Another busy week has come to an end and there is much to report!! I didn't actually have a whole lot going on at the beginning of the week, but on Wednesday I went to my first yoga class at the Fitness First down the road from my work. I'm going to start doing yoga twice a week, on Wednesdays and Sundays - I just had my second session today and I must admit that my back is in a bit of pain!!!
Thursday night Katie and I went to go see Avenue Q, a musical that was written for people who hate musicals and which involves puppets who are quite rude and vulgar! It was absolutely hilarious and slightly outrageous - we loved it! It's been playing every night for over a year now, and will continue for another year. It's actually an American musical but appeals greatly to the British sense of humour and irony. On Friday it was my co-worker Anthony's 40th birthday, so we all went out for a 2.5 hour lunch and made fun of him for getting old. In the UK, the tradition is for the person whose birthday it is to buy drinks and food for everyone, so I didn't pay a single penny!! Everyone agreed with me that this tradition doesn't make much sense, but none of us were complaining! I then went out for drinks after work with some younger coworkers of mine - the pub next to my work is packed every single next, but especially so on Fridays. It's quite funny to see crowds of people in their business clothes getting all rowdy in the pub.
Yesterday Katie, Andrea, Catia, Daniel and I headed over to Camden Town in the afternoon. I'd always heard about Camden Town and the markets there, but I had ABSOLUTELY no idea how amazing it really is!!! If you think of Kensington Market in Toronto, it's basically like that but 30 times bigger and with a much vaster range of products, clothes, jewellery, food, basically anything you can possibly imagine. It's such a unique place too because the punk culture is still very much alive there, with giant mohawks and anarchy signs all over the place, and yet the place is full of different people from all walks of life. You can find trendy, alternative, punk, pop, anything there really. We spent a few hours roaming just a small fraction of the markets, and then Katie and I headed off to St. Paul's tube station to join a walking tour at 7.30. The walking tour was a ghost walk that went around the central city area of London, or the oldest part of the city, for an hour and 45 minutes. Funnily enough, part of the tour stopped right next to my office building. The pubs attached to my building are hundreds of years old and have many stories to tell, and the alley ways behind the building used to be used by the black friars who used to live there (hence the reason why the area is called Blackfriars). One friar was actually murdered at a spot right behind my building by having an iron stake driven through his forehead. Creepy!! I also found out that the Cock Pit, an old pub attached to the building, used to be the site of many a cock fight and gin-induced crime back in the day. It boggles my mind to imagine what the areas I walk through everyday were once like. We loved the walk and are going to try to do one a week from now on!! They have walks taking place all over London through this same company every day, and for only 5 pounds!
....It's now Monday as I had to put this aside for a bit! Anyway, on Sunday I had a veryyy busy day. I had found out the afternoon before that Ann (my good friend and old housemate at Mac) would be flying into London on Saturday night and flying out the next afternoon... not because she's insane but because she's a flight attendant with Air Canada! We didn't have enough time before the tubes closed on Saturday night to get together, so I met her on Sunday morning at 9.30am in Piccadilly Circus. We chatted over coffee and then I took her to see Leicester Square, Covent Garden and Trafalgar Square - all the tourist favourites of the West End! We only had a few hours to spend together but it was amazing to see her!!!!!!!!!!!!! I still can't believe that Ann and I have been in London together! The same goes for when Mark was over - it's crazy! I'm very, very lucky to have been able to see some of my closest friends while over here (not to mention living with one of them) and to have gone travelling with my sister. It makes the transition a lot easier!!!!!!!! Anyway, after seeing Ann I went back to Leyton and attended a yoga class. It was quite intense and my back still hurts from it! I then went to meet my friend Nicola down the road as she just moved a 20 minute walk away from me!! We met up and found an extremely old cemetary with some absolutely fascinating headstones in it, mostly covered in ivy or worn away. The graveyard was part of a very old church, and we spent about 45 minutes just wandering through the property and looking at the dates and names on the headstones. Many of them dated back to the 18th century, and there were others that were even older but we couldn't read them as the wording was completely worn away. There was also a board giving a short history of Leyton there, and it turns out that it used to be a retirement area inhabited by wealthy merchants and businessmen of London who would use Leyton as a getaway. At that time it was outside of London in a rural area. Hard to imagine now!!!!!!!! I've always been fascinated with who lived in my old Victorian house in the past, but that got me even more interested, so I've contacted the old archives library in Walthamstowe Forest, the borough of London where Leyton is located, and I'm going to make an appointment to go in and view the property records. I've already purchased a brief report on who has owned the house, but it doesn't seem to be complete. A man named Henry Cresswell Foulkes purchased the house in 1886 and I believe rented it out. I'm not sure if it would be possible to find out who he rented it out to though! A brief google search of that name shows that he owned a number of properties in the area, obviously a fat cat landlord type!! Anyway, after walking through the graveyard we went back to Nicola's new flat, which is owned by a BBC journalist who is currently on a 6 month contract in Washington and is absolutely lovely. She and her husband made an absolutely fabulous dinner of mushroom/onion/garlic tomato sauce with cheese and spinach tortellini. It was an amazing change from my usual store-bought sandwiches and paninis!!
I'm now at work and am not really that busy today! Katie and I are hoping to do another walk tomorrow evening, Wednesday I have yoga after work and Thursday I'm attending an office event, Rock n' Roll for Kidz, which is for charity and is supposed to be quite fun!!!
I hope everyone is doing well!!!!!!!!! Nana, I got your e-mail and was going to write back but I figured it would get repetitive if I were just going to post in here anyway!!! It was so good to hear from you and I will write to you soon, there is definitely a lot going on here that I haven't mentioned!!!!
Lots and lots of love,
Emily
