Change and changeabilidad

There is no real reason why ‘and changeabilidad’ needed to be tacked onto that title other than the fact that I saw the front cover of the Spanish version of ‘Sense and Sensibilidad’. That little ‘-ilidad’, which is the Spanish version of ‘-ility’, really tickles something and is another one of the many peculiar reasons why I find Spanish a much nicer and softer language than the sharp jerkiness of English. Meanwhile, I am choking on my own tongue as I try and squeeze out some Russian under my breath on the tubular commute. The anonymity of London allows me to entertain a new group of people every day with my gurgling Russian whispers.

The winds of change swept through during the week, no-one was hurt but it did blow some of the rain away. The gusts did however pick Lucas and I up, Wizard of Oz style, and relocate us in Kilburn. A nice little area, to the south is posh Maida Vale and to the north is suburban Cricklewood. To the west is trendy Willesden and Queen's Park and if you go east you will stumble upon smart West Hampstead. The centre of Kilburn is the Kilburn High Road, a section of ancient Roman Road . This road starts life at the north-east corner of Hyde Park as Edgware Road and continues through North-West London up to St Albans, which was a Roman settlement.

I’ve been doing a background check on our new area and have found these interesting titbits of information….

The name Kilburn comes from Kelebourne, a stream which flowed from Hampstead through Kilburn, and eventually into the Serpentine in Hyde Park.

Along the Kilburn High Road there is a pub or bar every forty yards. It is said that if you stroll along at 3am on any given morning you will hear the muffled sound of good cheer emanating from these numerous pubs with drawn curtains and closed doors. The Land of The Lock-In…..

The Kilburn Priory was established in 1130 and provided shelter and food for pilgrims on their way to the shrines at Willesden or St Albans, until the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII. On its site was built The Bell Inn in 1600, our new local with a mean sausage and Yorkshire pudding. The Bell became the scene for dog fighting and bare-knuckle bouts, as well as certain immoral activities connected with a house over the road. By the early 19th Century the place had also become a notorious duelling spot, sounds good to me.

Kilburn is home to London's largest Irish community. The first wave of Irish immigrants came in the mid-19th Century after the great potato famine. There was a second wave in the 1950s and 1960s. Why they settled in Kilburn, nobody quite knows.

The Borough of Brent is one of only two areas (the other is the London Borough of Newham) in the UK to have a non-white majority. Kilburn itself is an ethnic mix, with Afro-Caribbean, West African, Somali, Middle Eastern, Pakistani and Bangladeshi peoples in particular. The so-called white community is also diverse, with the large Irish contingent and a Polish faction now competing with a growing Russian enclave in the area.

Kilburn is still trying to shake off its rather unfortunate reputation. In decades gone by it was associated with the IRA and the republican cause, with collections for the 'boys back home' being a not uncommon activity in the Irish pubs.

We are currently sharing our flat with two nice Slovenian girls who also have a love of all things Walkabout. They are due to depart for Greece in a couple of weeks and have found substitutes in a pair of Canadian girls, fresh from Uni in Canada and looking for adventure in smoky London. Their Walkabout initiation is not far away, I promise.

Daylight saving has commenced and the weather is going crazy with max temps at a sweltering 14 degrees on some days, it could almost be that time of year to bring the knees and ankles out again.

Tomorrow (Friday) is my last day on my contract at work (end of work pics), and I’ve been wondering for a while what on earth I’ll do for work and money. Having registered for a clinical trial (£1,100 to take a trial anti-depressant for a week!!), I’ve just been offered and accepted a position in this same organisation, in the same building, on the same floor, and unfortunately, the same seat. So I’m going to have to give the trial a miss, I am disappointed. No longer a social policy officer, I will be known as National Development Officer. Sounds a bit more fancy and I’ll get an extra £3.85 an hour for it. So as some things change, some things stay (largely) the same.

