My London 3: 27 Years

My birthday was this week. I spent it hiding from the remnants of a hurricane that blew through London, and relishing the fact I didn’t have to work. Resting my feets for the weekend ahead, preparing to learn more about the cellar and to work hard and well at the bar. I’m getting bar skills faster than I ever thought I would, six months on. The other day, I broke a personal land speed record for changing a keg. Not exactly the things I thought that I’d learn in London, when I arrived more than a year ago to pursue my dreams in graduate school. Not what I always thought I’d be doing at 27.

Canary Wharf Station

27 can be a dangerous year. Kurt Cobain, Our Lady of Camden, Jimi Hendrix, Joseph Merrick (The Elephant Man), Janis Joplin…many people who are now famous died in this year. I’m not famous (whew!). I think I’m safe!

DLR Arrives

But then, I never thought I’d be in London. I didn’t necessarily want to be here, especially when I was studying abroad and wanted a new language, and couldn’t see the value of studying in my native tongue.

Vivienne Westwood. I kind of want to be her when I’m old.

I cleaned the dishwasher today. An accomplishment. I now know how to take one apart and rinse all the relevant components thanks to the constant closing at my job. I used a great Pintrest trick, and washed first with white vinegar and then with baking soda. The chemical reaction lifted all the stains, just as promised.

One year apart, in the same bar.

The revived Docklands

Swing bridge

Canada Square

London’s jumbled skyline

There isn’t a whole lot of interesting things to say about life, except that I’m now 27 and that we’re getting married in 25 days…and that life continues in its infinite series of strange events that add up to the journey we all take. Someday, I hope that my descendants can read these words and remember that I was just a normal person, born at the end of one century and hoping to live into another. The oldest people now were born in the late years of the 19th century. I can hope to see the 22nd.

But if I don’t, I hope that they can see this blog. I hope that they can see a part of who I truly am at this moment. That’s why I write the boring details of my day.

Not bad, even to a certified beer server

Mosaic Pale Ale…much better

The beautiful ugliness of the BT tower

Impossible prices, for tiny places to live. I despair of home…

I live in a bizarre situation. I share a house with six (seven?) people, with one toilet. We don’t really talk. Everyone who lived with us since we moved in last November is gone. They don’t know we’re getting married. It’s bizarre. Isolation of modern society at its best…not even inside the same house is there a community.

More on London later. I have to go to my job and close.