One one things

I was rudely awoken this morning by the drilling and hammering next door. We seem to have bad luck with houses this year, first dead boilers (I dreamt last night that the boiler in our new place had broken, I am truly scarred) and now building next door. The unfortunate thing is the guy who owns the place seems a lovely fellow and is so apologetic that I don’t have the heart to show him my wrath. The builders themselves are Eastern European so it’s a bit tough to get through to them. My sign language skills have been tested and by the looks on their faces i don’t think i’m getting too far with it. Might have to resort to a single finger extended vertically. It’s funny how when speaking to ppl whose command of English is less than perfect, your own use of language also deteriorates. I catch myself saying things like “drilling lot of noise, sleep very difficult, drilling stop”. Sounds like a telegram.

So this goes on between nine and five, and that is fair enough as these are regular working hours and most ppl are out of the house. Only slacker students like me will be bumming around at home. But come 5 O clock the drilling stops, and there’s an uneasy silence. And then it starts. Europop. I tried to decide which I prefer, pre-pubescent Latvian girls doing a dodgy imitation of the vengaboys or post-pubescent Polish men drilling to the tune of she’ll be coming round the mountain, and i couldn’t so i just left the house for most of the day.

With this very invalid excuse for not working I did a bunch of touristy things in London. I spent ages in Covent Garden watching the street theater which is really good. I particularly liked the crazy Jamaican limbo dancer who managed to limbo under a stick balanced on just two bottles side by side. I’m sure he was inspired by “Feeling hot hot hot” playing on his little radio. The crazy tattooed guy who juggled the apple with two machetes was also a hit. More than what he did it was the whole act and his witty banter that made it really entertaining. The two middle aged guys in suits who did a double act were probably the most amusing bc they have an excellent sense of humour and despite some of the jokes being rehearsed it was quite apparent that a lot of it was adlib. The shows are free but you are expected to drop in a quid or two into the performers hat at the end of the show, and they make sure that the cheap skates who try to free ride are ridiculed sufficiently. The finishing line of the tattooed guy is “Drop in one or two quid, if you’re rich 20 quid, if you’re a tourist 50 quid, if you’re Australian..I understand”.

I also dropped into some of the nice markets in London. Portobello market in Notting hill is very nice despite the crowds on a Saturday. After crawling through a mass of American and European accents I managed to get a glimpse of some of the shops. These line the street and sell mainly “antiques”, the authenticity of many of which I can’t guarantee. I could have sworn that I saw a sign saying “antiques made to order” but then that may have been a figment of my imagination. There are also some amazingly cheap CD shops. They sell 4 for a tenner and they appear very authentic. I got myself a copy of the Lion King London musical soundtrack and have now taken to singing it aloud to scare the tourists. My favourite part of Notting hill is the farmer’s market where they have loads of fresh veggies, fish and butchers. Few things give me more pleasure than fish shopping. After much fussing about, sniffing and head scratching we decided to get some French Sea Bass and Sea Brine. The former was steamed after being marinated in lemmon, fish sauce, french dressing and vinegar. It was divine. The latter was baked but I think it’ll be better curried. We got some squid too which we had as a snack, beautifully batter fried by my housemate, another experiment that turned out very well. A different stall was selling splendid looking Italiany stuff. Too much choice can be bad for you, specially on menus and in food stalls. It took at least ten minutes to decide which 4 things to buy and finally decided on some artichokes bathed in olive oil, an excellent pesto of black olives, anchovies and capers, a variety of mushrooms marinated in olive oil and spices and some feta cheese, topped off with some fresh ciabatta bread. Santa Maria.

On another day I quite randomly walked into a massive second hand book market in Southbank. Book markets are another source of endless joy for me, I tend to spend hours and hours at them. As one would expect the quality of book varies greatly, you get some very ordinary stuff like “How to get rid of worms: fast” but if you can be bothered and have the time, there are bound to be some excellent finds. I was lucky enough to find a book that i’ve been looking for for ages, “In Xanadu” by William Dalrymple. Some time ago I wrote very briefly about “The Age of Kali” by the same writer, “In Xanadu” is his first book. The guy was a student in Cambridge when he decided to mimic the journey of Marco Polo from Jerusalem to Xanadu, the summer palace of Kubla Khan. I’m only a few pages into the book but it’s tremendously interesting and rich so far and I’m looking forward to reading the rest of it. This sort of book frustrates me bc I can barely organize a trip to one or two countries in Europe let alone a trip across one or two continents. I need to get my act together before the academic year, and my student life ends.