Tlönista

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.