Weekly Round-up:

Hello troops – Well it’s been a week since my last informative and action packed post so I thought I’d dazzle you all again. Hmmmm the week in review….

Friday night: I had a quiet one, went to the gym, new PB on squats in England, but still not as good as Canberra.
Saturday: Fairly quiet day, did the food shopping, well overdue. Wasn’t planning on going out then got an avalanche of encouragement to join John, Pat and Cowlsy at a pub in town. If you’re not going to give in to peer pressure then what’s the point of having peers I say. I knew the boot would be on the other foot later on….
Sunday: Hungover and tired. Dee from Buenos Aires visited for lunch, then Georgia and her sister came round and we all chilled in the same spot for five hours – in fact thinking back, I spent almost the entire day in the same 5 square metres. Which is pretty standard – how scary.
Monday – Wake. Tube. Work. Tube. Gym. Netball. Sleep.
Tuesday – Wake. Tube. Work. Tube. Gym. Sleep.
Wednesday – Wake. Tube. Work. Tube. Sleep
Thursday – Wake. Tube. Work. Tube. House hunt. Sleep
Friday - Wake. Tube. Work. Tube. Pub for St Patricks Day.

In an expected but concerning development, my gym membership has expired which means I will be without my trusty squat rack and pieces of steel for quite possibly over a week. Whether I can cope with the absence only time will tell. But I am already looking at small cars and barbell shaped people with a twitch in my quads. My only comfort is the scientifically proven fact that ‘Guinness makes you strong’ and today is St. Patrick’s day.

The most exciting development at work is that a report I have written is getting published next week with a national press release. Never one to go back through an exam or proof read my own work I am sure there blaring mistakes and my subliminal communist message will have been distorted somewhat.

To anyone who thinks Aussie bureaucrats talk a lot of jargon and hot air – you should have a listen to you average middle manager in the UK. Succinctness ain’t a KPI.

Phew. Just ate two feet of baguette with falafel and bacon and egg. And I haven’t moved from my desk all morning or lunchtime and probably won’t be moving until I go home. How’s that for a sedentary lifestyle!

I think March is the month of sleet, it has been steadily flitting down for days now, I still have hope that the sun exists and will offer warmth and comfort one day.

[WEEKEND PASSES]

Well it’s Monday morning now – I didn’t finish writing the post before, possibly because I was bored with typing and looking at a computer screen. Computers and email and electronic stuff is actually quite exciting when you only see one every few days. But when you have to stare at one for 7-8 hours a day they lose their appeal somewhat.

Netball Grand Final tonight. We are up against our nemesis, it is 1-1 so far in the previous two encounters, although we had a slight advantage in the game we won – so we’ll need something a bit special to pull it off tonight. Our defence will win it, rebounding and keeping their shooters to a difficult distance. Carmel will dominate the centre court as usual and I will make sure we score every time the ball makes it into our circle. It will be a good one…..not going to work today – just focus on netball….

Senor Spielbergo

Zdrastvutye.

Christmas has come again, and I'm not referring to the rain and cold wind blowing today. My PV-GS150 arrived this morning. To all you non-academy award winning camera people that is a digital camcorder with a broadcast quality picture. It is about the size of my clenched right fist and has a telephoto lense, wide angle lense, various tripods, various UV filters etc etc etc.

If I don't make a number of short films that at least win the Cannes Film Festival then I will have failed Allah.

The only unfortunate thing is that I won't be doing much movie editing (or any while on the road) until I get back to Australia, so I'll be sending home stacks of MiniDV tapes from various locations.

Just realised I've never played with editing features on blogger:

• I probably should have
• It would have made them slightly prettier

But then again:

1. I would have wasted more time formatting
2. And probably got a colour that doesn't match the blue (I write on white)

AND ISN'T THE CONTENT THE MOST IMPORTANT THING?

And what font would I have used?

And what font would I have used?

And what font would I have used?

And what font would I have used?

Spring cleaning

Spring is here!

