Societal relativism

When I went to London, at the end of 2006, I thought everything was wonderful. Public transport that worked. And I felt safe, even when I was walking home alone in the dead of night. Of course, I was subconsciously (and not so subconsciously) comparing London to Cape Town.

When I visited again in October 2007 it was great to return to the familiar home of HP. But some things had changed. I found myself clutching my bag to my chest whenever I ventured outside, and complaining if the train was a couple of minutes late. Now I was comparing London to Liechtenstein/Switzerland, and it didn´t quite measure up.

On the wrong side of the (smoking) law

When I was in the UK, I wanted to see as many friends as possible. "Come to Brighton," suggested KR, so I came. After a suitably decadent Friday night, KR was up brighton early (sorry!) to go to work, and I was at the train station. With a lamentably heavy "overnight" bag. (My packing problems are documented here, and here). In the rain.

I was only due back in London that evening but, despite my heavy load and the shite weather, I was tempted to spend the day exploring Brighton. First up, I asked a policeman at the station if there was anywhere to leave my bag. Now, KR had already informed me that there wasn´t, but I figured there was no harm in a second opinion. The policeman dispelled any lurking doubts with a brusque retort: "We don´t have lockers. Terrorists are likely to put a bomb in them."

I was tempted to reply: "And Eid Mubarak to you to sir," for it was indeed Eid, but figured that wouldn´t go down too well.

I decided to have a cigarette while I pondered my plans for the day. I went and stood outside the station, but under the shelter, due to the rain. At which point the policeman chased after me, to inform me that the station was a no-smoking area. Apparently, you can´t just be outside the actual building to smoke, you have to walk a few metres to outside the station gates, because what I took to be outside is still technically part of the station.

Pernickety fucking Brits. In Zurich, you can smoke in the train station itself. However, I duly had my cigarette outside in the rain, as I am scared to death of the British police. Gone is the image of the friendly bobby from my childhood; instead I live in fear that one of the paranoid freaks will randomly gun me down just because.

The altercation had put me in a defiant mood. "Damn my packing skills, and the bloody weather," I reasoned: "When am I ever likely to be in Brighton again?" So I set off for the pier weighed down by my bag, but buoyed up by an intrepid spirit.

From a disgruntled passenger

What with my busy schedule in London I spent a fair amount of time negotiating the tube, and South West Trains. Never mind the gap, while travelling by train I had to contend with the following announcement:

"This is a passenger announcement. Beggars occasionally board trains, and ask for money. Please do not encourage them by giving any. If you see a beggar on this train, please tell a member of staff."

A "passenger announcement"? I noticed when I was in the UK that the Brits (recently?) seem to have developed an annoying habit of stating the bloody obvious, at least when it comes to officialese. And "beggars"?! It beggars belief... I suppose being PC isn´t that high on Londoners´agenda, considering their newly elected mayor.

Having to listen to this announcement roughly every 30 seconds (or so it seemed), was certainly just as intrusive (albeit in a different way) as any number of people asking me for money. (And I used to travel by train in Cape Town, so I have also experienced the latter.)

My levels of irritation rose to such heights that I took to scanning the carriages for anyone who looked likely to approach me for money, just so I could defiantly give them all my small change. There were people snogging, and reading, and talking too loudly on their mobiles, and reading, and drinking beer, and reading. But no one ever asked me for money, which was perversely disappointing. Time to can that announcement, methinks.

A night at the theatre

Back to my time in London. My friend (like I said, I don´t do acquaintances), Martin McCutcheon (that´s Martin, not Martine) was appearing in a play at the Pacific Playhouse while I was in town, so naturally I said I´d go along.

Cut to my birthday celebrations in London. My friend Warwick and I were making plans to see each other again. "I´m busy tomorrow," he said. "Going to a play." "What play?" I asked, curious. Turned out we were both going to see Martin´s play, and London was starting to feel as small as Cape Town.

It was ages since I´d seen any theatre, and Kikia Te Poa was just the ticket. Boers, Kiwis and rugby, not my usual style, but it worked. Aaron Hapuku was outstanding as the half-Maori/half Irish soldier, and Martin held his own as a boer commando, although I did tease him about his Afrikaans accent (more than passable to an English ear, but may not have cut it in Pretoria).

However, I was somewhat distracted by the conviction that the people sitting opposite us in the small theatre were none other than JM and Dot. Considering the man has written about rugby, and that it was a play with a South African connection, this hypothesis seemed not inconceivable. I asked Warwick for his opinion. "You would know," he said. But in the absence of my glasses (a story for another post), I didn´t.

