Canterbury Tales

Canterbury is known for:

1) It’s beautiful cathedral (see below)
2) Geoffrey Chaucer’s bawdy “Canterbury Tales”.
Canterbury is a pretty little town lined with cobbled streets and very well kept manicured parks/gardens.

(Above from left to right: Canterbury Cathedral, some old building that looks like it's going to implode. Below: One of the manicured parks in the city.)

Out of the main city, the roads are extremely “country” (ie: lacking street lamps, extremely windy) and look a little something like this:

Everybody living here insists that Canterbury is a densely populated town, but I doubt a densely populated town could survive with only a handful of bars to quench the thirst of the typical Englishman.

Verdict: Smaller than Perth.

My London Pad is a “Men are from Bars, Women are Complicated” Barometer

How to tell the difference between a guy and a girl….. You tell them you are sharing a house with 3 other girls and this is how they respond:

Females: “Three other girls?!?! How many bathrooms do you have?”

Males: “So if you came home and found your house mates drunk and making out with each other on the couch, would you join in or leave…?”

Harry Potter lives in a closet, and so do I……

(I can touch both sides of the wall if I sway from side to side.)

Covent Garden, Oxford Cirrus, Bethnal Green

Covent Garden is a tourist precinct during the summer. Only a few (brave) buskers remain during the winter months. (The cold weather probably helps them get into character particularly if they are pretending to be “statues” as the ones shown below.)



Covent Garden is also known for it’s money grabbing hustlers. One thing good about looking as though you may not speak English if that you can actually pretend that you cannot speak English. All you need to do is:

1) Have a blank/lost look on your face – (how I usually look anyway – har har har.)
2) Perfect the phrase, “No speak English,” (preferably in a pseudo-Asian sounding accent).
The end result is having a hustler give you an extremely disappointed look and saying in a rather deflated tone, “Oh…… Never mind…..” (Just make sure they don’t catch you gabbering away fluently in English on your way back.)

Oxford Cirrus is the Londoner’s departmental chain store heaven. (Ie: not my cup of tea.)

Bethnal Green evokes one of two responses:

“Eek. That’s not a very nice area.”
Or:
“Oh, that’s a trendy place.”
Aside from my “police-knocking-at-my-front-door-on-day-five-of-living-in-london” incident, I like to think that it’s something like Brunswick St in Melbourne (but grungier). It is famous for it’s beigel store (opened 24/7). It is so popular that Londoners living in the south-west will drive all the way to Bethnal Green to purchase a 85p smoked salmon and cream cheese beigel. (Fletch, I ate your beigel – it was delicious…..

There I also spied the “Space Invader”. (I “heart” this Parisian graffiti artist.)
http://www.space-invaders.com/

How to Cook An English Vegetable

Celeriac (n.) s -lîr - k

A variety of celery, Apium graveolens rapaceum, of the parsley family, having a large, edible, turniplike root.

1) You purchase a strange looking vegetable (with leafy stalks that look like miniature celery with a strange looking white root/ball at the end) off a cart from the psychiatric hospital’s vegetable garden. “It’s good for stir-fry,” says the man. “It tastes like celery.”
2) You ask the man (and then your colleague) the name of the strange looking vegetable, only to (naturally) forget it by the time you reach home. (“Never mind,” you think. “The landlady should know what it is.”)
3) You show your strange looking vegetable to your landlady who looks completely befuddled. “I don’t know what it is,” she says. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” Your landlady tells you that she’s going to see her neighbour. “She use to be a cook so she should like what it is,” she says.
4) You wash the sand off the vegetable and puzzle over which part you actually eat. “Well, if it’s supposed to be like celery, maybe it’s the leafy green part that you eat,” you think. You throw away the bottom bally bit.
5) You stir fry the celery looking bit and (cautiously) try and piece. Bleech!!! It tastes awful – like putrefied brussels sprouts with a slight celery after taste. Perhaps you weren’t meant to eat the leafy bit. You try the stalk bit. Bleech!!!! It’s no better. You messaged your colleague to find out whether you’re actually eating the correct part.
6) Your landlady comes back. “My neighbour had no idea what it is or how to cook it,” she says.
7) You give up and start cooking some other more normal vegetables.
8) You check your phone after dinner. Your colleague has replied and tells you that you’re supposed to eat the root bit. “Peel it and boil it like a potato,” the message reads.
9) You go to your bin (which is thankfully cleaned with a newly lined bin bag) to (sheepishly) rescue the discarded root.
10) You try to peel the root and can’t quite figure out how much of the “skin” you actually have to peel off.
11) You give up, put the “vegetable” back into your fridge and open a can of baked beans instead.

Post Script: You finally peel, chop and boil up the “celeriac” the following week. (Bloody hard work – it was like trying to chop up a brick.) It has a similar texture to “winter melon”, bland with a slight “celery” taste.

Verdict: Not worth the effort after all that chopping and peeling!

“Old McDonald Had a Farm….”

…..and now I live on one too….. From Monday – Thursday at least….. AAAARRGGHH!!!!! Nah, it’s not as nearly as bad as I thought. I think my first week as just a bad week for me overall seeing that I had a chest infection and was feeling very sorry for myself. I would have contemplated doing a lot of unspeakable things for half a jar of Vicks. (I was also resigning to the fact that I would have to hang myself in the paddock if I ever had to stay on the farm for a weekend.) It is extremely isolated and requires a drive “off the beaten track” for about 1.5 miles down a windy dirt road amongst the fields of wheat, orchards and sheep….. (Driving down the road in the dark kind of reminded me of Steven King’s “Children of the Corn”.) But on the bright side, the country air is clearer, the scenery can be beautiful, and I have my own self contained room with own bathroom, toilet and laundry. (Beats having to fight for the bathroom with 3 other girls….)

