The London Diary - 1

Posts wrote and saved. Published much later.

Well, we moved. Again. And this time, to an entirely different continent.

It's pretty cold in London, I was told. On september 26th, 2007, at 7 pm, as I walked out into Level 10 of the Heathrow Airport Parking Lot, my face hit the crisp autumn air with a defiance. It was 12 degrees, and an unusually cold day, but Edis, our friend from Cyprus, thought it was just another unpredictable London weather day. With him at the wheel, the drive from Heathrow to Basildon took 2 and half hours amidst a blocked M25, but in those hours, I learnt all about Cyprus.

Earlier, standing in the long queue at the Immigration, I noticed several pairs of blood-red eyes. Hyderabad, from where we took off, had had a nasty bout of conjunctivitis. And some thought taking a flight out of the country with blood-red eyes would not necessarily put others at risk of infection. "Don't rub your eyes if you've touched the railing," hubby warned. But I've always been a leaner, and railings are for leaning...and I caught the infection. On the way from the airport, I could feel my eyes burn. But I guess I was just too excited to be in a new country to sulk about an infection, so it eventually subsided within a day with a little bit of help from a mighty dose of eye drops.

We stayed in the hotel for a month, apartment hunting in the meanwhile, and also looking for good ol' south-Indian restaurants. And so it happened that East Ham became our weekend town, with Saravana Bhavan being a second home. The first time we had a south-Indian meal there after a 4-week staple diet of fish&chips and rissotto, my hubby and I refused to even look up from our thalis. The food disappeared down our throats in minutes, and promises were made to treat ourselves to this atleast once a week.

It's November now, and we've found an apartment. The first day, we moved in, boiled milk, had chocolates for sweets, and found a place for our Ganapati. The second day, we went to an Indian store, bought groceries and a wok, came back and settled for our first home-made meal. We are settling in.
Gloucester Park's just a few mins walk from home. Here we had a feel of Diwali on Guy Fawkes Day. Here, I saw the best Fireworks display ever, sitting on wet grass, on a small hillock, cotton candy in hand.
Another day, I decide to walk along the quaint bylanes and discover a library. Overjoyed, I enter and ask about the registration charges. The lady at the counter is so so so kind, and tells me to just have a look around. I do, and without realising it, I sit for an hour at the reading table with a guide book on Essex. I return to the counter and tell her I love the setting and the book collection, and ask her again for the registration fee. She smiles, and tells me that this is just one of the many council libraries, and the services are completely free. "Now would you like to join?" And so I joined a library.

I have been blissfully out-of-work for 4 months now, and I am running out of patience. Being employed means having a routine, and I cannot function when I don't have a routine. X-mas and New Year is just around the corner, and England's having a holiday season. It's just not the recruitment season, I am being told. So now my days are filled with exploring Gloucester Park and London, going on random bus rides across London city, enjoying the double-decker view, sitting through gut-wrenching documentary on Crime Against Humanity at the Imperial War Museum, trying out Carribbean cuisine, hosting friends, catching up with lost friends, and writing out-of-mind blog posts. With no apt endings.