Return ticket

I’ve made this trip many times before. However, this is my first time leaving London holding a return ticket.

It’s a bizarre feeling. The thought of going home for an overseas holiday is a little hard to compute. It’s home! Australia isn’t overseas!

It’s caught me a bit off guard. Compared with trips in my early 20’s, the anticipation hasn’t been quite as strong. After all, I know what’s coming. There’s no need for guidebooks, I know my way around. And there’s really no need to plan what to pack. I know where to go if I need something.

I know I’m ok in Australia. It’s easy.

That sense of security caught me off guard late last night, when it finally sank in that I was about to take the long haul flight and I wasn’t at all prepared. I was up until the early hours chaotically throwing whatever was on the floor into a suitcase. Normally a meticulous ‘roller’, I could only manage to scrunch clothes into a ball and toss them onto the pile. Before I knew it, I was a few hours away from my flight with no clear strategy on how I’d even get to the airport. Evidently, peak hour plus luggage makes me the most unpopular boy on the Tube.

Now that I’ve had a chance to catch my breath here at the airport, I’m thinking, wow. Wow, I’m going home. But wow, home’s not really home. Wow, it turns out I really don’t know what to expect after all. It’s kind of freaking me out! (The complimentary vodkas may be a contributing factor.)

When I booked my ticket back to Australia all those months ago, I was so excited. London was hard. I was navigating so many things; new job, different culture, no friends, new friends. It was exhausting! And while I was determined to see it through, the idea of a little reprieve was very appealing.

And then London crept up on me. I began to get some rhythm. I learnt how to weave through the hoards during the peak hour crush (I hardly knock anyone over anymore). I taught myself tricks on how to beat the cold (mostly beer and central heating – I still haven’t come to grips with thermals). And I found some great people in this city, with more arriving every day or so it seems.

Now that I’ve found that rhythm, I want to stand still a while and let it flow. Don’t get me wrong, I’m totally looking forward to catching up with the people I’ve missed. The sunshine and I have so much catching up to do. And I do love Melbourne. But part of me feels a couple more months in London before returning wouldn’t have gone astray.

I suppose I’m just a touch afraid that I’ll return to London and be offbeat again. That the lure of old friends, warm weather and yes, decent coffee, might mean having to go through the adjusting one more time.

But then I suppose there are worse positions to be in. Woe is me! I have to return to a sun-soaked country for an awesome time before resuming my trip of a lifetime. How terrible!

And I get to go back with a fabulous tan.

Turning Point

When I left Australia I told myself that if I hadn’t made it in London within six months, I’d turn around and come home with my tail between my legs.

Low and behold, I’ve just looked up and realised six months is up. Half a year ago to the day I stepped off the plane and cruised through passport control, ready to own London. I felt confident, excited and secure knowing that London and I were going to get on like a house on fire. It took me 20 minutes to realise I was waiting at the wrong baggage carousel.

Not a great start. Since then I’ve had regular reminders that in order to survive London, or any unfamiliar place I suppose, you have to learn you’re the master of nothing.

Case in point, one of my first job interviews went ridiculously well. We got to chatting, had a few laughs and the whole affair went 20 minutes longer than scheduled - evidence of the great time we were clearly having. I was so happy with how it went that I rang my recruitment agent immediately to let her know what a star candidate she had on her books. A couple of hours later she rang me back to let me know I had failed to make the second round.

So evidently it’s best not to get cocky about anything.

(Although interestingly in the next interview I had, the dragon lady interrogating me had me contemplating tears. Blubbering mess. Yet somehow, the feedback I received there was ‘He’s good. He’d do well here”.)

I’m sure it’s really just a fact of life, something we all need to be in-tune with rather than a location-specific phenomenon. The point is, when you’re out of your comfort zone, you become acutely aware of each misstep and every little thing that doesn’t go quite right. Even inadvertently heading North instead of South when emerging from the Tube has the potential to send you into a round of ‘what am I doing here? I mean really doing here?’

But I suppose it’s made the six months feel more worthwhile in a way. The feelings of uselessness are nothing compared to the sensation of accomplishment when you overcome a new problem. The sense of personal triumph I had when I finally figured out how to top-up my Oyster Card without patrons behind me swearing furiously was one of the best highs I’ve had.

But enough nazel gazing! To commemorate my six months in London, I made a list. Everybody loves a list!

Things I love about London

1. Europe, just over there
2. Public transport (the Tube really is impressive. Even the signage is impressive. I’ve never been so impressed by signage before)
3. Earning Pounds (so much better than not earning pounds)
4. Pints
5. Snow
6. The West End
7. History, everywhere
8. Parties wherever, whenever
9. Christmas lights
10. Coffee houses run by Australians (reluctantly I admit the New Zealanders also make a decent coffee).

