Nylons in a Knot

This week starts with great news! I found out what the green shop is, and I'm happy to report back that they seem to do everything in the way of house modifications and renovations. Lofts, installation, plumbing, etc, etc. This is where my attention span stops short. No house = no renovations necessary = no need to care! But I know that last week's post kinda left you hanging...really not keen to be the one who promises you a story about a green shop then doesn't deliver. Anyway, whoo-hoo.

However, and I am truly sorry, this post is not going to be solely about the green shop. I hope you're not too disappointed. Honestly, I don't think I could get anything out of it other than what is above. I could try, but I'm not going to, because more changes have been afoot this past week...

Despite the fact that it's still high summer, with glorious, balmy days (well, ish - in a London sort of way) and blue skies (yes, again, ish) it would appear that the football season is on again.

Every year it takes me by surprise. Because, seriously, the last football season just finished. How is it even possible that they've started again? H1 and I didn't believe it, despite all the evidence - the hordes of people making their way into Fulham, the rubbish on the ground, the smell of takeaways in the air - bewildered, we looked around us, we listened to the stampeding feet and the roars coming through the air, and like reeeeaaaalllly slow people, we eventually came to the conclusion that yes, in fact, it was the football responsible. Then we swore. A lot.

Being a foreigner in London, you have to be very careful about showing your distaste for football, or so goes the accepted wisdom. I'm quite an open person, I don't do well with lies or secrets - so I'm pretty sure everyone around me knows exactly how I feel about it. Including you. It's not just that I don't get the game (although I don't - how can you feel passion for something when nothing ever happens?) but I just don't understand any of it. The takeaways! The rubbish! The nylon! How can one sport make so many people, grown people, people who should know better, wear such vast quantities of nylon? 

I would question where all that nylon comes from, but I know. The reason I know is because across the road is a 'club shop' which sells football nylon for people who don't actually play for the club, but like to dress like they do. (In nylon). All I can say is I hope this 'shop' heavily invests in fire retardant every football season. Seems like a good insurance policy.

There is a club shop across the road from us, because we live near a football club. Not very far away, in the other direction, is another club shop, which - surprise, surprise - has another football club rather close to it. Essentially, our flat lies in a midpoint, an equidistant amount from two football clubs that lie in opposite directions. And they're not the funny type of football clubs, where four people show up when they play at home and sit on benches outside, shivering in the rain. I could respect that. No, these are big clubs, which belong to the Premiership (please don't ask how I know that word) and have fans, and everything. It is grim.

What this boils down to is that H1 and I are not football lovers. Yet we live really close to two football clubs. Our flat is probably the worst point in London for those who are not fans of the beautiful (yet lets be honest, intensely boring) game to live. And we live there.

It's a cruel irony, and every year, when the football season starts up again and scares the living daylights out of me, I reflect upon our decision and laugh, as I recall our conviction that the location was pretty much perfect. It is a rather wonderful thing actually, like looking back at how stupid you were when you were a teenager, and realising how much you've changed. Except without the change bit. Another summer nearly over, another football season back on, another nylon shirt sold. All you can do is roll with it and laugh, and so long as it's funny (and football will always be really quite a joke to me) it's all ok. 

All Change in SW6

I've noticed a few changes, after just that one week away.

London is a ghost town, for starters. The streets are eerily bare when I walk them in the mornings, and I feel like I'm interrupting them. The schools are empty, my office is empty. The homeless people are still hanging out in the park, though.

There is also a new shop a few buildings down. For the life of me I can't work out what it is. Before I left, it had green paint in the windows, announcing it was 'Coming Soon' - but not actually letting anyone into the secret of what it might be. Now it has green signage and open doors, and a ubiquitous anagram name, and still no clues as to what might go on in there. I would investigate further, but I just don't care enough. One day I might (we will have to wait for a very slow news week).

Then, of course, there are our new downstairs neighbours. Up until a few weeks ago, we had one or two pleasant boys living down there, who never seemed to go out to work, ate a lot of takeaway, and did not make noise. We decided they were complete stoners, because of the food and the quiet and the dopey greetings when we ran into them on the stairs, and accepted the peace.

He/they moved out, and was replaced by a man who came in every day for a couple of weeks, cleaning and doing various other mysterious things to the place, before he also disappeared.

Then we went away, and upon our return, we found there were new people in there.

A little side note - I remember having a conversation with an old colleague last Christmas, one who lived outside London and commuted. He was complaining about his neighbours - how in his town, everyone knew his name and who he was and his routine, and how he shied away from that. To commiserate, I told him I took a highly Londonist attitude to my neighbours - I didn't know them, but it didn't stop me hating them. Oh how we laughed.

Thing is, I didn't mean a word of it - I felt no animosity towards them at all. It's easy not to when they don't make a peep, and don't complain about your noise (we live above, it's a rickety conversion with squeaky floors, I often wear shoes in the house, and we listen to music often. I'm in no doubt that we are terrible terrible neighbours to have).

