Moose on the Move!

Little Old London

We arrived in London via Heathrow Airport at about ten thirty in the morning. It is an enormous airport and difficult to navigate. It is so busy in fact that when we pulled up our plane was not allocated a gate, we just pulled up on the tarmac and had to walk down some stairs to awaiting buses which would drive us to the airport proper. Except that they didn’t have enough buses at the ready… so the two of us, who had been sitting near the back of the plane, had to stop half way to the front doors and wait for the back-up buses to arrive. It was the last thing either of us felt like doing at that point… after a long flight, standing within sniffing distance of the outside but not able to get there!! Arghhh.

We did make it out eventually and cleared immigration and customs without too many hassles and made our way down to the city trains. So began our adventures with the London public transport system. Being exhausted from the overnight flight and the time difference we were very pleased to see that the train was almost empty as we boarded. With much relief we plonked our packs down on a seat, plonked ourselves down beside them and commenced zoning out. As we travelled closer to the city more people got on but we weren’t paying much attention until the middle aged woman next to me turned around and informed us that we were both very rude for having our packs on the seats when they were intended for people. Well. She was right, we shouldn’t have had them there, but it wasn’t an intentional insult, and nobody had asked us if they could sit down. We stood with our packs for the remainder of the trip and consoled ourselves partly with the fact that not all our seats were immediately filled when we stood up…but mostly by the fact that she had really ugly shoes.

The plan was to stay with our good friend Leia Sanders from home but, being a Friday, she was at work when we arrived. So we headed for Hyde Park in the city centre to wait the few hours until she finished. Many people had told us that England is a miserably rainy, cold, grey sort of a place. We have proof that it isn’t. Hyde Park that afternoon was beautiful. The grass was green, the sky was blue and the sun was shining. In short, it was the perfect place to snooze for a couple of hours, using our packs as back rests.

Photoson our photo pages.

We met Leia a couple of hours later in a slightly less delightful place, namely the food court at Victoria Station. It is amazing how alike food courts around the world look. We splurged and bought a small fries from KFC to share for a snack (the exchange rate is not good at the moment).

Leia lives in an area of London called Thornton Heath, it is about a half hour train ride from Victoria Station in a southerly direction. She had just moved into an apartment on her own, it is a one bedroom affair on the ground floor of what was once a fairly typical English city house. There are now either 4 or 5 flats in the one building. Leia’s is very nice. The kitchen is simple but looks like it was all installed not long ago and the landlord put in a washing machine when Leia asked. One thing that we were both a bit surprised (and also delighted) at, is the way that Leia pays for her electricity usage in the flat. She has a ‘vending machine’, a little box on the wall by the front door that takes £1 coins and deals out 3 units per pound. Very neat. What happens if you don’t put coins in? The electricity just cuts out.

Leia had dinner plans with a friend already that night, so the two of us walked her back up to the train station and then went in search of dinner type food. The kebab shop looked too good to pass, so we didn’t. There is a very culturally and ethnically mixed population in Thornton Heath and it was interesting watching people come in and order in one accent, have their order confirmed in another accent and then pay with pounds. The kebabs were great. We retired fairly early that night into Leia’s bed which she had insisted we take, we were very grateful as we slipped off to sleep, emitting only occasional kebab flavoured burps.

Before we left Perth we went to Thomas Cook to open an account here. We had to give them most of $4000 for the required opening deposit of £1500. OK. My sister, Inge, who is renting our house in Kardinya, had been faithfully gathering our letters and had sent a selection of the important ones over. Among them were a collection of letters from the bank and our first account statement. According to the paperwork, our £1500 had been deposited into the account, withdrawn from the account, deposited, withdrawn, deposited again and withdrawn once more and our grand total at the end of the statement was a whopping 6 pence!!! What??? And where was our money???

Needless-to-say this bank account was now our very top priority! The following day, Saturday, the three of us headed back into London town. It was another lovely sunny day and it felt like it had to be a great day. We took all the required paperwork from home to open our new UK bank account, and after waiting quite some time we finally got to speak to someone. She looked confused, took our papers and went out the back to try and sort it out. She came back and told us that our cards were ready, she wasn’t sure why the money had gone in and out but that there was $1492.06 cleared in our account. Big smile. Ok, good, but why is there £8 still missing? She said because it was Saturday there wasn’t a lot she could do but to leave it with her and she would find out. Hmmmm….

We spent the rest of the day wandering around the city, going to Leicester Square, Covent Garden, Regent Street, Piccadilly Circus, Oxford Circus… it is a little like being on a Monopoly Board. It was a nice day.

