the-inbetween.com

Personal Maps

I’ve been keeping a map of (most) walking treks through the city of London and where I’ve been eating and drinking (not often.) It’s all from memory, so it’s not all accurate, but it gives a good sense for how and where I’ve been spending my time here. Yes, I have walked a lot.

By comparison, here’s a map showing all the places I ate at (and drank at) and took take-out food from in Toronto, from January up to the time I left. The interesting thing about this map is how local it is.

Note the scale in comparison to the London map. Something could be said about a one’s habits in a city they’ve long called home. You get into a groove and don’t really venture out too far. Being in a new country, I haven’t found all those home comforts yet so I go around seeking them. Either that or there really is shit all to see in Toronto.

The Jacket

One of the foolish things that I did before heading off to the UK was to not bring a coat. With my bags packed and ready to go to the airport, I grabbed it and wondered “should I take this?” It was a 32C day, I had enough to carry as it was, I was going to be in the UK in the middle of the summer and I had plenty of time to buy one before I did need one in the fall. I put it back.

The British weather didn’t seem to agree. The first few days here were cool, wet, windy and downright miserable. I walked around the city in the one long sleeved shirt that I brought, through the frigid drizzle and highs in the low teens, on the verge of pneumonia. Finding a jacket became a more prominent item on my London todo list.

On Saturday, I found myself in Harrods. Its coats, however, were not the compelling reason for being there; I was there for Laduree. The day before I had a discussion about macaroons and how I should have some. A quick search led to Laduree and its London locations. The place seemed suitably fancy. If I was going to try macaroons it was best to start with quality. When I found myself in Kensington last Saturday afternoon, I knew I had to go to Harrods to try them. Being there, I could check out their menswear department too. Unfortunately for me it was the last day of a large sale and the place was packed and the stock was dwindled.

The few found jackets that I liked didn’t exist in my size (fat ass) or were attached to a nice sticker that said, as if it was nothing, “£1300“. Such jackets were just a tad outside of the “impulse buy” range. Or any range, for that matter. Then I saw a pair of “sport” jackets. Nothing fancy, affordable, thin, light and they provided the proper wind and rain protection that I wanted. More importantly, it fit.

I slipped it on and zipped it up and went to the mirror. It was alright. I zipped it up to the top to see if my fat neck would fit — it did — and then played around with the bottom zipper a bit. I was confused why it would need two zippers and surmised that it was there in case you ever felt the need to air out your belly button. I moved it half way up until the jacket looked like a cloak. I was satisfied by its zippiness. Then, as I started to unzip from the top, I hit a roadblock. The zipper got stuck just below the neck. I tried yanking it harder, but it wasn’t going.

Having seen me fiddling in front of the mirror, one of the uniformed employees, a long haired blonde, asked me if I needed any help. After a moment of hesitation I admitted my shame: I couldn’t get the zipper off. She said it was alright and tried to help as if I was a little child. “Oh, it’s really stuck,” she said with a more serious tone. “I’m going to get some help.” As if my embarrassment needed more witnesses.

Soon I was being yanked on by a guy with greased back hair. He too had no luck. “Hold on, I’m going to get someone senior.”

At this point I’ve had the jacket on for a few minutes and, being the middle of the summer, I was starting to sweat a little. It was funny at first but now I wanted the damned thing off. An older, grey haired gentleman was directed my way. The bottom zipper was stuck in the fabric but knowing that didn’t make the process any easier. Twice I tried to slip the jacket off over my head, but it wouldn’t fit over my fat noggin. The zipper was too high up and too restrictive. If we could lower it a tad I’d be free, but the zipper was having none of it.

As he was playing around with the zipper I began to quip about how embarrassing this is, how this isn’t a good first impression to a potential buyer, how it feels like I’m in a straight-jacket and what David Blaine’s next act should be. Though I doubt even he could work his way out of this trap.

Fifteen minutes later (it felt like an eternity, but it was probably considerably less time than that), with the jacket slung over my head, the manager managed to yank the fabric out. I smoothly slid the zipper to the bottom, opening the jacket wide open, and took it right off. Relief. I placed it back on the rack, thanked the man, grabbed my bag and headed straight out of the men’s department. It didn’t matter if they had the perfect jacket for me hiding on the racks somewhere, I was done.

Moments later I bought macaroons at Laduree. The caramel salted butter one made the entire ordeal worthwhile.

Cinematic Experience

On Friday, I went to a big screen cinema inside of a shopping centre–a decidedly untourist-like thing to do–to see “The Dark Knight.” It was a warm day in London so I welcomed the air conditioning in the empty theatre thirty minutes before the screening. Silly me, expecting major crowds for a record setting movie one day after its release. However, before it started I was in convulsions brought on by the onset of hypothermia. That venue was downright cold.

