Earth has not anything to show more fair

This summer marks the end of a whole decade spent living and working in London.  A decade.  Ten years.

Here is my embarrassing list of London things that I have still not managed to do:

1. Buckingham Palace.  I've walked past it, but have never been arsed to go in.  Same goes for the changing of the guard, and whatever other guff they get up to in there.
2. Madam Tussauds.  TheBloke (TM) has been here, and has all manner of hilarious photos of him peering down the Queen's cleavage and pinching J-Lo's arse.  I've never seen the point.  Though I would quite like a Kate Middleton waxwork for my living room.  I would put a wick in her and light it, and enjoy her slowly melting and looking much less perfect as each evening went on.  I digress.
3. Kew Gardens.  I drove past it once, but only because I was lost.
4. St Paul's Cathedral.  Walk past it a lot.  Never quite wanted to stump up £16 or whatever it is these days to go and look round inside.
5. Wembley Stadium.  Don't like football, don't like loud music, and I think it's the wrong venue for comedy.  'Nuff said.

So, yes, there's a long-ish list of things in London I haven't yet done.  And, of course, as Samuel Johnson said, "When a [wo]man is tired of London [s]he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford."

This week has been my last week working in London for a while.  I left work today to start my maternity leave.  I now live outside Central London - still a comfortable commute in, but you wouldn't say we lived in "London proper" anymore.  This week, fitting in friends and book clubs and various different commitments before I went away, I had the opportunity this week to revisit Bank and Liverpool Street - an area in which I worked for about five years.

I walked past the Gherkin, and recalled in my first ever City job, how two naughty colleagues, Cookie and Boothie, made me skip most of an afternoon's work to get drunk with them in a restaurant next door.  The Gherkin was still under construction at the time.  Still two of my closest London friends, we continue to go out for dinner regularly... and they are still very naughty.  I smiled.

I walked past the Royal Exchange and remembered meeting friends there - a central meeting point - before going to the South Bank to watch an episode of Have I Got News For You? being taped.  It seemed such a long time ago, but I looked up at the beautiful architecture, unchanged throughout the decade, and smiled.

I walked down Bishopsgate, remembering how I used to walk to work from an overpriced one-bedroom flat in Dalston each morning to save the 65p bus fare.  (This was well before Dalston was trendy.  I think the technical term the estate agents used was "vibrant", and the term the Daily Mail used was "Murder Mile".)  I remember how I had a clip-on MP3 player to my mobile phone which held an astonishing 16 songs.  I remembered how I'd always feel virtuous for the exercise - which would make me so hungry, I'd eat a bacon sandwich as soon as I'd arrived in the office, thus more than negating the 65p bus fare saving, plus ruling out any calories I might have burned from the exercise by a good 300%.  I grinned at the memory.

I passed the Tesco Metro where on a Friday evening I'd sometimes buy myself a bunch of flowers, reduced for quick sale.  And how I learned how difficult it was to get lily pollen out of pretty much anything.  And smiled.

I jumped on the tube at Liverpool Street, and the train passed through Bethnal Green, where I lived for about six years.  I remembered how my friend Erica and I would spend at least one night each weekend at the Backyard Comedy Club - sometimes getting so drunk we stepped in a cold bowl of our own vomit the next morning (OK, that was just me.  Sorry).  Sometimes just loving the comedy so much, and staying for the cheesy disco... which was the same songs in the same order each week, literally on a tape.  Whenever I hear one of those songs on the radio nowadays, it still makes me smile.

Today at Canary Wharf - an area I've always held to be quite soulless, I looked up at the skyscrapers, and realised the sky was cloudless, the sun was shining, the breeze was blowing across the Thames as the new Shard went up in on the horizon and actually, I would miss this place too.  I smiled as I remembered the Gherkin going up as I first moved to London and my first few years in the city I wondered when London would be finished, when would the endless cranes move away?  Of course, the answer is never.  London keeps building, London keeps changing.  But it somehow never changes so far that it becomes something else.  London is always London.

So, this is no Wordsworth, and my London - made up of retail outlets and skyscrapers, is less picturesque perhaps than Westminster Bridge.  But you know what?  In ten years, it's made me smile a lot.  Thank you, London.  And goodnight.

Sill-iness

There are many joys of being a landlord.  I will number them below:

1.  Getting rent in on time.

Oh, that's it.  Well, hey ho.  There are several downsides though, and anyone who calls it "passive income" is a big fat liar pants.  I have always loathed and detested dealing with Tower Hamlets Homes (my last letter of complaint to them actually used the phrase, "I seriously doubt that anyone in your department could organise a drinking session in a brewery", and their reply pretty much confirmed that, as they addressed it to "Miss Laurahmed Noon" and threatened to tow my car which hadn't been parked there for three years.)

Still, despite still being in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, a second flat we look after is managed by a different company - Poplar Harca.  I can tell you're riveted by this.  Stay with me.

Now, last week I made the mistake of contacting the tenants to organise a gas safety check.  Yes, this is a legal obligation, but inevitably, whenever you contact tenants to give them some information, immediately they give you a list of nineteen things that have gone wrong with the flat since you last spoke to them a fortnight ago.  So far, so exciting?

So this time, it's an ongoing problem with the seal around the window, which is letting in cold air.  According to Poplar Harca's website, this is their issue as building owners to repair.  According to the people on the end of the phone, this is now our issue as leaseholders.  I still haven't worked out why.

Now, the main difference between Tower Hamlets Homes and Poplar Harca, as far as I can tell, is that Tower Hamlets Homes will only employ people:

a) whose grasp of English is insufficient to do anything other than smile and nod (not ideal for a phone-based job)
b) who have moderate learning difficulties
c) who do speak English, don't have learning difficulties, but are vile and obnoxious.  Poplar Harca seems to employ lovely people who are actually fairly efficient.  This makes me nervous.  Surely this is too good to be true.

Still, whilst they do speak English, the accent was still something of an issue on the phone earlier today.  Tower Hamlets, being a diverse area of London, has tens of accents and various languages spoken.  But today my problem was with a Londoner.

Me:  Yes, I think it's a problem with the window seal.

Her:  Oh, we don't cover window sills.

Me: Not the sill, the seal.

Her: Oh, so you're saying it's not the sill, it's the sill?

Me:  *Trying to think of a way to explain to her that the way she pronounces "sill" and "seal" are identical.  Fails.*  Erm, yes.

See, told you this would be an anecdote worth waiting for.  Oh.  Sorry.

Fun with phonics

So I'm a little bit in love with my new iPad.

One of my favourite things is the dictation software which allows me to update my blog without actually having to sit at Brighton tight. No, not "sit at Brighton tight", sit upright!

Sitting upright is something of a challenge at the moment, so anything that makes life easier is always much appreciated.

So yes, the software is not without limitations, but it still seems very much into my printer placement. Dammit feeds into my laziness. Nothing to do with my printer placement.

TheBloke (TM), being of a South African persuasion, has enjoyed trying out this software using his best Afrikaans accent. This mostly involves saying "arse cream" instead of ice cream. Fortunately the iPad is not so uncouth as to know the word arts. Arts dammit, ARSE! Ah, there we go.

Now a word from TheBloke (TM) in his native South African accent:

"Laura watched Sex and the City the movie this evening."

Fucking thing works fine sometimes, doesn't it? Don't tell anyone. Anyway, it was a massive partnership. Not a partnership, acheiral of sheet. For fox sake, acheiral of sheets. A kind of shipped. A pile of shipped. Close enough.

iPad review of the film: A pile of shipped. For fox sake.