uppercase F

Zoot Suit Riot June 7, 2008

It’s been a few days since I updated this blog. Since starting my jobs I’ve been exhausted most of the time (I got pretty lazy over the last few weeks). My job at the Natural History Museum has been fantastic. I have been handling some really awesome material, including notes and illustrations from the Challenger expedition, and books from the Charles Darwin collection. If you want to see exactly what it is that I’ve been doing there the last few days, you can go to my work blog A Librarian in London.

Last night I went out with my friend Tova to a bar in Soho called The Black Gardenia. It was an awesome little place that was made to feel like a Speakeasy. It was down in a basement, and most of the patrons were dressed in twenties flavored outfits. They had a band with a standing bass and saxophone, as well as a dancer in some kind of weird bikini thing. It was super cool, and I felt very much at home amongst the Austin-looking rockabilly folks.

Today I went out to dinner with Kathleen and to see a play in Leicester Square called Haunted. It was pretty good, and made me jump a few times. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a scary play before, so it was unusual to be frightened by something that was right in front of me. Well, something besides the scary man on the bus with a saw and hammer in his bag (that actually happened to me tonight).

After the play we went to go eat Mexican food. Hoorah! We ate at a place that had supposedly received good reviews (that I can’t remember the name of now), and it was certainly a valiant effort. The chips were still tostada like in form, not greasy and as thin as they should have been. And nothing was spicy. But all in all it definitely hit the spot.

Work, Part II June 4, 2008

I began my work at the Natural History Museum today. I started out with a grand tour, which took all morning because the place is ginormous. Everyone is incredibly nice at the museum, and I was made to feel very welcome. After my tour I got to watch a lecture by one of the resident scientists called “Plants that suck!”, which was about parasitic plants. Super interesting. I had no idea mistletoe was a parasite, did you?

I met Kathleen for a picnic lunch and we ate on a gorgeous lawn in the front of the museum that almost begs to be eaten on. It was a really nice day today too (which was a nice change from yesterday), so it was a really pleasant lunch. Kathleen came in to the museum with me and we walked around the dinosaur exhibit, and then she took this dorky picture of me outside the library I’m working in. Now you can see where I’m working!

Work! June 3, 2008

Sorry I don’t have any pictures this time. I hate blogs without pictures. I tend to find them dull and tedious to read (with the exception of Jonathan’s, of course- I have to throw that in there). But I felt that whipping my camera out at work might be slightly inappropriate. The last two days I started my first full week of work, and began the preservation and archiving work at the Women’s Library. It was flipping amazing. On Monday I did preservation work. At first I cleaned some French books that were about STDs. Gratefully they were in French, so I couldn’t get too grossed out. Then I got to go through some recent donations to the library. This was awesome because they were suffrage magazines from during World War I, and belonged to a woman named Jill Craigie who was a filmmaker and wife of the labor party MP Michael Foot. My job was to go through these journals and find annotations that the two had made to the articles. The articles were interesting- covering topics like the forced feeding of women political prisoners and birth control- but my favorite part was seeing the ads. They had ads for corsets, food, and hair supplies, which would be considered pretty ironic nowadays if included in a feminist magazine.

Today I worked on an archiving project, which was incredibly nerve racking because I’ve never done any archiving or taken any classes on the subject. I was handed two boxes of stuff and told to get to business. So I spent all day going through the personal papers of a communist feminist named Nan Berger. She was an extremely interesting lady, and published a lot of material all around the world. It was interesting to see all the pseudonyms she had to go under to protect herself from the anti-communist forces. It felt a little creepy though, going through her personal correspondence. Especially when I got to the ‘death’ folder, and read the obituaries collected by her daughter. It’s weird having someone’s entire life- from birth to death- painted for you in a day.

I start my job at the Natural History museum tomorrow, so hopefully everything will continue on being super.

Betwixt! June 1, 2008

Today was another play watching day. Kathleen got us tickets for a musical called “Betwixt!” which was playing at a small theater in Islington called the King’s Head Theater. Apparently this theater has had many plays and actors go on to the West End and Broadway, so I had a feeling it would be good. I absolutely loved it! It’s probably the best one I’ve seen so far. It’s a comedy musical fairytale thing, and had a really good score. The characters were fantastic, the singing was good, and the story was funny and entertaining. There’s really no better word to describe it than adorable. I think it should definitely move on to bigger and better things, so if you get a chance to see it you should. Two thumbs up! Five Stars! Ten of ten, and all that business! My friends are awesome for hooking me up with such wonderful things.