And no list of favourite things would be complete without a list of not-so-favourite things:

Things I don’t love so much about London

1. Ryanair (this should really be Number One on my ‘Things I hate about life’ list)
2. Public transport (overcrowding and ludicrously restricted operating hours for a city of many, many millions)
3. Employment (for a smorgasbord of reasons, which I shan’t share due to the fact I’d like to keep earning pounds)
4. Beer belly
5. The weather
6. Crowds
7. Tourists (how quickly I forget)
8. Whole days lost to recovering
9. Darkness
10. London ‘coffee’.

Yes, the two lists are linked. That actually happened by accident (by and large), and it was a nice realisation to see the things that frustrate me often mean good times ahead. Except for London coffee. No good times there.

Anyway, happy anniversary to me. As it turns out I am going home next week. But just for a holiday. And very much with my tail in the air.

By the way, a few people have been asking me what I ended up doing for the New Year’s weekend (you read my blog, YAY!). I won’t bore you with the details, (my Mum reads this after all) but it involves a whole lot of Number 8. From both lists.

50% chance of rain

So, London weather.

It’s an apt topic because right now I’m sitting before quite possibly the largest snowflakes in the history of time. If not, they’re at least the biggest damned snowflakes I’ve ever seen. But more about snow later.

When I made the decision to move to this part of the world, I was generally greeted with one of two reactions: “That is so fantastic, you’re going to have an amazing time”. Or, perhaps more commonly: “You’re insane. You know it’s cold right?” There was also a third reaction: “Are you sure that’s wise? We are in a global financial crisis.” But that one was mostly thrown at me by my mother and grandfather, who both had a vested interest in scaring the hell out of me. (To this day I still receive articles from my mother regarding the derelict state of the UK.)

Honestly, the job stuff didn’t bother me. Too much. The weather? I was having a harder time warming to the notorious weather.

The week I arrived in London was horrible. The skyline was a constant ominous grey. My flimsy Australian jumpers were clearly going to do diddlysquat. And the skies opened regularly, ridiculing me for daring to challenge them without an umbrella.

It was the middle of summer.

The sting of it was made that much sharper due to the fact I had arrived via New York, where, with the exception of a torrential downpour here and there, the air was hot and the sunshine plentiful. If summer had a Facebook page, I’d be its Number One fan (oh look, it does!) and I was relishing the chance to lap it up in shorts during the month of July (until I suffered a vicious attack by what could only have been a large nation of sandflies). However, after two days in London it was clear that I was faced with the daunting prospect that I may never wear shorts again.

But as I became quickly accustomed to my new life, and I stopped looking for reasons why I would fail at it, the weather stopped bothering me as much. London even eventually laid out her finest for me. August was beautiful. It was warm, and the previously drab buildings positively shone. I spent many an unemployed day lazing in parks, sampling crisps and reading the Twilight series. (It still hurts to think I wasted possibly the most free time I’ll ever have in my life with that drivel, but that’s for another entry.)

After I saw what London could be, I figured I could handle its worst. What’s more, the biting cold that people had taken such enjoyment in warning me about didn’t eventuate through September, or October, or November. And then December hit.

Now for the record, the cold and the darkness are, by and large, manageable. There have been a couple of days where I was in serious danger of losing an appendage, but those times simply served as a reminder that layers are a wise investment. And there is snow. SNOW! The first day I saw snow falling from the office windows, I was straight outside in my suit cavorting merrily, stirring my colleagues to dryly remark, “oh that’s right, you’re Australian.”

What does annoy me about the weather, is not really the weather at all. It’s not the snow, nor the rain, nor the cold. It’s London’s inability to cope with any of these factors. London shuts down. Transport stops. People leave work early with fear in their eyes. There are times when I feel I need to give London a good bitchslap and remind her she’s a major international city. She can’t keep hiding under the covers every time she feels a little frostbite coming on.

A quick example from just two weeks ago. The snow which had fallen was now ice, putting an abrupt end to that love affair, and London succumbed to chaos.

It took me over two hours to get home that day – a journey normally taking no more than 45 minutes. Any form of transport that wasn’t a mile underground simply wasn’t operating and hundreds of people were locked out of major train stations and kept at bay by police officers with dogs. Passengers who were lucky enough to catch a passing bus were soon offloaded and told to walk.

I was lucky, I only had to walk some three kilometres through the sludge and ice. My shoes were soon full of water and it was difficult to keep my footing – making it a very slow, arduous journey. Street lights bled through the mist and the ice rendered everything bleak. It was apocalyptic. Hundreds of weary people shuffled through the streets, hunched over and often ending on their backsides. Cars were banked up, incapable of moving except to slide across the ice. It really was easy to imagine that this could be the end of the world. Or at least, a movie about the end of the world.

Ok, so I suppose it was kind of cool. Although my shoes were ruined. That really did annoy me.