Pimlico? How Do You Even SAY That?!

Well, well, well ... look at me, writing a blog for a second (well, technically 4th, but I wrote the last 3 in one sitting) time in a month ... and it's only the 8th. Amazing!

I actually have a FEW stories for me. Yay me! Life is good!

So ... this crap about the snow in England ... it's frickin' RAH-DECK-AH-LUSS if you ask me. And any other Canadian living here. We've been warned about snow and how it shuts the city down. K dudes, it hasn't even snowed in like 48 hours, and the city is still in hibernation mode. Almost none of us teachers have worked this week. I HAVE NOT WORKED A DAY THIS WEEK AND I'M LOSING MY MIND! We get up and get ready for work, call in to say we're available at 7am, and ... WAIT. And, NOTHING. At first I kept busy with unpacking, getting my room cleaned and re-organized, doing laundry, etc etc ... Then I caught up on some much needed sleeping and unwinding from my four countries in four days tour. Then I got bored. Really bored. So bored, I started watching Celebrity Big Brother UK. Yet another thing I find frickin' RAH-DECK-AH-LUSS. Like Stephen Baldwin's on this show. And he's REALLY creepy on it. I wanted to give him a chance, I tried to. But like, I don't even NEED to go to church once a week, cos I can watch Stephen Baldwin preach for a frickin' hour EVERY SINGLE MORNING. Amazing. And like Cisco (if that's how you spell it) Like seriously? You had one hit single, called THONG SONG, like ten years ago. You made the phrase "She had dumps like a truck, truck, truck" popular, and when asked what it meant, you had no answer. 'Cos it doesn't mean ANYTHING. I mean, I can whine and complain about these people, and yet ... I can't. Stop. Watching Them. I'm even developing a mini "celeb" (ha) crush on the biggest tool of all time, but only because he's the cutest dude in the house. I can't believe I just admitted that in my blog. I need CBBUK rehab. Sick, bro.

OK, so I think y'all get the point that I'm getting a bit of cabin fever and starting to lose my mind. Especially cos I look outside and see sunshine. Not snow. Here's England's problem. The snow comes, and it comes quickly. Instead of being sensible, England warps high speed into panic mode, sends everyone indoors (after cleaning out every aisle of the grocery store - I'm NOT kidding ... shelves were BARREN) and nearly grinds public transport to a halt. After getting everyone to safety, they do NOT put graders on the road to clear the ice and snow. They do NOT shovel public walkways. Homeowners do NOT shovel their walks. They DO use a LOT of salt and gravel. So, basically, the walk from my house to the tube stop is a treacherous icy hobble full of dips and craters where they've dumped sporadic piles of salt instead of spreading it. I honestly think I could become a millionaire if I sold snow shovels here. Don't steal my idea. The shovels are coming.

There is one thing that is amazingly fascinating about this week, though, which made me really appreciate the neighbourhood we live in. Every time I leave the house, I see families being absolutely ecstatic about spending time together. I've seen people toboganning and making snowmen in the park down the street (hard task, since, like I said, there's really NOT that much snow here!) and families walking hand in hand, just enjoying spending time together ... It's a nice thing to see.

So, as you can tell by my bitter rant (Sorry, sorry) I've gone a bit batty with this snow pandemic. I forgot to mention that on top of the grocery stores being raided, thermal underwear sales went up 1000% (not kidding) and the country is now panicking because it is running out of two very important resources : 1) gas to HEAT OUR HOMES 2) Salt (again, NOT kidding) So yeh, hysteria, everywhere.

In my boredom which is NOW being caused by me going into poverty due to this ridiculously long extention to my Christmas holidays (No paycheck for 3-4 weeks! Hooray!) I decided to go thru the numbers of my mobile phone, as well as my recently added friends on Facebook. And discovered a bit of a treasure ... my new Canadian buddy Courtney!

Courtney and I met at one of my fave dingy underground clubs of Camden (of course!) one night, she was on her way out, I was in the midst of being "wooed" (aka NOT interested) by some grimy boy and she heard me mention Canada, stopped dead in her tracks, and introduced herself. We swapped digits, and that was that. She then found me on Facebook (stalker) and threw me a Friend Request which I warily accepted. (Totally kidding!) And then we never talked to each other again.

Until the other day! And we haven't shut up since! We made plans to head to the Maple Leaf for some Canadian sanity the other day. I got dolled up and plopped myself on a tube and ventured out. After about an HOUR of travelling, I was still only a few stops away from my home base and still VERY far from the pub. And it was BLIZZARDING. I will actually give this snowstorm blizzard status for once. So, I had to call Courtney and cancel. Sad day.

The next day (Yesterday) we were texting and Fbook msg'ing away and decided to head to the Tate Britain. Exciting! Mostly exciting because this is yet another one of the fun FREE things to do in London (which is becoming necessary for the broke teachers of London society. Haha) We wandered the Tate which had some REALLY cool things but we JUST weren't vibing on it so we headed towards the tube ... and wound up in a pub. Which is NOT free but too fun to pass up. Courtney had also brought her roomate Tracey along and she is a pretty rad chick as well. I was super pumped to have made two new amigas to socialize with! Tracey had to peace out, so Courtney and I formed our own walking pub crawl of Pimlico which is a part of London I had never really been to (on purpose) before. Turns out there isn't much to do in Pimlico which is probably the reason for this. It was really cute and quaint tho, and we actually met some legit, born and raised Londoners for quite possibly the first time ever! Amazing! We wound up having SO much fun in old man pubs chatting with locals and scoping out boys who turned out to be gay (WHO knew?! I did! Haha) that it was one of the funnest nights I've ever had in London! I'm gonna write a seperate blog for my adventure to Oxford ... Stay tuned!

xo Megs