So, after the play, I covertly followed the couple out of the theatre to see if I could garner any further clues. A few metres down the road, I realised this was supremely stalkerish behaviour, and decided a couple of drinks and post-performance shmoozing was the more dignified option... The "night I saw JM and Dot at the theatre" still makes for a pretty good story; who cares if it´s "true" or not?

Ankle tan

It is beginning to frustrate me that I'm so out of date on my blog. I mean, in terms of posting, I'm still in London, but in real life I'm actually in Dubai.

And some posts just won't wait. I'm distraught, because I've just discovered that I have an ankle tan, courtesy of the Capri trousers I wore on the city tour yesterday. At least it's not a sock tan. And after winter in Liech, I'm glad I've got any sort of tan at all!

How to be a perfect host

For my time in London, I stayed with my saucy HP cousins, and their kitty cat, Muffin Pants. They are definitely top contenders for the Consummate Host 2007 Awards. Here´s what they did right:

1. Gave me a room and their spare key.
2. Did not comment on my comings and goings in the early hours of the morning.
3. Went away on holiday for a large part of my stay.
4. Lived their own lives, and let me live mine.

It´s simple really. All too often, when you´re staying with friends or family, both parties end up bending over backwards to accommodate each other, and end up with a compromise that leaves everyone feeling disgruntled. HP just continued about their daily lives, and assumed I´d look after myself.

Perfect, and no feelings of catholic guilt to haunt me. Sure the evenings when we all managed to be home at the same time were few and far between, but this made them even more special. It´s a rare gift indeed to give you guests the space they need... Perhaps it´s because HP are cat people?

Birthday V2.1

I´d already had a pre-party, a party, and an after party with my new friends in Liech. Why stop now?

I rounded up my friends in London for another celebration. The very lovely Leti suggested Candid Cafe as a venue - reminiscent of ATOM sans copious alcohol consumption, sexy waiters, surly barman, and infamous bathroom shenanigans.

But hey, I´m not complaining - it was definitely the closest I´ve found to Obscurvitory in London. It was fabulous (dahling!) to catch up with friends from Cape Town and Grahamstown days in a setting that felt a just a little bit like home.

Meeting Mr Generation X

As we were all milling around in the foyer of the Bloomsbury Theatre, I spotted someone I knew - not a common phenomenon for me in London. By "knew", I mean I thought this person might be the brother of an ex-housemate. I´d only met him once before, years ago - the brother, not the ex-housemate - but like, we are "friends" too, on the interweb. And the person across the room from me, did bear a striking resemblance to the profile pic of my "friend", TX.

I was at a book reading by Douglas Coupland. Would TX go to a Douglas Coupland reading, I wondered idly? Based upon my limited knowledge of his personality, I reflected that he very well might. Would a Douglas Coupland reading be the kind of gathering where it was likely I would bump into someone I only knew vaguely through the interweb? For sure!

I ended up sitting a row in front of the person whom may or may not have been TX, and finally said hello and inquired as to his identity. It was indeed TX, and there was just enough time to check out some pictures of his cutie-pie progeny before Coupland took the stage.

He was reading from his latest novel, The Gum Thief. At first, I was disappointed. I mean, this guy looked older than my parents (for the record, he isn´t). And he read in a soothing monotone, with the emphasis on "monotone" rather than "soothing". But gradually I began to realise this style suited the sterile and pre-packaged world his characters inhabit.

I read two-thirds of the book while I was sitting in the queue to have it signed (for the record, I read the rest in the tube on my way home). And what I do love about reading Coupland, is that almost every line is a fridge quote. But part of me can´t help feeling, at least in his latest offering, that´s all there is to it: an assortment of sentences and phrases that would make me laugh out loud each morning if I had bothered to copy them down and stick them on my fridge. But I didn´t, and now I can´t remember a single line, and I don´t really care.

Typically of Coupland, The Gum Thief contains characters who struggle to break free of their McJobs; sadly, this results in little more than fast-food literature. Don´t get me wrong - I loved reading the novel. But there weren´t any new flavours; only reprocessed ideas and characters that left me, if not exactly unsatisfied, then certainly unaffected. Perhaps this is the point?

Literary groupie that I am, it was still fun to have my book signed. And Douglas Coupland called me "glamorous", even though I was only dressed in jeans and I had been unable to reapply my lipstick for fear of losing my place in the queue. But then he ruined any advantage gained through his flattery by drawing a sparkly heart in my book, which was a trifle disturbing.

Hairy Tales II: Judys Hair

Naturally, I was delighted to discover that there was a hairdressers, Salon Birgit, attached to the Hotel Schlössle, my accomodation in Vaduz. However, I was somewhat less delighted to discover it would cost CHF86 for a simple cut and dry. This was roughly the same amount I´d paid for all the stripping, dying, cutting, washing and drying I´d had done at H.A.N.D. And I even had a head massage thrown in.