(There are no pictures from today because I got threatened yesterday at Afrika! Afrika! with a 5000 pound fine if I took anymore pictures of the performance. This has made me weary of taking pictures at future events. See how I risk life and limb to document my experiences?!)

Chaos in the Underground May 31, 2008

OMG. Ohmigod. Oh…My…God. So I have had one heck of a crazy day. I’ll get to the Underground insanity in a minute, but this afternoon I went to see a matinée showing of Afrika! Afrika! with my friend Kathleen. Thanks to Kathleen’s superb connections we were able to sit in an executive box, and get a sweet view of the show. The show itself is incredible. I mean, un-freaking-believable. I spent most of the show worrying for the performers’ lives. Now if that doesn’t spell a good show, then I don’t know what does.

After I got home I decided to scope out the Underground scene. As some of you may have heard, they are banning alcohol on the tube as of June 1st. I had heard from many sources (including my mom) that there were going to be some parties going on tonight to celebrate ones ability to consume alcohol on trains. Specifically, there was going to be parties on the Circle Line, which as you can imagine runs in one big circle around the center of London. So, as I’m taking my little train to the center of London I notice that there are quite a few people partaking in the booze. By the time I reach King’s Cross it’s just absolute anarchy. There are thousands of people on the platforms screaming and yelling and toasting, some of them in fancy dress. Everyone was waiting for the Circle Line to arrive. At King’s Cross many different trains come into the same platform and the London Transport people were smart enough to stop announcing what platform the Circle Line was coming into. But it wasn’t enough to stop the swarm of people. I followed the crowd into a Circle Line train, where there must have been a couple hundred people in my carriage alone. Everyone was chanting and banging on the windows and ceiling. A favorite chant of the crowd was “Boris is a wanker!” (the mayor of London), which they kept chanting over and over again. Hilariously, there was a group of American girls next to me who were chanting along and one of them turned to their friend and said “What’s a wanker?”. People were banging on the ceiling so hard the lights actually turned off multiple times.

I don’t know if you can tell from the pictures, but there was a poor man in a suit who was just trying to get home. After turning down multiple offers of drinks he decided to depart the train. So… after traveling around for awhile on the sin wagon (and getting mooned- jokes on you guys, because now your asses are on the internet), the train gets to a stop and doesn’t move for about 10 minutes. Everyone starts yelling and screaming, and news gets back to us that the driver has left. That’s right- the train driver got out of the train and quit. Unbelievable. So everyone is kicked out of the train, and it is absolutely trashed. I mean, trashed like you’ve never seen. People had torn the signs and maps off the walls of the train. The ads were pulled down. There were beer bottles everywhere. Everyone was forced to get on another train, which was promptly trashed as well. I spent 2 and a half hours going around on the trains, and I only made it around the loop once. It usually only takes an hour to make one loop.

As I was taking my train back up to my house they kept making announcements regarding the closure of entire stations and lines due to the craziness. The Circle Line was closed completely. And I think it’s going to be a challenge to get the trains ride-able by tomorrow morning. There were people on all of the Circle Line trains, and I’m sure when they closed the line people just moved onto a different line. At the end of the night I came home with a piece of history- an underground map from the ceiling of a Circle Line train.

I Actually Heart Camden May 30, 2008

Tonight I went to a show called “Rapunzel’s Last Midnight” with a new friend of mine. The theater was teeny tiny- there were only about 9 or 10 of us in the audience. The show itself was… OK. A little odd, and a little meandering, but OK. Not a shabby way to spend a Friday evening though.

We then headed to Piccadilly Circus to get some food before we went to a bar. The picture above is the tube station at Piccadilly at 11pm. AT NIGHT. I felt like I was in rush hour tube traffic it was so busy. And on the street there were just thousands of people. I wonder if this is what it’s like every Friday night and I’ve just been missing out.

