who, and then I taught her how to play Go Fish.

Gill came home shortly after we started Guess Who. After the games, I watched about an hour of “Scrubs” and had dinner with everyone except Poppy – beef, apple and stilton pie with steamed veggies & baked potato. I had some delicious Cornish vanilla ice cream for dessert – it was extremely creamy. It’s official – every time I’ve had ice cream in the UK, it’s always way better than any ice cream I’ve ever had. As far as I’m concerned, Great Britain is the Ice Cream Capital of the World.

So… I did some more stuff on the internet after dinner. Watched the season premiere of Heroes on BBC iPlayer, applied for more job stuff, answered a lot of emails… and at one time (nearly just before starting to write this), had a few minutes to panic after Daddy replied to an email asking how the dogs are with “I need to speak with you.” Definitely not a good place to reply so vaguely and yet so urgently… I texted him, asking if it was really so urgent, and he called me back within the minute. I’m hesitant to use it so much because it’s a pay-as-you-go, and when I set up my voice mail earlier, it warned me that I need to top-off soon. So you can understand why I would prefer if he could just email me more often. Anyway, it wasn’t good news, but thank goodness it was nothing to do with the dogs. Angel & Major are fine, and I can go to bed relieved.

So on that note, good night.