So now, karma has bitten us. Our new downstairs friends may as well be a plague of locusts, for the sense of Biblical doom I feel when I hear them.

Opening windows.

Closing the same windows.

Opening them again.

Moving.

Talking.

Yelling.

Watching.

And so on. Everything these people do, they do with noise. There is a him, and a her, and they cannot operate at normal decibel levels. I lie there, tense and rigid, at indecently late hours, as late as 11 some nights, and listen to them live their lives, and play with their windows (if you think I'm obsessed with the windows, you want to try living above this. The weather in London does not change that much on a half-hourly basis. There's no need for all this fooling round with the windows.) Sometimes he talks, and I swear, there is a noise much like I imagine a sonic boom to be like. Sometimes she talks, and it's like an overgrown, high-pitched rabbit that has escaped its hutch and just can't resist sharing the excitement.

But in the grand scheme of things, this is honestly not so bad. Really and truly. For starters, we can put on music, we can try to drown them out, and once I'm asleep nothing's waking me up anyway. The main thing keeping me sane, however, is knowing how much worse it has to be for them. They have to live with each other, and underneath us, and the advantage of being on top is that you will always, always win a battle of neighbourly noise.

So hey ho, onwards and upwards into another exciting week...fingers crossed London busies up a bit. Otherwise, next week - the mysteries within the shop with the green writing!

Out of the frying pan...

...and head first into fiery New York, for a too-short week of fast-paced fun.

A well-placed flirt with the man at the bag drop got me checked in and through security an hour before I was meant to, meaning an entire extra hour to spend with H1, who was meeting me on the other side of T5. Convinced my bag was going to end up on a flight to Alaska, I scammed my way through anyway - the previous week without H1 had flown but another hour without him seemed absolutely outrageous.

Finding him lurking outside duty-free, I broke the news that our flight was delayed, not caring a jot myself. We shrugged it off, glowing in each other's presence, smiling contentedly round at the rushing crowds, and went for a little wander round the shops, spraying perfumes, flicking through magazines, and laughing at Gordon Ramsay's Plane Food. Then boredom set in, and we sat down to watch Van Wilder on the laptop. Then hunger set in, and we went for dinner. Then we realised our flight was five hours late and that we had to call the shuttle in New York and let them know of the delay, and this we did (no proooooblem, Sir, the shuttle will be here when you get in). Then more boredom came along, our sentences got shorter and shorter, and it was with huge relief that the plane finally, finally boarded and took off.

Landing in New York, tired and puffy faced at about 2am EST, we got into one of those yellow taxis you may have seen before (shuttle lady lied!) and headed for Skyline Hotel, Hells Kitchen, to find we had been upgraded to a suite, albeit one with no rubbish bin. Somehow this marked the mood for the rest of the trip - really, extremely good things kept happening, but with marked oddities.

I cannot say enough good things about New York. I went there for three days three years ago, after working at a summer camp, and found it tricky. This time it was so so easy for such basic reasons:

1. More money in New York is better than less money. I had more money.

2. More time in New York is better than less time. I had more time.

3. Less people in New York is better than more people. I had only H1 and it was perfect.

Of course, when I say I only had H1, I mean I only had H1, the girls who befriended me in Billabong, my mum's friend who came to see us for the day, H1's friend who went for lunch with us, the wonderful couple from Ohio we met at a bar, and every waiter, server, and barman we stumbled across. The friendliness levels were the highest I've ever seen, so strong it took less than a morning to strip the London sarcasm from me and have me asking after strangers and telling them to have a nice day. The only unpleasant people we came across were the cab drivers (and that was fine and expected, welcome even, for what is New York without crazy cab drivers?) and an American lady outside Grand Central who loudly denounced the tourists getting in her way. Even she couldn't touch this mood - she was merely comic, and not at all convincing. (Yeah lady, you try to be mean. London would eat you alive.)

We ate great food (I was surprised), saw incredible sights (I wasn't surprised) and did some spectacular shopping (um, not even mildly shocked by that one. There's a reason more money is better than less). We went to a crappy comedy show near Broadway and laughed and laughed. We wandered through Times Square, Union Square, and Bryant Park, and saw the New York Public Library where the Sex and the City wedding nearly took place. H1 (who, by the way, maintains he has a firm dislike of SatC and all it stands for) got so excited when he saw the street where Carrie beats up Big with her flowers he almost choked.

We drank good coffee, we drank terrible coffee, we drank caaw-feeee. We ate bagels but avoided the giant pretzels from the street carts. We got rained on and we got burnt, then we got on a plane and it was all over.

Flying into London, my usual relief at being home was not there at all, not even a little bit. The sky was grey and the landing was rough, and it was cold outside, need-a-merino-jumper cold. We went out to the drycleaners and the supermarket and nobody told us to have a nice day. The builders had been in and there was dust everywhere.

My holiday romance is over, and my long term relationship with London seems sour in comparison.