Tlönista

While Jennie was out doing touristy things last weekend, I was exploring a different part of the Thames — heading west out to Richmond Park, one of London’s old royal parks and now a national nature reserve. Took a while to get there, but I made it. When I arrived under the vast open sky I couldn’t help but let out a little whoop of glee.

Richmond Park is, in a word, gorgeous. In an afternoon I did little more than skim half the perimeter and for someone unacquainted with English nature it was all new. There were lovely old oak forests — spacious, as oak forests are — that reminded me a little of the oak savannah of my Pinery back in Ontario. I also walked over great softly rolling swathes of grass, pale and windblown and criss-crossed with trails, that stretched out almost to the horizon where dark woods beckoned; and there were also hillsides covered with ferns which I came to realize were properly bracken, and being dry and brown made satisfying brackeny crunches when I stepped on them.

After spending my weekdays in sooty Islington what I relished most was all the smells. If you spend enough time among trees you find that each has a different smell — the distinct tang of willow, the subtle acidic scent of oak, the musty, rusty smell of dead leaves from chestnut trees — all rich and bracing. And the sharp pungent smell of rabbit spoor and deer spoor and the broader warmer smell of horse manure. (There were many people riding along the paths.)

I didn’t see any deer. Richmond Park supports a population of seven hundred or so (it really is a big park), which is carefully culled, natch; there has been deer hunting here for centuries. The old gnarled oak trees had long ago been trimmed, no branches at browsing height, and there were no telltale signs of deer overpopulation such as decimated underbrush. Or, to bring this full circle, tame, unafraid deer. The squirrels are all grey, and considerably smaller and more timid. There are also a great many ravens. In the ponds there are several kinds of fowl — mallards, a small black kind of duck, a large goosey brown kind, enormous white swans, and even Canada geese, brash and aggressive as always, biting each other’s necks in disputes over breadcrumbs and hissing at fat pigeons.

The park contains many cultivated areas, notably a garden on a hill which was originally a barrow-mound, and has a magnificent view of London. In the other direction there is a view of St. Paul’s, grey and distant through a gap in the hedge. It’s one of eight or so “protected views” of the cathedral in the city — incidentally one of the others happens to be at One Tree Hill in the park down the street from my house.

All in all, my kind of day — tromping around through the woods, and listening to Immaculate Machine on repeat.

(See more Richmond Park photos on my Flickr.)

When last we met, I was lost in the rose gardens of Regent’s Park in the rain. Two more things have happened since then:

1) We’ve moved out of the ISH into the mysterious BUNAC hostel, mostly because it’s cheaper. It also has free WiFi and laundry facilities and a kitchen. It’s a crowded, chaotic, cluttered little warren, filled mostly with Americans; everyone is really friendly and has been there forever.

You can’t find the BUNAC hostel’s address online, and even the hostel’s proprietor will only give you relative directions: “Go out of Goodge Street, make a right, make a left…” Despite the lit-up sign above the doorway, this place seems to be a well-kept secret. Probably a good thing, since it’s busy enough as it is.

2) As some of you have already heard through the grapevine, I got a job as an office assistant in a law firm in prosperous, gentrified Clerkenwell. I had to go out and buy Good Shoes and Matching Socks and a Good Shirt, and even still I’m short of office clothes. Luckily I discovered Primark.

Getting a job that — for the first time in my life — doesn’t involve selling bread, planting trees sixty hours a week, or ringing up groceries has taken a great weight off my mind. Knock on wood…

As of today (Saturday night), we’re still apartment-hunting. And we’re only booked into the hostel till Monday. Pretty pressed for time, but I am hopeful.

Today we went to the British Museum and saw, among many other things, the real Rosetta Stone. It’s such a huge place that one could just keep coming back, and since admission is free, there’s no reason not to. It only sharpened my hunger for art museums and galleries, though — the Victoria & Albert, and the Tate Modern, calling out for me to visit them! Soon. Soon.

Islington is nothing like Islington.

Regent’s Park is nothing like Regent Park.

They announce the station at the end of the line, too. “This train is for Aldgate”, and so on. It threw me off the first time, when we were travelling from the airport and I was damn near insensible with jet lag. Across the car from me was one of those digital scrolling marquee things with the message THIS TRAIN IS FOR COCKFOSTERS. I was a little shocked, and wondered why nobody else had noticed that some hooligan had hax0red the message system with profane denigrations in English slang, like that one time someone changed the GO train message to read “Stephen Harper eats babies” and then a colleague had to make an official statement to the fact that he had worked with Mr. Harper for X many years and never in that time had he seen him eat a baby. Then I looked at the map and realized the station at the end of the line was called Cockfosters.

Today Jennie and I went to the orientation at BUNAC, and bought cell phones, and got bank accounts at HSBC, and got Oysters (metropasses), and tomorrow we are going to go look at apartments. Now I’m going to go take a walk in the park.

Update: I got lost in the park. It’s a lot bigger than it looked. There’s a zoo, and a lake, and rose gardens, and swans, and soccer fields, and an entire college, and lots of paths. I might had enjoyed the experience more had it not been dusk and raining, and had I not missed the hostel’s dinner and also the period for half-price drinks at the bar. But that’s okay.