News from London, Part II

For this pet-sit, I am in the neighborhood of Camden Town, London. This is the home of the London indie-rock band scene, Amy Winehouse, the Camden Market and canals, Regent's Park, and a hodgepodge of people, restaurants, pubs, shops, etc. It is a very exciting but also comfortable part of London. You have the Hobgoblin pub around the corner a few blocks with heavy metal death music and then Fresh&Wild a few blocks down the other way, a Whole Foods boutique (I was, sadly to say, very excited to go in here and buy some organic tofu--but alas, there was no Kombucha). The Jazz Cafe is a few blocks in another direction where De La Soul is playing all week. Londoners walk around dressed to the t or even in sweatpants, but for the most part, their style seems more like a work of art, punkish, fun, inventive and at the same time looks completely effortless. I love just walking around to see what everyone is wearing. So, this is the area I'm in. I feel like I'm in the center of everything and am able to choose just exactly what kind of day I feel like having just by where I want to go, what I want to look at. My first evening here I was greeted for dinner at a nearby gastropub, the Crown and Goose, by a friend from elementary school that has been living here since she graduated college. It was a very nice time and lots of fun getting caught up!

The flat I'm taking care of is on a quiet street, but there's hustle and bustle just around the corner. It's quite nice and spacious, but the walls are unfortunately paper thin and I was kept awake the other night by the neighbors upstairs having a late-night fight and then heard the neighbors nextdoor yelling this morning, the woman saying, I'm [expletive] leaving him!! The professor, who owns the flat, had warned me about them, saying that she and some others are on the verge of calling child services because the children just sit in front of the TV (too young to be in school) and there is yelling sometimes all through the night. It hasn't been too bad, but I do see right into their TV room from the bedroom here, and the TV is either on or the curtain is drawn.

It's funny how the professor seems to be almost the opposite from the Piggys, from what I could gather during the little bit of time we spent getting to know each other. She raves about Marks&Spencers ready-to-eat dinners, while the wife would bake things from scratch often using the freshly-laid eggs and normally had a bountiful supply of vegetables growing in the garden. The professor doesn't recycle, the wife made it clear that nothing gets wasted, leftovers are either composted or fed to the chickens, everything was to be recycled. Nature flowed inside and out in the Irish cottage, while at the London flat all of the plants and flowers are fake. They both, however, construct their own cabinetry.

Some of the professor's requests in the packet she left for me were no drinking red wine in the bathtub, those are expensive limestone tiles and the wine would stain, and no standing on the sink to look in the mirror, because it does not have much keeping it up. Keep the windows shut or put a wire window contraption in it so the cat can't fall out.... I have a couple of windows open with the little fence thing--here I'm more worried about rats getting in! (There was a dead rat at my Ireland house-sit that I found outside of the shed, floating in a pie tin. Very disgusting, especially after it was infested with maggots! I could not touch it and did not want the chickens to start pecking at it, so I covered it up with a mound of dirt.) Here, I figure the animals are keeping the (most likely hoards of) rats away.
There is also quite a bit of dog and cat hair here in the flat, as you might imagine from looking at the photos of my furry friends. The thought of Riley collecting germs and small insects wherever he goes in his billowy coat makes it hard sometimes to fall asleep, I start feeling completely itchy and find it hard to breathe, like I'm inhaling the inside of a vacuum cleaner.

It's been really fun getting to know Camden and see the area with a dog as my companion. Riley is greeted by friendly smiles wherever we go and has been filmed many times by tourists (yesterday it was some Japanese people) as he goes by in the park. That is something that I really enjoy when walking Riley, how you see everyone's faces light up--what would the world be like without dogs? They bring so much joy to people.

Anyway, besides walking the dog, I've been filling my days with a variety of activities. Last week, I ventured over to Shakespeare's Globe Theatre on the Thames and went to see Timons of Athens in the famous open-air theater. You can stand as a groundling or sit on a wooden bench. I took the wooden bench with limited views, the cheapest of seated tickets. It was really neat to get to see the theater and think about all that William Shakespeare has given us with his talent, but I have to say that my limited views (I could hardly hear or see anything) from a very hard wooden bench and an American sitting next to me that ate through the whole first half, I had no idea what was even going on in the play, so I left during the intermission. I was also thinking that the animals had been alone for quite a while and after the day before, when Riley got into my suitcase and ate the box of lemon cookies that the Piggys brought me back from Italy and threw up and had diarrhea everywhere, I'd better get back.

Continuing to explore the area nearby, I spent an evening having dinner in the Primrose Hill neighborhood, about a 15 minute walk from the flat, hoping to spot some of my favorite British celebrities, Hugh Grant and Jude Law, both whom live in this neighborhood. I had walked Riley around this area earlier and we went to the top of Primrose Hill park and had an amazing view of the city--it just seemed to go on and on. Seeing the industrial skyline made me even more appreciative to be staying in a greener section of town, with some "lungs," Regent's Park. Anyway, I didn't see any celebrities, and probably will not continue my celebrity hunt because I realize really how dumb that is, but I did see some beautiful homes. It felt more like a really nice suburb where you can imagine one could easily forget that a buzzing metropolis awaits just a tube stop away.

I also went to the Wellcome Collection, a museum nearby that has more science-related exhibits (and it was free as are all of London's museums!). Here I saw a collection of skeletons that have been uncovered over the years during excavations for new construction all around the city. Graveyards that were built upon or forgotten, etc. It really was a fascinating exhibit, skeletons that were anywhere from Roman times, when London was called Londinium, to the Black Death years, to the 1800s. The scientists studied the bones and were able to come up with ideas as to what they ate, what diseases they suffered from (rickets was quite common as well as syphilis), what injuries they had, if they were obese, how old they were, what they most likely died from, etc. It was pretty amazing to think that you could have your physical life story told through your bones. There was a man from Roman times found whose teeth were completely ground down because the diet was very gritty--the lack of crevices actually protected the teeth from developing cavities. Another man was found with an arrowhead lodged in his spine that had bone growth over it, his body just took it in and adapted. There was another of a little girl that had been born with syphilis. Her bones were so brittle and tiny and her skull looked more like lumpy fruit, very sad. There was a man who had broken ribs, some that had healed, some that hadn't, and a huge dent in his head. The scientists hypothesized that the man, like many others found in the area, was most likely stumbling home drunk on a regular basis and falling down the steep stairways nearby. I found this all very fascinating as you can see! I could go on and on.

Of course another well-known fact about London is the plethora of great Indian restaurants, one of my top favorite ethnic foods. I don't think I could ever get tired of Indian food and plan to do my fair share of eating it while I am here. Yesterday I went to a place nearby and ordered the Ayurvedic vegetarian thali dish and was in heaven!

So, today I will take Riley for his walk/run--I was thinking we might head over to Hampstead Heath, a supposedly beautiful part of town a bit north of here that is very woodsy and wild. Then I have a ticket to see Vanessa Redgrave in a play called the Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion. I am looking forward to that and planning to be able to hear and see everything--a small theater, a one-woman show, and I don't think there were even any restricted views seats to sell.

I feel incredibly lucky to be here and can't believe how this all worked out! The internet can open up doors that I would never have imagined just a few years ago. I am incredibly grateful that I found some people that trusted me to step into their daily lives for a few days and given me these opportunities.

Hope everyone is well!