France

France is lovely, and it smells of home. London, not so much.

I'm not dead, I still don't have a working internet connection back in the UK, and this horrible thing called work is taking up a lot of time.

I'm nearly caught up on my jewellery orders (business picks up in the run-up to Christmas, which is nice), and I'm still way behind on my story. I've done 15,000 words, and I need to ideally be up to 25k by the end of the weekend. That's unlikely to happen, but it's not impossible. If I can get up t0 20k, that will be pretty much good enough. That's certainly possible.

Flight was fine - pilot from Easyjet actually understands customer service. Was shocked, but pleased - may write to them and tell them how good he was. Ground staff were utterly fucking appalling - am definitely planning to write to complain about them. Complete and total lack of understanding of basic customer service, or even health and safety principles - shutting a plane load of people in a tiny waiting room, with the heating on full blast, closing all the doors and windows, and then not giving us any information about what's happening and why we're delayed by 40 minutes is utterly unacceptable.

The apology from the pilot - which was polite, informative, specific and sounded fairly sincere - went a long way to making up for the shockingly bad attitude of the gate staff, but since it's a contracted out service, I rather think I might write to Easyjet, urge them not to renew the contract with a company that's so obviously lacking in basic training for its staff.

Incompetence annoys me.

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Let there be light!

And lo! there was light.

The electrician came. Our bathroom now has a light in - and it's even one that's safe to use in bathrooms, unlike the very pretty one we have before, which even without a leak upstairs apparently wasn't safe to use in bathrooms. Awesome. I love it when people try to kill their tenants for the sake of aesthetics.

Anyway, it's fixed now and we can see again.

Door is also fixed, and boiler is certified as safe. Our flat is now almost perfect.

Tree chopping person is supposedly coming later to sort out the tree outside our window - I'm more bothered by the mattress and carpet bits outside, to be honest, but they scare me too much to try lifting them. Creepy crawly things live in carpets outside, I'm not going near them. The council will get rid of them. (Hopefully.) Maybe the tree people will help...

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Domestic triumph

Today's domestic triumphs:

Bought clothes dryer.
Worked out how washing machine works. (Tip: works better when the door is properly closed. You're welcome.)
Found 3G inside - balancing on the corner of the coffee table. Bound to not work tomorrow, but for this second, I have the Glowing Blue Light of Communication beaming at me.

Domestic set-back:

Freeview box doesn't fit TV ariel cable. Suspect this means TV ariel cable might actually be satelite cable. Which means freeview box might not work with it, even if I can find a way to make it fit. Further suspect that freeview box is non-refundable, because shop is owned by capitalist bastards who want to make money. Suggestions as to ways forward gratefully received...

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Flats

The good news: we found a flat! It's a 1 bedroom with a garden and a kitchen and a bathtub and a washing machine and it's half an hour away from work, and perfect. It's just had new carpet laid, and it has a new mattress and it's lovely. Except.

The bad news: The flat above us had a leak between me seeing the flat and moving in. And it's screwed up the nice new paint work. And it's run into the bathroom light, making smoke billow from the lights in an alarming fashion. So we switched all the power off and took the lights off the ceiling, so it could all dry properly. And the inside of the light where the wires connected to it is all black and melty. Lovely. Since the ceiling is still wet, I'm thinking it's not entirely safe. Am now reduced to showering by torchlight, which isn't as easy as you'd think. Hopefully it will be fixed soon, by a real electrician, if I'm really lucky. At least the wires are taped up so it's now safe to shower. I hope. (If you never hear from me again, it wasn't safe to shower, and you should all learn a lesson from this. I'll leave it to you to decide what lesson - I personally favour "Never go up against a Sicilian when death is on the line!" but you can pick your own. And if you know where that quote comes from without looking it up, you get a gold star.)

Photos of the new place will follow at some point when I have a proper internet connection. I'm currently sitting in the garden which is the only place that gets 3G internet, so the dongle works out here. It's bloody cold though, so updates will be strictly limited until inside internet is installed... My UK phone number works, for those of you who have it - if you don't, and think you should, email me. (And if you don't have my email address, you shouldn't have my phone number, so that solves that.)

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A flat!

I think, just possibly, we have a winner! Contracts yet to be signed and all, but I see no reason it wouldn't work out, and we might be able to move in this weekend - it is a beautiful flat, in a fabulous part of town and it even has a garden all of its own! London-based blog readers, do get in touch in the summer if you want to come round for a BBQ...

I'm so looking forward to a shorter commute and an end to 6am starts...

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Further thoughts on commuting...

Much nicer when you have a seat! I had to stand all the way in today; not happy feet.

Going to look at a flat now - keep your fingers crossed for me; I think I actually want to live here! (Well, in as much as I want to live anywhere that isn't in Villefranche...)

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Commuting

I'd forgotten the joys of commuting, not having had to do it. This route isn't as bad as the Brighton-London one though; I even have a seat with a table!

Still, waking up at 6:30 and not getting to work until 8:45 is not fun. I shall be glad when we find somewhere to live - as, I'm sure, will my parents!

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Hi-ho, hi-ho...

It's off to work we go... Think of me as Snow White, just without the seven dwarves, and with blonde hair. And a tan. Ok, so the analogy falls apart somewhat, if you're going to be picky.