This morning I lay in the sunshine that was streaming through our bedroom window. The warmth of the rays tingled my greyed exterior and I felt that everything was right with the world. I'd also just devoured a bowl of fruit salad and was contemplating how long I should wait to digest the fruit before taking my antibiotic (yep those shoulders are still causing me big problems) and then polish off the avocados with some tuna and toast (although I've recently discovered that I should be half-dead with mercury poisoning given the quantities of tuna I used to inhale in Canberra).

I'm always amazed at how much one's view of the world and attitudes towards it can change based on a good night's sleep, a bit of exercise and some healthy food (and an all important warm shower to finish off with and wash away the remnants of negativity).

Saturday was a different story. I'd struggled home in daylight after another heavy night on the drink, after another tedious body and soul destroying week in a chair staring at a computer screen. The only reason I can drag myself into the office on most days is to check my email and research all the things I'm going to see and do, eventually.

So as I stepped out of the shower on Saturday morning, inspected my shoulders for the first time that day (no bleeding, good. No additional very sore spots, good. More hard red lumps, bad. More scarring, bad. Skin wrinkled and on the verge of falling off because of high power benzol peroxide, will live with it) I was more acutely aware of that nasty feeling that I keep trying to push away and ignore - I'm just going around in circles. Work, eat, gym, sleep, work, eat, gym, get drunk, sleep. And I realise that while I'm in London, those circles are actually a downwards spiral. For the first time in my life I actually feeling like I'm going backwards - forgetting things, losing athletic ability/coordination, having an interest in fewer and fewer things, feeling bitter about the people in this city/country. I ask myself for the thousandth time - why the hell am I forcing myself to stay in such an evil place? And I suppose that is part of why I despise London, it feels evil. Lucas saw a woman in a shop the other day deciding between a £200 and £300 handbag. And she probably wasn't even that wealthy compared to many in London. I can literally feel my stomach turn when I think about instances like that, in fact I can't even start writing about how it makes me feel otherwise I'll launch into an uninformed and ideologically biased tirade. Can I also just mention what I saw on TV the other night as well - you know the show in Aus 'Deal or No Deal'? Well I saw the British version. There was just so much emphasis on what a fantastically determined and proud woman this lady was because she had 'faith' that there was £75,000 in her suitcase. People were cheering and encouraging, there were tears and fist pumping. I was so totally horrified at the link they were making between this woman having 'belief in herself' and the total gamble of choosing which suitcase to open next. It was just a sickening display of greed and acceptance that money as an end is something worth striving for.

Where was I.....

So I try and justify why I should stay in such a hateful city so full of greed, pride, lust and envy. The obvious answer is so I can afford to get out of it and see the places that I've been dreaming of since we landed here just over seven months ago. But there is no way I'm going to be able to finance this next trip anyway, I'll be getting into some serious debt (and further locking myself into a pattern of earn and pay if/when I get back to Australia) whether I leave now or work for another four months. How many times Lucas and I have said - we could just leave.....but then reality kicks in - he has a wedding to attend in Canada in June, we have to wait it out.

So last night in my state of frustation with the pointlessness of pretty much everything I picked up the The Holy Qur'an that we have recently purchased to aid our research for the Central Asia/Middle East legs of the next trip. We had also been to a lecture on Friday night called 'The Future of Islam' with a debate between two renowned Islamic academics and thinkers (as opposed to scholars), an extremely eye opening look at the way Islam views itself and it's future. So the Qu'ran was actually a bit boring so I put it down and kept practicing my Kyrgyz/Uzbek/Uyghur (all Turkic languages and really just dialects of a common language).

So who thought I was about to convert to Islam? While I think spirituality has a big role in making me happier with where I am and what I'm doing - I'm not at the stage where I need to subscribe to a religion just yet.

Watched a cool movie last night, had a good sleep, followed by aforementioned eating and a high intensity gym session. So now I am feeling substantially more at ease with facing the next four months, well for a few days anyway.