That evening, back in Thornton Heath, we decided to have our first real English pub experience. Chris and I had noticed that between the train station and Leia’s place there was a small pub called ‘Bar 68’. We had stuck our heads in previously and decided that it looked ok, so the arrangement was made to drop in for a quiet beer with Leia. When we arrived the door was locked but one of three guys at the bar jumped up and unlocked it for us. It was smokier inside than it had looked and as we tried to decide what to drink the three of us were all trying not to start coughing. I decided to duck off to the toilet for a bit of fresh air. On my way back to the toilet I saw some interesting informational pamphlets on the wall, I started to get suspicious. As I sat down with Leia at our little table (Chris was still paying for the beers) Leia leaned in and said “I think this is a gay bar”, my suspicions were confirmed. All of a sudden it became very obvious – the rainbow triangle on the door was not there to look pretty, the ‘All gay men need to know about condoms’ pamphlets, the signed photo of KD Lang, the photos of men dancing closely in hot pants and the trolley full of gay magazines all gave it away. We told Chris when he joined us at the table and the three of us sat there and contemplated the significance of our first pub experience being a gay bar. We finished our beers and left giggling at our good fortune.


Sunday we headed into the city (getting good mileage on our travel passes) to meet up with a couple of Chris’ colleagues from Motorola at home, Toran and Liam. They had been working just outside London for a couple of weeks and had the day off to come in and check out the city. We met them by Big Ben, from across the road when we first spotted them it looked as though the two guys were taking it in turn to propose to each other. They were down on bended knee and all. However when we asked Toran about it a minute later he told us that they both just wanted to have a photo of themselves in front of BB while he rang out 12 mid-day. The height of BB in relation to the height of photographer and subject meant that to get both faces in the shot the photographer was required to kneel. Not so exciting….

We wandered from there up the road in search of lunch and found ourselves a cosy little English pub. Not specifically for gay people this time… and got ourselves some good English fare. Chris and I were madly trying not to convert the price of our modest meals into Aussie dollars (my £3.50 bowl of wedges came to almost $10 – eeep!).

We left the boys there, with vague plans to possibly meet up again later, and walked up to Trafalgar Square, down through Saint James’ Park (it was gorgeous with the daffodils all in bloom) where we sat for a few moments on deck-chairs set out for public use. All of a sudden we were standing in front of Buckingham Palace. It was prettier this time than I remember it. My impression last time was of a big concrete block, it is still a big concrete block ( I don’t think that will ever change) but it seemed nicer this time. Despite searching the windows closely we didn’t see the Queen (she probably has better things to do – like painting her toenails) or any royals. We did see some of the guards marching around and swapping over posts. Yes they were wearing big fluffy hats.

We walked down to the River Thames where we saw the London Eye – a huge Ferris wheel that was built fairly recently and although it doesn’t fit with all the other old buildings in the city it is quite exciting. We walked along the north bank of the river to Cleopatra’s Obelisk which bears the scars of the first bombing raid on London in WWII.

Later we met Chris’ colleagues in an area of London called Earl’s Court for a few drinks and a bit of dinner. We ended up getting a little lost on the underground on the way home – some of the lines are not as straight forward as they seem, especially if you’re a little tired.

Monday morning we slept in a little, Leia included because she is now on school holidays – yay! Then Chris and I went back into the city to buy me a new mobile phone. The one I had at home had been progressively dying and the month that it wasn’t plugged in while we were travelling just pushed it over the edge. Poor little thing.

That evening the three of us decided to try out another local delicacy – Wimpy Burger. Yes, you read that right – Wimpy. It is a burger chain over here so we bravely headed up to give it a go (just so that we could report back to you, of course!). We went in and ordered take away from the man behind the counter who set to work making the burgers fresh. We walked them home and sat down to give it a go. Honestly – it was all a bit, well, wimpy. I guess you can believe what’s written on the signs!

Most of the rest of the week was reasonably quiet – we started looking at the internet for vans/cars, we hunted around for an adapter, a thumb drive and a case for ‘fat cat’ (Chris’ hard drive containing all his music files) – except for Wednesday.
The day after we arrived, Leia got a call on her mobile which was for me. It was the guy from the shipping company about our unaccompanied luggage. It had arrived the same day we did BUT we couldn’t pick it up until it had cleared Customs BUT customs are only open on Wednesdays (between 9 and 3), so they would have to hold onto our bags until then BUT because that is longer than the first two days they were going to have to charge us storage for the remaining three days. How is that fair???

This should have been a fair indication for how the whole day was going to go… We knew it was going to take us a while to get out there on public transport but we had no idea. It was seven hours from the time we left to the time we got home again with our bags. AArrrgghhhh….. The bus was tricky, the lines were long, we had to walk 20 minutes to customs, wait in line there, walk back, wait some more and then bus/train it home. The whole process was painful, with the added stress of knowing that if we didn’t get to Customs in time then we would have to leave our bags there for another whole week and pay £6.5 (about $15) a day storage….

Thursday night we went our for dinner with Leia and a group of her friends (almost all of whom are originally from Perth!) to the Covent Garden area. It was a really nice evening with some really nice people.

Friday afternoon, all feeling tired, we went to see the movie ‘Hitch’ at a local cinema, it was just like cinema’s at home. With yummy popcorn.

So all in all it was a good start to our time in the UK. We had started discussing what kind of a vehicle to buy, I thought a Mazda Bongo sounded too funny not to get, but Chris wasn’t convinced. We will get it sorted soon.