Craniophiles

I was planning to write these blogs for you guys monthly. So I am either really, really overdue, or bang on time for the start of 2015. The 2015–2016 Australian financial year that is… I sincerely hope no one was holding their breath for this, and if you were, please forward my deepest sympathies to your families. And stop reading blogs after death because that is creepy.

But running with the assumption that my lack of news hasn’t caused you all to forget I exist, I figured it really was time for an update.

London is good. Great at times, shit at times, so we are averaging that out to a good for now. To be fair, a lot of the shit has resulted from dealing with adults who act like children, so that is not really London’s fault. But since I am in the delightful position of (relative) internet anonymity I shall sling blame left, right and centre. And maybe even up and down. We will see how much needs to be slung first.

The good included a visit from my parents. That was better than good actually, that was great. Super, awesome great. Except when they left of course. I could say I cried like a baby but that would be a lie. I cried way more than a baby. A baby would be ashamed of itself if it cried as much as I did. I must have been quite a sight on the tube on the way home that day. I’m surprised they didn’t have to close the Piccadilly line due to flooding.

Work is good, the website I made for our project is live, have a look and then come back and shower me with praise. And like/follow us on social media. Or else. Now that the website is live I am also getting my hands on a few more bones, which is why I came here in the first place. Also – sometimes things like this (see pic below) happen. This type of thing makes for a very good day at work.

On the good list is also that it snowed. I was most excited and acted like a small child.

And another for the good stakes is that there is a number of neighbourhood cats I have been ingratiating myself with:

I’ve been playing netball and have discovered that I can still run. Not very far and not very fast, but I am still counting that as a win.

I’m really getting a lot more goods than bads here… maybe I need to upgrade ‘London is good’ to ‘London is pretty good’…

On a more general note, here are some things I have noted about the UK so far:

• Their ads are weird. I’m talking really freakin’ weird. I know some of the ones we have at home leave a little (or a lot) to be desired on the intellect scale, but we don’t have a drummer in full corpse paint and gauntlets selling muesli bars.
• They call muesli bars flapjacks. Madness.
• The locals hate public transport but use it anyway even if their destination is well within walking distance.
• Londoners appear to chose their friends based almost solely on location. If you live within a couple of stops on public transport you might be alright. The more stops they have to take, the less likely they are to want to be friends. Consequently all the friends I have are local – I am yet to see what happens when one of us moves out of the magical radius, but I will let you know when I find out.
• The streets are filled with hordes of zombies. Seriously. The pic below is proof. Look out the window.

I’m hoping to organise a visit home next year, but in the meantime I will have to keep dreaming. As I did last night. But in that dream I was running late for the flight with my travelling companions (a girl from netball and Raven) and I realised I had left my handbag, containing my purse and passport, back at the hotel. I jumped out of our cab and ran (yeh, in my dreams) back to the hotel to get my bag. Then, realising I had no hope of reaching the airport in time just decided to run as far as I could while calling a taxi. Thing was, I somehow managed to run through space and time and warp myself from London to Belair in South Australia, where I serendipitously bumped into my mother withdrawing cash from the ATM at the BankSA branch. She took me home and while all were very pleased to see me my father was concerned about the immigration implications of leaving the UK without having my passport stamped out at border protection. No one seemed particularly concerned about the fact that I had broken the laws of physics (and a number of other sciences) by travelling thousands of kilometres on foot, transversing an ocean, within minutes though.

Anyway, on that note, that is probably enough of my crap for today. I shall leave you with this lovely pic of a sunny day we had once and a promise that I will write sooner next time*.

* Promise may not be upheld. Promise not redeemable for cash.

This is the first in what will be quite a few non-skull related posts here. My inability to keep up to date with one blog has eliminated any possibility of me keeping two (one personal and one skullinal) so I am just combining the two. If you are friend or family this post is for you. If I don’t know you but you want to read anyway, that is creepy, but I am the one posting this on the net – so ok. I’m not in a position to be knocking back friends so add yourself to that group (family is obviously a harder door list to get added to).

So today is my 42^nd day in London. Six weeks would have been a more logical way to describe that, but anyway.

Thank you to everyone who has been in touch. Everyone who hasn’t is now officially a jerk. To ease your worried minds I am safe, housed, clothed, employed and have not yet become mentally or physically ill. So things are going pretty well.

A back home friend (hi Adamin!) recently asked me if I had made any friends over here… And while everyone has been incredibly welcoming and friendly, I am not really sure that I have. I have certainly found a number of people that I enjoy spending time with… but they are all of the variety that when they say, “would you like to go out and do X”, my answer would be “sure, let me go home and put on some make up and good pants.”

When really, I am more in the market for friends that I can respond with “let me go home and take off my make up and pants. I’ll leave the door open – I’ll be on the couch watching TV. Let yourself in.”

To be fair, I have probably only really made 2 or 3 of these friends in my lifetime. By that maths I can only really expect to make one every 10 or so years, so I shouldn’t hold my breath. But in a city the size of London, surely there are other lazy slobs to be found. A roadmap to them might be nice. Or a treasure map? Seeing as I have now established the requirement for pants as my litmus test for a good friendship, maybe I should just try my luck on the streets pantless? I’ll keep you all updated on my pantless friend progress anyway…

And lets round things out for today with a rainbow. This one is from out of my bedroom window and is ending in the BBC buildings around the corner. I might go look for the gold this afternoon. Possibly without pants.