There were various notices about making recordings and copyright infringement with dire warnings for those that would dare do these things, as though they were on even ground with murderers. I thought about how clueless the major movie studios are. Their own ineptitude encourages that behaviour. The Dark Knight was released in London on the 24th, which was a Thursday, an odd day for a release, a good week after its big money making North American premier. And I wonder why the delay? What possible reason could there be for it? It’s not as if they had to translate the film from English to English, so I’m at a loss to think of a reason for it apart from parading the actors around town for it (a pointless diversion for such a majorly marketed film). Hell, even Indonesia got the movie before the UK.

In that week, on the Internet, there were all sorts of geek orgasms proclaiming the greatness of the film, hundreds of reviews and news stories and thousands of “spoiler warnings” across the weblog and forum universe. Yet, in an English speaking country, no one could see it. Not legally, at least. It’s as though the studios don’t even want our money.

And that’s the thing. When I was in Aldgate earlier in the week one of the things I so clearly noticed was some Chinese guy peddling bootleg DVDs. “The Dark Knight” was the most prominent of them all. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t tempted but I assumed it would have been Region 2 (which wouldn’t have worked on my MacBook; as I said, the studios do it to themselves) and I wasn’t sure about the quality of the recording. It’s hard to tell sometimes. I opted to see it on the big screen and pay the full, overpriced, admission cost for it.

After twenty minutes of adverts, I regretted the decision. That was then followed by another ten minutes of trailers, none of which were for movies that I’d want to see. That right there is the difference. The bootleggers? They’re admirable because they’re in it for the money. They charge what the market allows (not a whole lot) and get the product into the hands of the consumers as soon as they can with as few hurdles as possible. That seems like smart business to me. The movie studios and theatres? Fuck if I know what they’re doing, aside from making the whole idea of “watching a movie” a shivering test of patience that costs eight pounds. And after that, they complain about piracy? Next time I’ll stick with the bootleggers. It seems more honest.

The Thames Path

As with most days here, this afternoon I headed for the Tube with the intention of going for a long, wandering trek around London. I wasn’t sure where I’d go; I figured I’d decide on the train. I walked down the road past the station to a little bakery around the corner and grabbed a croissant and stuffed it into my camera bag. The blue eyed blonde Polish girl wasn’t working today. I crossed back to the station, pulled out my Oyster card and set it against the sensor. The light went red, the gate didn’t open and “SEEK ASSISTANCE” lit up on the display.

Twenty four pounds (and twenty pence) later I had a renewed weekly travel pass. It’s essential to have this in London if you are aimlessly traveling because you can hop-on, hop-off anywhere without ever having to worry about the fares and how much money you have left on your card or in your pocket. Still, for my simple TTC inspired ways the price is a major sticker shock. Then again, the London Tube is refreshingly free of TTC Union assjacks and it’s worth paying more for that privilege.

On the Jubilee Line, somewhere near Baker Street, I decided that I would get off at London Bridge and venture eastward along the Thames. The farthest I had been along in this direction was the Design Museum a block east of Tower Bridge, where the throngs of tourists start to thin. Many people are quick to point out that galleries and museums in London have free admission but if you want to see anything remotely contemporary or non-institutional–and you’ve already been to the TATE Modern–then you have to pay. This is true for the Institute of Contemporary Art and the Hayward Gallery and the Embankment Gallery (in the Somerset House) and, of course, the Design Museum.

I’m unsure if this is true for the Whitechapel Gallery. I ventured out into urine-smelling Aldgate last weekend to see it only to discover that it’s undergoing renovations and won’t be fully open until 2009. The auditorium was open, showing a film shot in an abattoir, and there were a few scattered locations showing stuff around the neighbourhood but after going to one space on Bell Lane and seeing nothing but a cardboard box, I skipped most of them. Granted, it was a very large cardboard box and the lady there tried to tell me about the artist’s motivations and inspirations for the work but, still, it was a cardboard box. That trip was a complete bust.

The area east of the Design Museum, along the Thames Path, is quite nice and suitably quiet. After you pass the last tourist and the last riverside restaurant and pub you enter a meandering path of riverside walks and silent side streets that takes you through miles of wharf lands. Amongst many others, there’s the Chambers Wharf, the Hope Wharf, the Ivory Wharf, the Canada Wharf, the Lavender Wharf and so on. Some of them sit there, decaying. Most have been converted into residential spaces, studios, pubs or an mixture of all the above. On the other side of the narrow streets upon which they sit are row houses, apartments, manors and all sorts of quiet residences. The traffic here was non existent, the pedestrians few and, refreshingly, no tourists to be seen except yours truly. To experience a city you have to go through these kinds of areas.

After a while I sat down on a bench overlooking the Docklands, the steel and glass skyscraper new city development, across the river. I ate the croissant I bought earlier while I watched planes fly by towards one of the many London airports. The Docklands is the most un-London-like part of the city. It’s overly planned, commercial, full of chain restaurants and retailers and it all has little character because of it. It mostly reminds me of North American cities and makes me homesick, to a small degree, for the small town charms of Toronto.

Several side streets and pathways later I found myself near Surrey Docks and the Greenland Lock, where I was crossing the road as a blue car approached from my left. “Excuse me.” A grey haired woman was sticking her head out of the car’s window as it rolled to a stop in front of me. She spoke with that old English woman accent.