We decided to head up to Camden to have a few drinks, and maybe catch a glimpse of Amy Winehouse (I have not given up on my search yet my friends). No Amy, but we did find a pretty cool bar called the Buck’s Head. This bar met our all-important criteria of not too crowded, but not empty and boring. The drinks were cheap by London’s standards (7.50 for two drinks), and there was a good DJ making noise. All in all a good night. My opinion of Camden has definitely changed for the better.

It’s gross outside May 29, 2008

So there has been little activity outdoors because the weather is so freaking disgusting. But I was able to get my butt outside to see the Sex and the City movie. For some reason it came out 2 days earlier here in London, so me and Jane got matinée tickets to the movie of the decade. Yes, I said it. Before we went to the theater we ate noodles at Wagamama, which was so delicious. It’s a chain, but there’s only one in the US, in Boston. It was super good, and for desert we had the White Chocolate and Ginger Cheesecake. It was just as delicious as you are imagining. I was in heaven. The movie was good/funny/touching/cheesy. It was like a regular episode on steroids. Two thumbs up.

Hopefully the weather lightens up so I can do more touristy things before my job starts on Monday.

The Eye May 27, 2008

My friend Jane arrived in London yesterday, so I again had company in my journeys across the city. We took a 3 hour walking tour this morning that hit a lot of the places I’ve posted about already, but it was interesting to hear the history behind everything I’ve seen. Like did you know that it is legal to kill a Scottish person with a bow and arrow in the city of York, as long as the man is armed? And that the Winston Churchill statue outside the Houses of Parliament has an electric charge so birds don’t sit on him and poo on his head? Or that there are pelicans living in St. James’s Park, and they eat pigeons whole? Now you know. We were able to catch part of the changing of the guards ceremony outside Buckingham Palace, which I missed when I visited a few days ago. Lots of pomp and circumstance, as well as tubas. Or sousaphones, as I was corrected by Jane the musicology student.

After the tour we were quite tired so we stopped into a pub and ate some food and drank some beer. Two hours later (after some confusion with the food), we decided to make our way over to the London Eye. I had been on the Eye when I was in London 7 years ago, but Jane had never been and it gives such great views of the city. You can see Peaches in the photo above enjoying the view. The line to get on the Eye was heinous, and it’s completely over-priced, but it’s definitely a cool thing to do.

A Friend! May 25, 2008

Today my childhood friend Danielle came down from Milton Keynes to hang out with me. Whipee! I’ve been friendless since coming here, so it was refreshing to have someone to direct my comments to that isn’t a teddy bear. Though, as you can see from the pictures, Peaches was still present. We both went down to Buckingham Palace to see if the queeny was home. If she was, she was being very rude and not coming down to greet us. We then strolled over to Hyde Park (the real one, not the trendy part of Austin), which is lovely. I tend to find parks dull and boring, but Hyde Park had a gorgeous rose garden and it smelled wonderful.

We then walked around until we found somewhere to eat that both of us could afford, and ended up chowing down at a tavern. It was delicious. Danielle ordered nachos for us, and- I swear to God- it was a plate of doritos with sour cream, guacamole, and salsa. But nachos nonetheless! Yummy. I also ordered a cider called Bulmers, and I’m not sure if you can tell from the photo, but I think it’s a cider made for giant people. I, ladies and gentlemen, consumed a drink containing 580ml.

We then strolled over to Leicester Square and Covent Garden, where all the West End plays are showing. It was interesting to see the Sunday evening theater crowd wondering around, and it reminded me a lot of New York.

Yay for knowing someone!

Oi! May 24, 2008

Since the sun was actually high in the sky today I decided to make my way over to Camden Town. Sheila had told me there is a market there on the weekend where “people my age” hang out. This sounded promising. I took the bus over because the Underground is a complete mess this weekend due to the Bank Holiday on Monday. When I got off the bus I was swept into a crowd of what seemed like a million people. It was absolute chaos. I guess since it’s a holiday weekend everyone and their mom decided to come out. There were in fact lots of people my age, but the market wares weren’t quite what I was expecting. Though there were some pretty awesome music stands selling old albums, and some pretty nifty clothing shops, most of the stands looked like unlicensed Hot Topic Stores. I must have had 10 people come up to me and hand me fliers for tattoo and piercing shops. Now, I’m certainly not one to shy away from this kind of stuff, but it all seemed a little… fake. Like everyone was trying REALLY hard to be punk. Maybe I’m just being a pessimist. Take a look for yourself…