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.