I resolved to get my hair cut more cheaply when I was in London. Walking to the station in New Malden one fine afternoon, I happened to chance upon Judys Hair. There was a notice in the window saying ladies' haircuts cost £24*, and I was in there like a flash.

The only problem was, the hairdresser was no Beauty. She didn´t know what I wanted; I didn´t know what I wanted; and the result was a presentable trim, but not what I would call a haircut. Granted, there was no longer the possibility of an unwanted mullet sprouting forth from my skull, but that was the best that could be said about it.

I continued the walk down to the station, the customary post-haircut spring in my step strangely absent. Out of the corner of my eye I spyed Sam´s Barbershop. I learned something that day. Never trust a hairdresser who can´t apostrophise. How can someone incapable of constructing a correct sentence, or in this case, phrase, be trusted with the inifinitely more finicky task of creating a proper hairstyle? I couldn´t help thinking I should´ve rather gone to Sam´s, and shaved my head again. If his grammar is anything to go by, at least he would´ve made a decent job of it.

* Trying to convert between francs, euro and pounds (and with those pesky rands demanding to be taken account of also) was, and still is, beyond my elementary mathematics. On that particular trip to England, I later found out that the CHF/£ exchange rate at the time was something like 2.3/1. I had been innocently working on a 2/1 ratio (don´t you just love whole numbers!), so didn´t save as much on the haircut as I originally supposed.

The morning after the night before, and the rest of the day after the morning

I managed to get barely an hour´s sleep, only to be woken by Kate´s panicked voice: "Trinks, you´ve pressed snooze twice already. Your bus leaves in half an hour. You need to get up!"

I staggered out of bed. I really needed a shower. I also needed to finish packing. Admittedly, I had half-packed the day before, which, at the time, I thought was a supremely cunning plan. Alas, it turned out to be only 50% of a cunning plan.

I stumbled round the room, randomly chucking items in my suitcase. One of these items was my new laptop. Somehow it didn´t occur to me that a) there are computers in the UK, and b) their plugs are different. As well as the laptop and attendant paraphenalia, I blithely packed my camera charger, my phone charger, and my iPod charger. Overall, I must have lugged at least 5kg of incompatible technological equipment across the sea for no good reason.

And this was before I even began on the clothes. I was at a loss without Moral Squeeze to restrain me, and packing, as you may have guessed, has never been my forte.

"Should I take the long black dress or the little black dress?" I asked Kate indecisively. She patiently advised the latter, while I stumbled around some more. "Where is my eyeliner? I simply cannot go to London without my eyeliner," I declared. (Nevermind the fact I rarely use eyeliner, since I am unable to apply it without looking like some kind of racoon, despite having previously worked at a fashion and beauty magazine).

"Trinks, I think you are still drunk. And in the throws of an extended Bridget Jones moment!" said Kate, barely surpressing her laughter. "I don´t want to be Bridget!" I wailed, conveniently forgetting that some years ago I had attended a fancy-dress party (theme: the fictional character you most resemble) as none other than Ms Jones. Call it part of my mispent youth.

Back to the dilemma of the moment. "I don´t want to be Bridget!" I wailed. "I am a strong independent women. Without issues. And with sexy underwear. Not at all like Bridget!" I sounded pathetic, and strangely unconvincing, even to myself. But, despite histrionics, we were in fact (almost) ready to hit the road. I grabbed a bottle of chardonnay and my Silk Cuts and we made a dash the bus stop.

My day didn´t get better. Without Kate around to jolly me out of my hangover, I was stuck in travelling hell. In brief, my itinerary looked like this:

1. Bus from Vaduz to Sargans
2. Train from Sargans to Basel
3. Bus from Basel to EuroAirport*
4. Flight from EuroAirport to London Luton**
5. Bus from Luton to Victoria***
6. Train from Victoria to New Malden
7. Walk from New Malden station to Elm Road
8. Collapse into bed****

* The EuroAirport is cool. One airport, three countries. Believe it, because it´s true! I also ate some very expensive food there, which made me feel slightly more human (although still primarily alien).
** Note to self, and other travellers. It is a much more pleasant experience getting felt up by svelte Swiss security staff than their British counterparts.
*** There is a reason that flights to Luton are cheap. Because it isn´t even in the middle of nowhere. It´s like, far out on the edge of nowhere, when "somewhere" is on the opposing edge.
**** That would have been nice. But I had plans for the evening. Plans that had been booked and prepaid on the Interweb.