Moving flats and a giant white dome

My walls are now bare. Well, almost - I still have some pictures of squirrels in Underground stations to take down, but that won't take too long. It took over an hour to wiggle all the photos off the wall and put them into neatly (well, maybe not quite neatly) labelled envelopes, in order.

The reason for my blank walls? I have a new flat! I will be moving this week. Hopefully it won't take too many trips (though it's amazing how many bits of paper you can amass in five months), so by this time next week I will be properly established in my new room, with photos back up on the walls.

The new flat has fairy lights in the living room.

This makes me happy.

Another thing that made me happy today, strangely, was taking down all my photos. There's something about staring at lots of smiling faces that makes you smile yourself, and I took so long taking them down and making sure they were in the right order (I plan to beat my previous time of three and a half hours for putting it back up) that I spent a lot of time staring at lots of smiling faces.

(Why do the photos have to be in order? some of you may ask. See my post here for background - scroll down for the pictures)

I went to the O2 for the first time this week. The O2 used to be called the Millennium Dome, and is a giant white dome in a bend of the Thames. James Bond slid down it once, and some people say it can be seen from space (sure, but where does space begin? I don't think it can be seen from the space station).

I'd forgotten how absolutely huge it is. I went to the Millennium Dome twice more than a decade ago, so my memories of it are a bit fuzzy (I do remember it was absolutely awesome, though). They have the O2 Arena in the centre, where they had Cliff Richard playing on Wednesday night and Britney Spears on Thursday night, and they also have lots of bars and restaurants and a thirteen screen cinema and a museum of pop music. The Dome is in North Greenwich, and they have a big line made in paving stones to walk along as you approach it. Being so close to Greenwich, I wondered if this was the Greenwich Mean (0 degrees of longitude), so I amused myself by wandering back and forth across it and muttering 'Eastern Hemisphere, Western Hemisphere, Eastern Hemisphere..."

I don't think it actually was the Greenwich Mean. I'll have to go and find that one day and jump back and forth across it.

Today is the last day of daylight saving, and I'm staring out the window and thinking that, this time tomorrow, it will be 4pm. It seems too dark for 4pm. The sun is going down. Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating, but still.

Stupid upper latitudes.

Flats and the British Museum

They put coriander in packaged salads here.

I've just spent the last ten minutes going through the bag and picking it all out. Luckily there wasn't that much.

In other news... I have a flat! It's very nice and warm, has two supermarkets within walking distance, a bus stop right outside and is ten minutes walk to the tube station. It is also right next to a McDonalds.

I have not yet had McDonalds.

It is actually sunny, currently, and the sun is coming through my window, which is a nice change from the downpours of the last few days. I went out to get groceries yesterday in a drizzle, and forgot to get an umbrella. That will be on the list for today. I looked for Vogel's, which I know to be available in the UK, but had to make do with generic wholemeal bread. I must go on a search, I think.

I'm also planning how to make my room my own. There's not a lot of stuff you can bring with you when you're only allowed 30kg, but I have big plans for photos and Middle-Eastern Tiffany lamps, when I can be surer of money coming in.

Last week I went to the British Museum, which was amazing. I started at the north end (after studying a map and concluding, wrongly, that was the main entrance) and saw the mummy rooms, which were packed to bursting with mummies and sarcophagi and school children (the last outside the cases, of course). They all began to blend into one another after a while, with the exception of a few Roman-style ones, some very ancient ones, and the animal mummies. I think I need to know more about them to appreciate them properly - or go with a guide who can point out all the differences and meanings behind things.

I wandered for a bit, then entered the Enlightenment gallery. This gallery is done up like an 18th century private library/museum, with glass cases and very old books along the walls. Everything is jumbled up a bit higgledy-piggledy, but this gave it a sort of charm and interest. There are loose themes in the different quarters of the gallery, and statues and display tables set about the room.

I passed through the North American exhibits and back into the grand atrium (which is extremely impressive, with a modern faceted glass roof), looked at a few maps and figured out where the Rosetta stone was: hidden behind a crowd of people in the entrance to the Greek and Roman galleries. By this time it was getting on towards 5pm, so I went straight for the Elgin marbles (from the Parthenon) and admired them. It would have been amazing to see them before people took a dislike to them and started hacking them apart, but they are still beautiful, and poignant because of what they have lost and how far they have travelled.

I think I'd like a Greek statue for my room. A real one.

London days: flats, jobs and squirrels (or the lack of them)

It's difficult to figure out what order I should do things in. Flat (apartment) first, or job first? I've decided on both at the same time, because I figure it will be hard to get either so I should start as early as possible.

It's been a beautiful day here - blue skies and warm, with a little breeze. I took a long walk to drop off application forms and check in with employment agencies, got an iced coffee on the way and really enjoyed it. Aeroplanes were making patterns of jet trails across the sky (in London and its surrounds, there's always at least one jet trail in the sky), flowers were out and leaves were green. I love walking past the little old terraced houses with their tiny gardens, the shops nestled into hundred-year old buildings and the cars parked every which way. There was a bakery selling meringues so large you could use them as footballs. I must go back and get one some day. I've been looking out for squirrels (I love squirrels and haven't seen one in at least ten years), but no luck so far.

I feel I've had quite a productive day, with internet chores and real-world chores done. I'm having trouble remembering my new phone number (I memorised it wrong in the first place) so I have translated it into do-re-mi notation and I will see if I remember it better that way...