The only way is jumping

Pictures will be added Tuesday 24/10/06.

While weekends are definitely made sweeter the more tiresome the week is, I really would appreciate them just as much without the loooong work weeks. Nothing bad or out of the ordinary happened, just long and tiring. I think I fell asleep at 9:30 two, possibly three nights this week. I have no idea how I used to stay up all night during college doing work, and still put in a full day of work and classes and hanging out the next day. And as I write this I realize that next month I will have been out of college for six months. Wow that just hit me like a ton of bricks.

Anyway, once again the TimeOut London web site gave me something to do this weekend. Without fail, everytime I check out the site I find something to do. This Saturday it was the Bloomsbury Festival, in, you guessed it, Bloomsbury. More specifically Brunswick Square, less than 100 yards from the Russell Square tube stop, and the neighborhood I stayed when I studied here. I love any excuse that brings me back to this area. As it was the first area of London I ever saw and explored on my own, it will always hold a special place in my heart.

I started off listening to a quartet perform on the main stage, Portico Quartet they were called. They played mellow music with no words. I am terrible at music instruments, but one guy had a cello, one a drum and cymbals, one a long gold brass instrument, and one some metal thing I named a goompa, after the villains in Super Mario Brothers. Yep. I then walked around some of the stalls they had set up, as well as what was billed as Bloomsbury’s first farmer’s market. I bought a cheap beaded bracelet and necklace set at the stalls, an infamous 1.50 Borough Market brownie, and then potatoes and tomatoes at the farmer’s market. I felt very grown up for some reason buying vegetables at a farmer’s market. And then kid-like as I marveled at the purple cauliflower. I would have bought some just because of the way it looked, but it would have been too pretty to eat.

I then made my way across the street to The Brunswick, for an “aerial performance.” The Brunswick is this concrete monstrosity that reminds me more than a little of Davie Hall. It has flats on the top and shops on the bottom. (“With condos on the top, whose rent keeps open our shop…” Sorry, “Rent” break.) Last summer when I was here it had nothing but the tiniest Boots ever, sketchy-looking flats, and temporarily housed my favorite sandwich shop. Now, however, it’s been transformed. It’s still a concrete mess, but is in the process of becoming “Bloomsbury’s high street.” There’s a giant Waitrose supermarket, a cinema, cd store, Superdrug, French Connection and some other higher-end shops, and of course a Starbucks. There are lots of benches in the open-air center and on this day performers and musicians.

Anyway, on one side were performers suspended from wires, doing some type of interpreative artistic dance. It began with a woman wearing angel wings on the very top. The site of this made a little boy behind me start screaming, and kind of scared me a bit too. It’s just surreal to look up and see an angel standing eight stories up on a roof. I’m used to seeing odd things in the city, but not angels on top of shopping centers. Other performers came out then, climbing on the sides and two went down the middle and “danced.” (By the end I swear they were just flailing.) It was interesting, if for no other reason than seeing people come out of the back doors of their flats and seeing people suspended in the air in front of them. I don’t know if they weren’t warned or what, but one lady looked especially intrigued/terrified.

The performance ended and I set off for lunch at my favorite pizza place from last time. For 3 you get a personal pizza and a soft drink, as long as you take it away. So I did just that, and ate it in the shade in Russell Square. Russell Square happens to have one of my favorite fountains ever, which is saying a lot as most of you know fountains are in my top five of favorite things ever. Well they would if I actually had a codified list, which I don’t. I’m anal but not that anal. Yet. Anyway, I like the fountain because there are no barriers, it’s just there, you can walk right up to it and through it. It just feels like a natural part of the landscape, like it springs from the ground, and it wants people to be near it, to enjoy it. It was the first fountain, and I still think the only fountain, I’ve seen in person like this.

After lunch I went back to the festival to join a free walking tour on the history of Bloomsbury. It had started raining by this point, and would continue off and on the rest of the day, but the tour was still enjoyable. It was led by a short, thin British woman, whose name I don’t know, but I named her Jane, because she just seemed like a Jane. She said things like “such a grand old boy” and “blight on our history” and I just found her very British.

But before the tour was officially underway, a short pause while I run into a low-lying tree branch that I swear appeared out of nowhere. I hit it so hard, and it was such a surprise, that after I ran into it, I looked up, saw the branch, and thought, “Hey, a branch, I should move.” Then I realized my teeth had rattled and my head was throbbing. Too late to duck. I think only two people saw me, actually that can’t be true, there were a lot of people behind me, but they did ask if I was ok while trying not to laugh. I wanted to be like, “It’s ok, laugh. Happens all the time.”

Although I must take the time to say this. Just like last time I traveled, I am not as clumsy in this time zone, on this continent, as I am at home. I know no one will believe this, but it’s true. While I occasionally trip on the uneven sidewalks, I barely run into things, never just fall out of nowhere, and I have not once fallen while running up and down the many stairs at work 10 or 15 times a day. And yes, I am knocking on every piece of wood right now and muttering “no jinx no jinx” under my breath.

Anyway, the tour was based on walking the boundaries of where the Foundling Hospital was in the 1600s, and looking at a map from 1769. It had its boring bits, I really didn’t need to know the history of stucco, but as “Jane” was constantly pointing out what original in the neighborhood, I really enjoyed. I literally get chills when seeing a plaque on the sidewalk that’s been there since 1730, or a doorway there since the 1800s, or the window to the room where Charles Dickens wrote “The Pickwick Papers,” even though I’m not even a huge Dickens fan. Jane clearly knew her history and had a love from her neighborhood that made the tour very nice.

I had planned on going to the Foundling Museum after the tour, but it had started to rain and I was tired and my back sore, so I sat at a Pret on Bernard street to read. I then went to Aldwych in search of a cheap store I had seen awhile ago, only to discover it was a “New Look” store on High Holborn. In other words, a store of which there are at least two of on Oxford Street, where I had just been on Friday. It of course was raining hard at this point and I was irritable, tired, and wet, so I cheated and took the tube home instead of walking, and made myself a good meal of a salad with my fresh tomatoes, chicken, and farmer’s market potatoes. The most well-balanced meal I’ve had in awhile.

Sunday was rainy and cold. Church, long lunch with people from church, to the library to stock up on books, and then back to the flat to read, drink tea, and watch BBC. We finally got our tv to get English-speaking channels, with an antenna that means everyone has an ever-present aura, but at least it’s in English. And I have been reading up a storm here, I think three books last week alone. It helps having nothing to do on reception at work. And it’s the best way to unwind after work too.

In general, I’d just like to say I’m happy here. I miss home, but I’m not homesick, I love it here, but still want to try other places. For once, I’m not restless. And it feels great. And Mom and Aunt LuAnn will be here in less than two weeks and I’m so excited I can barely stand it.