Week in the Life 2011: Sunday

I'm in week 36 of my first pregnancy.  I'm glad I've made this far and hope it continues to go as well as it has been.  It feels like a bit of a waiting game now, although I'm sure there are still plenty of things I need to do.

A weekend of wind and rain

flying kites on Parliament Hill, originally uploaded by supafly.

It has been unusually rainy in England since we've been here. It was a downpour most of Saturday so we spent a good part of the day inside rather than going to the city's Gay Pride festivities in Central London. In the afternoon, we went for a walk through our Peckham neighborhood (we're just in between Peckham and Camberwell Green) and on to Dulwich. Marshall finally got to see the cheap grocery store that I'd found. It's called Lidl and is a German chain. Our new roommate Martin, who is from Hanover, Germany, told us that it is considered nicer than Aldi since it actually sells namebrand products.

We then walked on to Dulwich through a constant drizzle. We stopped at the Sea Cow for some tasty fish and chips (and mushy peas). There was also an argument going on between one of the customers and the guy behind the counter frying fish. I'm not sure what it was about, but there was some yelling and then the guy left.

This is one of at least three fights I've seen in my neighborhood. There seems to be many passionate, hot-headed people here - and you can't blame it on hot weather because it's doesn't usually get above 65 degrees Fahrenheit. The first big fight was on a bus headed from London Bridge back to Peckham. We were on the top level of a double decker and all of a sudden two men in the back started choking each other. One man banged the other man's head repeatedly against he window. A woman that was with them just laughed as they fought. Needless to say, everyone was watching and finally one person went down to tell the driver. The bus was stopped and the driver came up, but he didn't do much. It wasn't until everyone else started telling the bus driver to kick them off the bus that they stopped. First, they clutched each other's shirt sleeves and fought over who was going to let go first. "You let go." "No, you let go." It was ridiculous masculine ego. One of them went downstairs for awhile, but eventually came back up and talked on his cell phone as if nothing happened.

The next big fight I only heard. I was again on the top of a double decker, this time headed into the city from Peckham. I heard a lot of yelling below and the bus stopped. Many people yelled that they had to get to work. Eventually, we all got off and boarded the next bus that came by. On the next bus, several people were talking about the fight. It was apparently between a couple and one threw a glass bottle at the other as their kid sat in between them. A lot of the yelling had been other people telling them they shouldn't fight like that in front of their kid.

Back to the weekend...In Dulwich, I found the best charity shop yet. It was packed with Terry Prachett books! (He's a British fantasy writer.) I had the entire Discworld series, but there was a Johnny Maxwell trilogy he had written that I hadn't read so I bought it. After a few hours in the drizzle, we headed home on a bus to where it was warm and dry.

Sunday started out much nicer and we headed to the Brick Lane Sunday market. It reminded me of the Maxwell street market in Chicago but was much larger. They sold absolutely everything there. We were first bombarded by women selling porn and pirated blockbuster DVDs. Then we passed rows and rows of stalls selling hardware, tools, medicine, cosmetics, food, jewelry...come to think of it, the one thing I didn't see were hub caps for sale. We stopped to look at bicycles (probably stolen) that were being sold for £35 to £65. A steal compared to the price at a normal store. Behind some of the stalls were nice, artsy boutiques selling interesting and expensive housewares, jewelry, and clothing. One boutique had motorcycle jackets for sale - I was tempted by a women's jacket that had just come in, but they didn't have my size. There was also a lot of great graffiti. We stopped at Brick Lane Beigel Bake (open 24 hours) for some delicious freshly baked bagels. I got mine with salt beef (like pastrami) and mustard and Marshall got one with salami and one with butter.

Next, we headed to a couple of neighborhoods I thought Marshall would enjoy seeing. First to Camden town. We stopped to watch some boats go through the locks and then walked through the many food and clothing stalls. We went into one store selling raver gear. They had borg pods on the wall and lots of futuristic clothing under black lights. Marshall was impressed by all the food for sale and tried some lamb tagine from a Moroccan stall. I got an apple, lemon, ginger smoothie and a trio of freshly made cinnamon donuts.

Soon we boarded a bus to Hampstead Heath, which is just North of Camden. We found Keat's house (which I had missed by 1/2 a block the last time I was there). It was surprisingly big and plain. It looked too modern to be his home. We took a few photos and walked on. Marshall realized how posh the neighborhood was when he spotted a Maserati on the street. He had to have his picture taken with it, and then we entered the park.

We walked up to Parliament hill and watched the crowd of people that had gathered to fly kites. It was a windy day and there were many successful kite flyers. One woman and her son were having a hard time getting their bulky bi-plane shaped kite aloft and Marshall was getting irritated with their poor kite flying skills. The person next to them had a simple pentagon shaped kite flying the entire time - sometimes the string would drift towards us and I'd have to move it before it beheaded us. He was also trying to fly a stunt kite which was a lot more challenging, since it had two strings instead of one. Besides the kite flyers, we saw two men with metal detectors (searching for buried treasure?), many picnickers, and families strolling through the park.

