So... About 5 months ago I started blogging. Around the same time (in fact, at exactly the same time) I seemed to stop blogging.
It really was my intention to chronicle my dull yet very occasionally meaningful life through the wonder of the blog, but for a squillion different reasons (each one an excuse with a variable degree of lameness) I just never got around to doing it again. Until now.
Well - since I made my last entry on here, quite a lot has changed. I no longer work in a gallery and a pub in deepest, darkest West Wales, in fact I no longer even live there. I managed to fulfil my promise to myself that I would run away to London (harder than you'd think, believe me - and God knows how anyone did it before the miraculous invention of the internet), and am once again in gainful employment. Once again doing two jobs, one in a vintage shop (yippee!) and one in a pub in Camden (which I'm quite enjoying, considering I'd vowed to myself never to do barwork again). I'm planning on staying in London over Christmas, mainly for financial reasons (about minus 5000 of them), and probably won't head back to Pembs until after Easter.
So far, London is pretty much blowing me away, for many reasons - here are just a few:
- If you can think of anything at all you want to do, you're usually within a bus ride of being able to do it.
- Public transport - yes it has its off days, but if you miss a bus/train at least you don't have to wait for two hours for the next one to come along, and you don't have to give up all hope of travelling anywhere locally if you don't own a car and it's a Sunday.
- The fact that you can pass a building, landmark or monument on the bus everyday on the way into work, and know that there are thousands of people in the city at that very moment who have travelled from the other side of the world just to look a it.
- Shopping (obviously). Last week I bought some designer shoes from a Cancer Research shop for the princely sum of £8.00.
- The people. Considering I was warned several times, and by many different people that the South East of England was the most hostile place on earth and nobody spoke to each other ever, I've found it to be the exact opposite. People here are friendly, warm and engaging (maybe not on the night bus, but I think I prefer it that way), and although I find lots of the men I pass in the street here a bit forward (I've been forced to make up an imaginary boyfriend who gets cross if I give out my phone number to strangers), at least they make an effort, which I don't recall many PembsBoys doing, and they take it in good humour when you brush them off, rather than calling you a minger and attempting to spread horrible rumours about you - which I do recall many PembsBoys doing.
Obviously London isn't perfect, there are many things about it that need fixing, not least that you need to be very smart with your money (well I have to learn sometime I suppose...), back home I had all but forgotten what homeless people look like, and I find it all the more shocking when I see people sleeping rough for that reason, and there is a clear social chasm between the haves and have-nots. But for all this, moving here is possibly one of the best decisions I've ever made, and I plan on sticking it out until I hit the back end of my thirties at least.
For the sake of balance, I should point out that there are some things about home that I really miss too:
- The scenery (cityscapes can be breathtaking too, but you'd have to go a long way to find a place as beautiful as Pembrokeshire).
- Driving - as ecologically unsound a means of getting about as it is, you never feel freer than when you're behind the wheel, the radio is on full blast, and you KNOW you can go anywhere!
- My friends (of course). Sometimes, even when you're having only the most mildly crappy of days, nothing beats the feeling of guiltlessly complaining about it for hours to someone whose job it is to listen to you without making you feel like your whingeing is a nuisance, or that they'd rather be somewhere else talking to someone more interesting.
Anyway, I think I've run out of stuff to say. I'll try to improve the quality and frequency of my blogs (so you may get something a bit more eloquent around, say, February).
Hope this hasn't been too dull for you, and thanks for taking the time to read.
Love Lucy x
