Sinking into Narnia

A great start to the day. My boyfriend tells me the toilet is broken - not that he broke it, mind - that it is broken. It broke all by itself. I'm not surprised though, because we have a problem where the floor in our bathroom is subsiding and when you sit on the toilet it feels like you're falling into Narnia.

We complained about it to the landlord months ago when it started, but they said it was fine so it's almost been like we've been waiting for something like this to happen to prove that every time we use the bathroom we're in danger of slipping into the underworld.

Now hopefully they'll sort it out properly and replace the bath which is seeping damp through the walls.

It must sound like I live in a real palace. It's an old London house, so you expect a bit of nonsense, but extreme toilet adventures is going a bit far. Dodgy insulation, high heating prices and ridiculous water charges I expect - but not the danger of falling into an early grave every time nature calls.

Annoyingly, as it's a Saturday they can't get the contractors in to fix it properly so a little Irish plumber came around to temporarily fix up the loo until Monday. We just have to make sure we go about it very daintily. The worry is that Monday will come and the contractor comes and says 'oh, yeah, this is a big job. You won't have a bathroom for 2 weeks'. Eeek. I think the landlord is contractually obliged to put us up somewhere that does have a bathroom but what a pain in the arse that'll be. Excuse the pun.

Hair Bear

Some people are awful, aren't they?

I had a casting last week to do some hair modelling. I was pretty surprised they asked me back because my hair is a state at the moment - two tone, shapeless etc etc. But they did, and I thought, oh great, maybe they'll sort it out and I won't have to pay for someone to do it.

I went back to the second casting, where they were deciding what to do with all the girls' hair, and I waited around for 2 hours, yes TWO BLOODY hours for this Italian old geezer to come up to me and try to bully me into getting my hair cut much shorter than I wanted. He literally backed me up into a corner and said "with deepest respect your hair is in terrible condition and you should let us start from the beginning". What I should've said was, 'with deepest respect, up you!' but I just said that I thought that would be the case and I didn't know why I'd been asked back.

Grrrr. He was so rude and such a bully. With every girl he tried to coerce them into having a cut they didn't want. He was oleaginous and awful.

At the very least it has provoked me into going to a salon to get my hair done by a professional. So, watch this space and we'll see how it goes.

Olympic Parade

Today was the Olympic parade through London. I only realised when I saw live coverage of it on the BBC. That's a bit of a shame because I might've gone down to join in with the celebrations as I bloody love the olympics and paralympics.

It seemed to be under publicised - I'm saying that because I was unaware it was happening and as an obsessive reader of sports news, I would have thought I might have read about it.

Thankfully it was a lovely day for it. The sun was shining and there were a fair few people out to cheer on our awesome athletes. Not as many as for the rugby world cup winners parade or the ashes parade (wasn't that a boozy hoot), but I hope there were enough people to make the athletes feel as celebrated as they deserve to feel. Which is loads and loads. There's something about sporting achievement that is so pure and heart-warming, it really gets me. And putting that alongside Britain's usual position of 'also ran' being smashed to the side as our nation became a nation of champions made me genuinely really proud to be British.

I can't wait for 2012. Well, I can. There's the Ashes of next year, several Six Nations and the next rugby world cup to get involved in before then. I'm still very excited about it, nonetheless.

I Wish We Had A Barack Obama

Me and my friends have been getting way too interested in the American elections, with the big one less than a month away we find ourselves reading an insane amount about it on the internet.

When I think about it, and gosh, I do get wrapped up in thinking about it, I'm always left with a feeling of exclusion. Because as excited as we can get about the idea of Obama becoming president, it doesn't directly impact on our lives here in London. The thought of British government elections fills me with ennui, like I've over eaten salty porridge. What exciting choices do we have?

Take the Mayoral election - a choice of Ken, who'd clearly had it, or Boris who is clearly entertaining, but mental. What sort of option is that? It's difficult to even say a labour vote is a given for me because the party seems to be operating beyond, through and out of party principles. Where is our Barack Obama? It is obviously not Gordon Brown.