When we got too cold, we headed down the hill and into the village of Hampstead to the Hollybush, an old Victorian pub, where we had cider (me), guinness (Marshall), and a sausage roll. We rested our feet and read a little as well. (Reading books in pubs is a common thing, unlikes bars in the US). Then, we headed home, satisfied in a full day of (almost dry) sightseeing.

Weekend in London

the festival crowd, originally uploaded by supafly.

Our first weekend in London was a busy one. Well, after sleeping in and waking up around 11am it was. We joined the free guided nature walk that was a part of the Camberwell Arts Festival. It met at the Peckham Library which was just across the street from the cheap grocery store (Lidl) that I found and the fancy Burger King. We got there early so we checked out the modern architecture of the Peckham Library. It had many colored glass panels and was a career center as well as a library.

After finding our tour guide amongst a group of petitioners - Marshall just looked for the person without a clipboard in their hands - we set off down the Canal Road. This was a path that started at the library and had once been a shipping canal, bring lumber to Camberwell Green where it was treated and stored until it was needed elsewhere.

The walk took a couple of hours and we saw many interesting sights along the way. A long line of bicyclists passed near the beginning of our journey. One had a boombox mounted onto a recumbent bicycle with a roof. He blasted music for everyone on the ride. We also passed an old house that now housed a retired work horse as well as some chickens. As we crossed the street into Burgess Park (twice as large as St. James Park) we came upon an outdoor punk rock concert. There were lots of people there and I even recognized one of them - an overweight guy with a fluorescent green mohawk that I had seen yesterday in Camden town.

We stopped to enjoy the lake at Burgess Park. The little girl on our walk would run towards every group of pigeons we saw to get them to fly off. After the lake, we stopped at a beautiful set of walled gardens called Chumleigh Gardens. It was previously "the friendly female asylum for aged persons who have seen better days." What a great description! There was a cafe there so we stopped for snacks and a walk or sit in the garden. It was beautifully overgrown and reminded me of the Secret Garden and all the unkempt gardens that they found hidden away.

After a nice break, we walked to "the bridge to nowhere." This was a bridge that used to provide a way to get across the canal but was now just a bridge over a walking path. It was fun to cross despite it leading nowhere! We exited Burgess park and took some back streets towards Camberwell Green. On the way, we passed an allotment, an open lot that had become a community garden. Apparently, you have to live within a mile of the garden to have a plot and there is a long waiting list to get in. It wass nice to see that people are so eager for some land to grow things in. I wish America had fewer big lawns and more gardens. Our walk ended at the community orchard by Camberwell Green. There were some berries ready to be eaten on one of the bushes (I can't remember what kind) so we all picked some before we left the tour.

After the walk, we went to Southwark Park for the Carnival de Cuba. It was a big festival with row after row of food stalls. Most of them sold jerk chicken. The longest line was for the stall making mojitos. I got a fried plantain as soon as we got there and then we opted for a cuban meal of red beans, rice, chorizo, and hot sauce. I enjoyed their more environmentally conscious eating utensils - sporks and knives made out of wood. I ended up seeing those at a lot of the festivals this weekend.

After listening to some reggaeton and watching salsa dancers (as well as the East End Elvises - these two old guys dressed like Elvis who apparently go to every outdoor music festival), we crossed over to the quieter part of Southwark park and then went to Brick Lane. (After accidentally taking the bus from Canada Water in the wrong direction and finding Surrey Quays - a suburban like area with a movie theatre, bowling, and big chain restaurants.)

I had been to Brick Lane before but had forgotten. It's a bit overwhelming because every Indian restaurant on the street has people in front of it that very aggressively try to get you to eat at their restaurant. They offer you things like free drinks or 15% off of your bill. We went down to Whitechapel trying to find a less intrusive place to eat and found a new restaurant that was quiet and filled with mostly indian people and, most importantly, noone was out front trying to make us eat there.

Sunday we had another leisurely morning. Marshall made a delicious breakfast of fried egg and pepper sandwiches and we ate as an artist put up an art installation across the street. It was a car he had jacked up and had replaced one of the wheels with a resin wheel that played a cello as it spun around.

After breakfast, we went down to Trafalgar Square for the Dano Korean Festival. There they had lots of traditional entertainment like fan and sword dancers and traditional Korean music, but our favorite act were the Korean breakdancers battling with UK b-boys (from Ireland). There was also lots of delicious Korean food and a tent where you could decorate a paper fan (in celebration of summer). The crowd was big and it was the largest concentration of asians I had seen since I'd gotten to London. (I've also seen quite a few language schools where students from Korea go to learn English in London.) We also noticed several Korean girls (from Korea) with English boyfriends and we speculated how many of them were just in the relationship to have someone to practice their English with.

After watching the b-boy battle, we walked down to the South Bank of the Thames for the Coin Festival. This was a festival to honor refugee week and they had many different performers. We listened to African music and watched traditional Indian dancing as well as Serbian dancing. While we sat listening to the music, a group of people next to us passed around a joint. We also saw the East End Elvises again, this time gyrating to African music. I also discovered they have their own flickr group - how hilarious!