But, today is the day I leave the world of 1950s gender roles and go back to a Real Job. Part of me is looking forward to it, part of me is shitting bricks about the whole thing; what happens if I've forgotten how to be an office drone in the last year? (Not that I was ever exactly gifted in that regard, so no one will likely notice. But still.)

Wish me luck!

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Flat hunting

Flat hunting is hard work! We saw 3 flats yesterday, none of which really worked for us, and have one more to see on Weds evening, which I'm really hopeful about - keep your fingers crossed for us!

(If any of you reading this have a flat in central London you've not told me about, now is the time...)

England's ok when the sun shines - there was sunshine briefly yesterday, and bacon, so the day started well. And finished well with Starbucks - who do soy milk lattes! I can drink latte again, the world is a happier place. Soon it will be Gingerbread Latte time, which is the only reason to be at all pleased about Christmas.

It's raining now, of course. But I'm just going to have to grit my teeth and get over that, I think. Rain isn't actually going to make me dissolve, and it's mostly just drizzle anyway. Not as nice as sunshine on the beach, but hardly the end of the world, all things considered.

Today I'm going suit shopping and general clothes shopping, since I own the sum total of one pair of jeans and a strappy top that actually fit me, neither of which are appropriate for work in any case.

How has your weekend gone?

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Back in England

Flight yesterday went ok, apart from the hour's delay. Easyjet provides yet another spectacular service. One day, I'll get a flight that goes perfectly smoothly, and be utterly confused.

So, the beginning of my part-time-expat-ness. I'm going to keep this blog going, at least for a while, not least because I'll want somewhere to document the hassles of flat hunting and part-time-expat-ness. Also, I'm aware that I still haven't written about my wedding day. It's on my list of Things To Do like opening a bank account, finding somewhere to live, buying new work clothes, starting a job, all that sort of thing.

Anyway.

Good Things About England So Far:
Starbucks
Huge hotel rooms
Bacon
The BBC
English books - WH Smith in general
Potentially, the pub, though it has an ominous name
Marks and Spencer

Bad Things About England So Far:
Rain
Cold
Sky (the TV company, not the grey thing looming menacingly above us)
Sky (the grey thing looming menacingly above us, not the TV company)
The trains
The cost of the trains
Rain
Being homeless, so having to carry everything around with me
Did I mention the weather, generally? I think I'm going into shock at the amount of rain and grey and cold and wind. I was on the beach yesterday, ffs, where did it all go so horribly wrong?

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August Exile Photos: London

Day 2 of the August Exile was in London - we went to Greenwich in the morning, then took a boat up the Thames to eat Chinese food and go to the Royal Academy of Arts. I've finally got my photos up, so here are a selection. (Yes, there are a lot of photos of the buildings in the Docklands. I like them, and someone clearly went to a great deal of trouble to design them. If you don't like it, wait til tomorrow when you get ducks.)


The Royal Observatory at Greenwich

The Octagon Room, designed by Sir Christopher Wren:

London's only planetarium, apparently

The oldest object I'll ever touch:

Buildings along the Thames:

Tower Bridge (Twitter account here):

The Tower of London, with Traitor's Gate coincidentally apparently just in shot:

Royal Academy of Art:

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Manicures and pedicures explained

All typos are a result of trying to type at 6:30 in the morning before coffee on a mini computer. Try to imagine the horror.

I'm waiting for my Eurostar to whisk us away and back home, via Paris. So I thought I'd update you on the manicure/pedicure experiment. I surprised myself by quite liking it and I particularly recommend it to you, Keith. You'd look awesome with purple toes.

For anyone like me, who isn't exactly an habituee of nail salons, I thought an explanation of what happens might be helpful, in case you ever have to go to one and pretend to know what you're doing. A manicure is fairly easy. They soak your nails in some hot orange water thing, scrape the crap off them, cut the dead skin away, file your nails into the right shape, and then paint them the colour of your choice. (Metallic purple, in my case.) Then you get a nice hand and forearm massage, in the place I went to, leaving your hands and arms smelling pleasantly of coconut.

The pedicure was a similar thing for feet. But more complicated. And with an awesome chair that gives you a massage to distract you from the grossness that is your feet. I want one of those chairs. Think how much better my blogposts could be! I urge you to start up a collection for me!

Anyway, feet. You put your feet in a hot water footbath thingy, then the same scraping the nails happens, along with cutting away the dead skin near your toes. Another soak in the hot water (which is suspiciously blue, like cartoon water), and your feet are now sufficiently softened for the Potato Peeler of Doom to deal with them. This revolting stage of the proceedings is not for the squeamish - your dead skin is scraped off, much like peeling a potato. The poor, poor woman who was doing it. Then you get the remaining dead bits sanded off with a block of sandpapery sponge, and another soak in the hot water. Finally, you get a massage in green gritty gunk to do something nice to your skin. It smells better than it looks. Once that's washed off, you're given some fetching yellow foam flipflops and a purple thingy to seperate your toes from each other (poor, lonely toes). Your toes get painted (metallic purple, or colour of your choice) and little shiny bits of glass get superglued to your toes in whatever pattern you'd like (I have three in a line). Chair massage continues throughout. (Did I mention how much I like this chair?)

I did have some brilliant photos of my feet in flipflops and separator thing, but they are sadly stuck on my mother's phone. So will likely languish there for ever. Too bad.

Anyway, time to find coffee and get ready for Paris. Enjoy your week!

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