Pictured below are some scenic shots of the farm. (From left to right: view outside my window, "Jack" the farm horse, "Tigger" the farm cat. Yeah, the landlady sounds ridiculous when she's calling the cat back into the house.)

(Above left to right: crop of some sort, my car courtesy of my agency, the drive out of my street - the horsey has a fringe tee hee hee....)

Everybody has pet horses down in this area of the country. Hunting is a common hobby – they even go out wearing the hunting get-up (ie: Equestrian Barbie ensemble) – although I haven’t had a chance to ask whether they carry around a bugle. Apparently it’s getting rather difficult to go hunting for foxes as there are crazy animal activists who go around spraying bystanders with mace. (The last victim in the local newspaper was an 8 year old girl who was watching a hunt from her family’s car, and had to then be hospitalised.) I think they will start hunting animal activists shortly.

Amazing Race in London

4:50am Wake up to pack your provisions for Canterbury.

5:30am Leave your London flat and head to the bus stop.

5:40am Hop on the bus and head down to the tube station. (It’s only a 10

minute walk but your backpack is so heavy that you don’t think you’d be able to physically walk the distance. You vow for the second time in two weeks never to pack so many things into your backpack again.

5:42am You reach the tube station only to find out that it’s closed due to faulty fire alarms….. ARGH……

5:42:30am You run back to the same bus you just got off to try and get back on again. The bus driver wants to get going so he ignores you while you knock on the glass door in vain.

5:42:35am Another bus (same number) coincidentally pulls up at the bus stop. You hop onto this bus.

6:00am You arrive at another tube station in an attempt to catch a different line.

6:05am You get confused as to which platform to go to and ask for directions.

6:05:30am You get directions to the correct platform. You hear the train pull up and have to race to get to the platform in time.

6:05:45am You manage to get on the train with 2 seconds to spare

6:07am You arrive at the next station. The train sits there in the platform for 5 minutes. (You have 11 more stations to go…..)

6:12am The train gets moving again and stops at the next station for another 5 minutes. (You have 10 more stations to GO!!!!!!! ARGH!!!!!!!)

6:15am The train starts moving again.

6:30am You reach your designated train stop and start running (or more like trying to run) to the overland train station.

6:35am You reach the overland train station and have to try and find your train.

6:37am You find what you think is the correct train, but cannot seem to open the carriage doors. You have to run to the carriage right at the end (as this is the only one that seems to be letting people in).

6:40am You sit down in the train in a sweaty, dazed mess as the train pulls away from the train station.

7:00am Two burly looking black guys (dressed in plaid) come into your carriage blasting loud obnoxious rap music on their mp3 player. (How rude….)

7:02am You look around – nobody is telling these guys to shut up as they are too scared to do so. You ask them whether they have headphones. They look at your threateningly and ask, “You gotta problem with us?” You explain that you are trying to sleep at this ungodly hour, and they grudgingly turn off their music. The whole carriage sighs with relief.

7:58am There is an extremely loud BANG. Somebody has thrown a brick at the train window and has cracked the outside glass (of the window) nearest to you…… SHIT!!!! Any harder and you would have needed plastic surgery (where the surgeons would have sprayed their own saliva into your open wounds during the operation – see “Tospy-Turvy London” for details), not to mention the long road to recovery in a head injury unit.

8:25am You reach your designated train station and start walking to the bus station.

8:40am You reach the bus station.

8:52am The bus pulls up into the bus bay.

8:57am Bus leaves from the bus station.

9:02am You reach the hospital grounds.

9:05am You reach your car (which you have parked in the hospital grounds).

9:07am You drive up the hill to your work place completely TIRED but somewhat on time for work. BLAH.

Moral of the Story: NEVER trust the tube. Just because the tube hasn’t been

running two Mondays in a row doesn’t mean that problems would likely be fixed

for the following Monday…

Topsy-Turvy London

1) The Upside: There’s always something exciting happening in London – no matter what day of the week it is. The Downside: Most people don’t earn enough to go out on a regular basis (ie: they budget to go out maybe once a month…..) That or they go out every night and get by living in a 3 bedroom house with 9 other people - refuge style. (Maybe they sell their soul too, I’m not entirely sure….)

2) The Upside: People (technically) earn more in London. The Downside: People don’t earn enough to balance out the exponential rise in cost of living and are generally a lot poorer.

3) The Upside: Travel to almost anywhere (in the world) is dirt cheap. A plane to Paris takes one hour. The Downside: Travel within London is expensive and usually involves taking the tube which is unreliable as it constantly breaks down (on a daily basis), can be closed during peak time due to congestion, and generally stops working during the weekends due to “engineering works”. It takes 2 hours to travel from the North East to the South West of London on the tube.

4) The standard of health care is extremely poor. R has witnessed consultants/surgeons refuse to don masks during surgery, and consequently drip saliva into open wounds when sneezing – note that this happened in one of the “best hospitals in London”. (I tried to think of an upside but couldn’t.)

5) Accountants are Gods and earn bucket loads of money. (They are millionaires after about 4 years of work.) Doctors are slaves, and earn about ₤5 an hour (after you account for all the over time that they do). Note that ₤5 is the minimum wage in London….

6) Everybody in London is either an Australian, a Kiwi or South African on a working holiday (usually earning a nominal wage), or a non-English speaking refuge. Asians (meaning Pakistanis, Indians & Bangladeshi – Chinese people are not considered Asian!!!!) live here in great numbers. Everybody living outside of London is predominantly white – ie: a “traditional” English person who thinks Australia is exactly like “Neighbours”. (At least they don’t think we ride kangaroos to work and school.)