Maybe we are not so desperate for change. Perhaps Britain isn't in so terrible a situation that we need something as re-energising as a Barack Obama to refocus our country. I can't help but feel that if Obama wins, it will help us here in the UK.

I think I'm in love with Obama. What a dude. If he doesn't win, I'm going to freak out.

Bleurgh

I have a bloody stomach bug. Oh, it's horrible. Perhaps it's karma because I've had such a nice two weeks, but if it is karma, karma is being a real dick.

I had a similar thing a few months ago. This time it's not so bad because the last time I couldn't leave the house, I could barely leave the bathroom. With this one, it started last night when I started feeling queasy so decided to go to bed early. I couldn't get to sleep because of the nausea and I had chills alternating with a fever. I spent a good few hours trying to sleep until at about 4am I bolted to the bathroom to be sick. I thought it would be a relief to have finally puked, but the nausea, chills and cramps continued until I had to get up for work at 7am.

Fortunately, today is a very slow day at work and after describing my previous night's adventures to my boss she said I could go lay down on one of the sofas for a while. So I did, and I feel slightly better but still like someone has stolen my insides and I'm walking around trying to stay upright without having a skeleton.

I can't wait to go home and go to bed.

Does anyone recommend anything? I'm just drinking water very slowly, and I had a banana. The problem I have is that I'm still not registered with a GP in London (that's a sort of long story, perhaps the subject of another blog) so all I have is NHS Direct, or the pharmacists in the Bush Pharmacy. They are great but I can't rely on them for all my medical queries, it'll get embarrassing.

Three Countries in two Weeks

I had my jet set trip to Ireland last week so I thought I'd top that off with a trip home to the motherland this weekend. I needed to go home to record some things for my brother, and it was one of my cousin's 30th birthday parties, so I thought I'd kill two birds with one stone and get on the train to Cardiff.

What's really annoying is that had I booked my tickets just a few days earlier (1 week, instead of 4 days) then the price would be halved. So I paid pretty much full price for an off peak return with young person's railcard discount (£40 ish). If I'd booked a week in advance I could've got singles for about £10 each way. Curses. Spontaneity is not cheap.

An additional concern for my bank balance came in the fact that I was feeling quite generous so I bought, for the first time in my life, a dozen assorted Krispy Kremes for the family. I felt like some sort of American style hero carrying the big box of donuts from London to Wales. I didn't even eat one on the train. You see, you cannot get Krispy Kremes in Wales and my brother loves them. So they are a real treat for my family who rarely come to London. It did cost me £9 though. For 12 donuts, that isn't terrific. I could've bought a quality pub sunday roast for that.

I Heart London

I had one of those days where you end up in the middle of town for some work reason and when you leave your meeting you discover you have some free time, and you're on the Thames.

I came out and crossed back over Westminster Bridge from County Hall and decided to walk to Fleet Street. The sun was shining, it was a beautiful autumn day. I walked past the London Eye, the Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace, The Mall, Trafalgar Square and the Royal Courts of Justice.

The whole time I was wondering around and actually looking at all the stuff and thinking 'I am so grateful to be living in London, what a beautiful, detailed, historical, impressive, glorious city. I really must appreciate it more often.'

I had lunch in Fleet Street and then got the bus to Paddington. i was going to Ladbroke Grove but because of the bus strikes the 23 wasn't running so I went to Paddington and then walked to Ladbroke Grove. I got to see another amazing part of London that I rarely get to see - aimly the grand Georgian architecture of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. It's quite wonderful how many people actually get to live in these beautiful houses in this Mary Poppins area of London. How lovely it must be to live in one of those buildings and have keys to the private gardens. One day..

Then I walked through Portobello Market, met some friends for coffee and after that walked home to Shepherd's Bush from Ladbroke Grove.

My legs ache a bit, but my mind is jiggling with how much I love London. It's days like this that make you forget about how horrendously expensive it is to live here. And walking is always free.