Lila's Locale

I’m in the process of moving from England back to the US and so am going to be MIA for the next week or so.

I haven’t done the London tourist attractions yet. I’m in that in-between place where I’m not sure if I’m a tourist or a local, but either way I have no desire to go to London and wander around the Tower by myself. On Tuesday night we went to a really fancy restaurant in SoHo as part of London’s Restaurant Week. Afterwards (after having a snack to make up for the fact that the portions were tiny) we walked back to Waterloo, via the main tourist attractions. We took some wonderful night photos of the lights of London.

Since we last saw Lila she’s failed as a hostess, been to London, and stopped wearing 4 layers every day.

I’m never roasting a chicken again. I’m just glad that I didn’t kill our neighbor we had over for dinner the night I tried to do a “proper Sunday roast.” That’s all I’ll say about it.

We went in to London for the second time. We picked up 15L tickets to a play, and the play was INCREDIBLE! We saw Arthur Miller’s “View from the Bridge.” It was tons of fun, and being in London’s West End, which is alive and hopping after midnight, is so much fun after being in quiet Hersham.

Our almost poisoned neighbor  has been really nice, and even took her with me to a big supermarket. She’s a nice old English lady. Very independent, loves dirivng around, and is loving getting to “teach” me about England.

In other news I finally went to Walton, which is the next closest village, and only a half hour-fourty minute walk. They have a movie theater and a little mall. We went up one night to go to dinner and a movie, and on the way found a cool ethnic super market. It’s like those places you find in Chinatown that have everything from furniature to housewares to hardware and home improvement. It’s just like those places you fine in Chinatown or Koreatown. I was super excited (yay spices that aren’t 4L a bottle!), and we ended up with bags of stuff that we had to carry home.

Here’s a happy hello from Hersham, the cutest dang place in the world. The apartment is really nice, though there are a freakish number of doors (everything has a freakin door!) and green carpet. The building is nice, though sparsely occupied, and only a 3 min walk to the center of Hersham. There’s a nice (expensive) grocery store, with plenty of vegetables, so yay for vegetables!

Since the apartment was empty except for a bed, most of my time and energy has been spent on trying to get us set up. In the process I discovered that I actually hate having to set-up a household from scratch, I’ve done it enough that I’m over it. Who knew?

The biggest adventure so far was the night we ended up at ikea. Here’s how it all started.

We’d planned to go to Kingston, where there’s a 99p store. We needed lots of little things (sponges, tea towels, soap, garbage bags, saran wrap) that I knew would be at a discount place, and since each of these things were 3-4 L (I can’t figure out how to get the sterling symbol so I’ll make do with an L) at the grocery store in the village we decided to take a little trip.

Farm Boy got home half an hour late. Problem one. He runs into the apartment, changes, and we go running back out again. We’d already missed the bus we were supposed to take, unless it was 5 min late, but we tried. We get to the bus stop, realize it’s the wrong bus stop, and go to try and find the right bus stop, which we never find. We go back to the first bus stop, where apparently a different buss going to Kingston will stop. But wait, if we take that bus we won’t have a way to get home, because we’d be on the last bus.

All this is discovered and talked out while standing outside in the cold. I’d walked out of the apartment wearing a paid of jeans, turtleneck, and a blazer, thinking we’d have only a 5 min walk to the bus there and back, no need for the whole tights under the jeans drama. After realizing that we’re never going to make it to Kingston Farm Boy says, “Let’s go to Ikea.” I hesitate, thinking it’s cold and I’m tired, but we don’t have any freaking trash cans, so I agree.

We head out for the train station. The wrong way. I realize we are going the wrong way as we pass signs pointing to Walton, where we want to go, that are not pointing the direction we are going. I make a light comment, along the lines of “is this the way?” to which Farm Boy assures me we are going the right way.  Okay, I say to myself, he knows where he’s going, don’t be such a know it all. Pleased with my restrain I trudge on as it gets colder and colder. He, of course, did not know where he was going, having never tried to get to the train station from the part of the village we were in. However, we eventually reach a train station. When we get there Farm Boy exclaims, “oh, this isn’t Walton, but we’re here!” I refrain from punching him in the nose. We’d just missed a train, of course, so we wait on the platform for half an hour.

My legs have never been so cold. The jeans I was wearing were a cute pair from Gap. Look great on, completely impractical for where I was.

Finally the train comes. Yay! I leap in expecting warmth…nothing. It’s freaking freezing on the train. We snag seats, and Farm Boy tells me our stop is Wimbledon. Wait, like, the tennis place? Yes, that Wimbledon, which was 20 minutes by train. I’m stunned having not realized that we were going so far away. After the train we transfer to another train (a tram they said) and take that for another 20 minutes. It’s again freezing in the stupid train, and this one is going painfully slow.

This whole time I assumed that Farm Boy had made this trek before, but as he’s asking people on the train where we get off for Ikea I realized that he hadn’t. When confronted he blinked all cute and innocent like and said that no he’d never done it but he knew it was possible in theory. Grrrrr.

Finally we get to our stop. We get off, and all I’m thinking is “let’s just get some stuff and go home I’m cold and annoyed.” We cross the street heading for the Ikea parking lot.

That’s when it started snowing.

Farm Boy says, “Oh look it’s snowing” at which point I would have punched him in the nose if I’d been able to make a fist. We trek through the parking lot and finally (horray!) make it into the Ikea. Two and a half hours after we’d walked out of our apartment. Ugh.

We eat and have tea (yay for hot tea!) taking our time, until we realize, oh wait, we only have an hour and a half until we have to catch that tram, otherwise we’ll miss the last train at Wimbledon.

We speed through the Ikea. We needed basically everything in there, but had to be selective, since we’d be carrying all this stuff. We pay with 5 minutes to spare, and hefting our two huge ikea bags each, take off for the tram, through the inch of snow that is sticking in the parking lot. I’ll let you imagine the return journey. It wasn’t pretty. Needless to say that by the time we got to Walton station I was so cold I couldn’t feel the top layer of skin on my legs. We got a taxi home from the train station.