“Excuse me, do you know where I can find the Wibbly Wobbly?”

In a self-conscious-of-my-Canadian-accent manner, I replied that “I have no idea.” She smiled, said “alright” and drove off.

I finished crossing the street and was shortly riverside again. In the corner there, next to the lock, a shirtless fat man was fishing. I continued down the path and, once I was at a point where he was no longer visible, I sat down on a piece of marble street furniture. I stayed there for fifteen minutes, dumbfounded, wondering what the hell the “Wibbly Wobbly” could be. I am, truly, in Britain.

iPod Touch in London

On Thursday it was cold and rainy in London so, for the first time since my arrival, I took a day “off”. I was not wandering the streets nor riding the underground nor hitting a gallery nor adding to the blisters on my left foot. Instead, I stayed indoors reading, listening to British radio–it’s very British–and manually added the artworks to all the albums in my iTunes library. This is a tedious process. I’m up to artists starting with the letters “Bu”.

The reason for such busywork was, more or less, to beautify my iPod Touch. I’ve been using it extensively, on the Underground, in sunlit squares and in bed, and I was growing tired of the grey music note on white graphic that accompanies any and every song without album art assigned to it. It seemed like such a waste of prime screen real estate.

Never did I think that I would devote such labour to this tiny device. I never intended to own it, I was perfectly content with my tiny iPod Shuffle, but jumped on the chance to get one when I discovered that it came “free” with the MacBook Pro. Like any offer too good to be true there was a catch. I still paid for it but could redeem the price with a mail-in rebate. This was acceptable, I thought. Unfortunately, in the move before the bigger move to the UK, I misplaced the iPod box and its required UPC so I could not claim it. The Touch was no longer free.

When word that the firmware update to 2.0, to coincide with the release of the new iPhone, would cost $10 I scoffed. Can you imagine if Microsoft charged $10 for their updates to the XBox 360 dashboard? There’d be riots. Yet here was Apple charging for this most basic of features. It was charging for the privilege to be able to buy from the new App Store. The nerve.

But I’m considering it. I have grown to appreciate this device a great deal over the last week and a half. It goes with me everywhere. Apart from the music that it contains, which is good, all the other features have proven useful. I take notes. I have used the address book to make a phone call. I check my email and post to Twitter, whenever I can find open wifi in London (not so easy), and use Google Maps to find my way through some of the labyrinths in this city. It’s not like Toronto, a city strictly laid out in a grid like manner, where it’s impossible to get lost. Roads go off in all directions here and in my wanderings, on one day, by dumb luck I crossed through the same intersection three times (it was a SEVEN WAY intersection). I didn’t need the Maps then because I was just aimlessly wandering, but they have proven useful in other situations.

Knowing what’s in the App Store I think $10 is a small price to pay for the extra convenience therein. Besides, the app store has one more category of applications useful for the boring minutes spent on the Underground: games. That is the most compelling because, no matter how many thousands of kilometers away from home I find myself, I can’t escape my nerdy passions for digital interactive entertainment. It’s a passion that I was going to work on during this trip, trying to build an idea I’ve had for a while, but so far it’s all been for nought. I’ve been too busy being a flaneur on the streets of London.

The Hazards of Looking Left

After spending my entire 28 years of existence in places where the traffic moves forward on the right side of the road it would take me a while to get used to it flowing from the wrong end. Not as a driver but, simply, as a pedestrian crossing the road. I’ve managed to avoid any collisions but, on a number of occasions, I have been startled by a car coming at me from a direction I did not expect: my right. Fear is a great learning aid.

I imagine that this is a known problem in a tourist heavy city like London. What else would be the motivation for painting, on intersection asphalt, signage telling pedestrian crossers which way to look? All around on the streets are painted notices advising people to “LOOK LEFT” and “LOOK RIGHT.” No doubt many a foreigner walked onto the street looking the correct way only to be struck down by a double-decker bus coming coming from the other direction. I have not been so unfortunate as I have adjusted my jaywalking habits accordingly.

The streets I understand now but the pedestrian pavement continues to dumbfound. If the cars drive on the left which way, as a courtesy, are pedestrians meant to walk on the sidewalk? Casual observation shows that, as anywhere else, people tend to stick to the right hand side. But not everyone. I wonder about those contrarians: are they walking their own path, regardless of common decency and courtesy, or are they the few stragglers doing it right amongst a sea of wrong-headed tourists? I was uncertain until I started going into the London Underground where, along the deep escalator descents, signs were posted alerting those that choose to stand to stand on the right.

My questions had been answered. Pedestrians stick to the right except when passing. This must be, no matter what automobiles do, a universal rule. I was satisfied.

The very next day in some connecting station somewhere on the Northern Line, in the busy tunnels going from one platform to another, there were signs posted asking pedestrians to stick to the left. To add to that, some stations had their descending escalators on the left and others had them on the right. Once again I was confused so, now, I do what makes most sense: I walk in the middle. Let everyone else sort it out.