Football!

I’ve been here about six months now and have finally caught English, so have been to some very English football games lately. First up, Brazil vs Sweden. If watching two foriegn teams play a friendly in a stadium full of expats from those countries while the England team plays overseas is not English culture I’m never going to find it. Anyway, Brazil vs Sweden at Emirates stadium! How sweet is that? “Pretty sweet” is the answer.

Quite a stadium, Emirates

Brazil line up a free kick

Almost as sweet as when we retired to Trev’s pub afterwards and got to drink infinite beer as he needed to “clean out the pipes”.

Tony with said beer

Said pub

The football was pretty cool too. But the stadium wasn’t full of chanting Englishmen so we had to go see some more. I was in charge of tickets and decided we could go support our local West Ham boys over in west London as they travelled to Bolton. Was surprised to hear northern accents when I bought the tickets, and a look at the map that night at home showed why: Bolton is somewhere near Manchester (and nowhere near London, west or otherwise)! Pretty good excuse for a trip away – my foolishness – so away we went. Highlight of the trip was on the Manchester –> Bolton train when the carriage was half-full of Barnsley fans en route to Blackpool, half full of Boltonites. They entertained us with songs suggesting where the other parties might like to stick their Yorkshire puddings / Lancashire red roses. At the stadium too the chants were brilliant, they are sometimes very clever and opposing fans even clap each other for a good one. My favourite was when Bolton sang “we are shit and we’re winning 1-0″.

Our West Ham boys on one of their futile attacks. They really were shite.

Bolton crowd

We took the opportunity for a quick look around Manchester and it seems pretty cool. Everyone talks like it is Coronation street and there are plenty of canals, my new favourite thing after recent adventures on the way to Milton Keynes.

One of said canals

And we were lucky enough to stay in the famous couchsurfing house, Percy Palace. It was just like they told us it would be.

Said palace

We’ll be back in Manchester in about a month’s time to have a proper look around, but first I’m going to Quebec! Hooray. Watch this space, and if I don’t post in the next few weeks call the police (I mean la police) because I’ve been eaten by a bear or a moose.

Rambling in Zone 9

Firstly if you’re a regular visitor this is my second post in several days. The other is here.

Believe it or not, this is only a few minutes walk from the London Underground:

It’s somewhere between Amersham and Chesham, way outside the M25 (I was scared too) , where a few weekends ago Valerie and I went for a nice stroll in the rain. It’s a good escape from London and like all the English countryside I’ve visited it is conveniently criss-crossed by public access footways. There’s even the chance to see a toad, which is of course why I came to England:

Yes, she is trying to kiss it. No, I don’t know why.

You can get to both those towns by taking the purple line (Metropolitan?) to the end. It’s only a short walk between the two but very nice. We hadn’t seen more trees than people in a long time. Not exactly wilderness, but nice. I’ve been doing a bit of this countryside rambling in England and am a new fan, a little to my surprise. It is a huge change to the ‘real’ outdoors that I am used to in NZ when there are hundreds of kilometres between people and mountains everywhere and sometimes volcanoes and you carry your food and fuel for five days… But it’s not so bad when after an hour there’s a pub and when it starts raining you can get on a bus and back to a town in a few minutes. And the English countryside is oh-so English. There are squirrels and foxes and little stone fences and rolling hills and colours like in Constable paintings. Here’s some more trees:

Getting London Done

With a good combination of weekend and ‘bank’ holiday, had a few more days off for the New Year and decided to finally get London done. This involved walking round Monopoly Board streets and postcard places, and taking a lot of photos. It was fun. New Year itself was a fairly standard night out in Leytonstone (our neighbourhood), but there’s nothing wrong with that. Tonight I’m flying to Egypt, inshallah, so will have another post or two from there soon. Here’s Big Ben from various angles.

Life in London

Life in London is sweet. I’ve established a fantastic routine of work, home, meet whoever is sleeping on our couch/ floor that night, party for a few hours, say goodbye to whoever is leaving the next day, sleep, and repeat. It’s a good life. We don’t have – or want – a TV or computer in the flat but the only boring moment was on one of the first days there, when we didn’t have any guests. That only happened one day… in the four weeks since we moved in we think we hosted around 250 guest-nights, mostly through couchsurfing, but also friends from real life. Here’s the floor on a not particularly busy morning: After the flatwarming was best; we found strangers under the table and in the cupboards!

As well as that I’ve been going to a few concerts. The Mules and Death Ray Trebuchey were fantastic; Julean and the Rai slept on our floor for a few weeks and plays some cool tunes; my Francophone friends were too snobbish for the East London Jazz Club but I enjoyed it; etc etc. And I got to the rugby two weekends ago, South Africa vs The Barbarians. It was at Twickenham, where for a brief moment the crowd started singing Swing Low Sweet Chariot and it was amazing. Last weekend Tony, Lucas and I visited some old friends from Wellington, now back home in Cardiff. They took all the photos and it might be a long wait before you see them on their blogs… But it was a cool weekend, especially when we got to visit Tony’s friend’s family in the countryside and eat a huge roast lunch while watching jays, squirrels, woodpeckers, pheasants etc play in the paddocks out the window.

Here are some random photos from London… I haven’t done much of the postcard stuff but these are far more representative anyway:

We’re off to Northern Ireland and Scotland in the next few weeks so keep an eye here for more stories. I’ll try and be more eloquent next time.

Work!

Hooray, I’ve found a job. I will start on a three month contract on Wednesday. I am perversely looking forward to it. I will be doing very similar stuff to what I did in Oz and NZ. The bonus of this town is that a) they pay you more b) they pay you in £. I’ll tell you the disadvantages after a few weeks when I’m suitably disillusioned.

The past two weeks of unemployment have been great. After the interview I wandered briefly through London, visiting Tate Modern and St Paul’s and stumbling across a lot of streets and tube stations that are for various reasons famous. Aside from that I’ve barely been in the city centre but am getting to know my part of East London quite well. I’ve been repaying some of the couchsurfing karma and hosting everyone and anyone who comes so there’s never been a dull moment (or an empty patch of floor) at our flat. We’ve got curtains and furniture and everything now and will celebrate with a flatwarming on November 24th. You should come! Though if I know you’re in the neighbourhood, I’ve probably told you already. We went to a The Shins concert on Wednesday night and they were very good. (And the next night, The Verve, !!!, and The Sex Pistols (!) were all playing sold-out shows at different venues across town. London is amazing.) I watched half a football game half in a very local English pub. We found that there are regular jazz concerts two nights a week at different venues nearby, and blues once a fortnight. I’ve been reading and juggling a lot. Life is sweet.