The following is a writing (essay, blog, thing?) that I wrote because I was quite bored and frankly, find writing journals pretty dull. I would just like to say before I begin, that I love England, even if this Study makes it appear that I do not.
LIVING
The average English man and woman lives in much the same way as anybody else. Television, alcohol and the weekend are the chief hallmarks of life, not matter your postcode. The only differences may be that (if you’ll allow me a stereotype) Barry is watching the Manchester V Birmingham match and sipping ale and Crispin is dithering about in Chelsea watching the BBC news and thinking he’s sophisticated when he’s just a prude and sipping at expensive malt whiskey. The result is the same. Burger King exists on every street corner, tabloids cheerfully inform us of Katie Price and Strictly Come Dancing’s scandal, and the kitchen table has much the same discussion as in every other part of the world. Philosophy, religion, politics and what-colour-curtains-shall-we-buy rule supreme regardless of language or hemisphere.
Minimum wage is quite minimum (a little over five pounds, which equals under ten Australian dollars) and universities are generally standard (unless you attend Cambridge or Oxford where one-on-one tutorials presumably count for something), and people usually work in leaning skyscrapers in the City, or quiet suburban offices in well, the suburbs. Children go to school, adults go work. Weekends are set aside for going to the seaside (Brighton, Blackpool, and other overpriced and overhyped blackholes of culture) or visiting grandparents or entering those colossal Westfields that dot the land like gigantic pimples on a teenager. Sports (cricket and tennis in summer, football and rugby in the winter) are the people’s game and are played in every field and on every street and on every pub television. Music, too, and the old traditions of music hall and jazz still permeate the beachside towns and the nowhere villages like a perfume, and the top forty guides one briskly through HMV like a plague. The are pubs with garage bands and disco and tribute acts and crooners and jukeboxes and DJs. There are clubs with ‘celebrity DJs,’ and an entry fee that could be used in better ways (feeding a small country, for example). Pub fare food is cheaper than Australia and on the whole better, less trendy and more filling. There is no monopoly on supermarkets like in Australia – along with Tescos and Sainsburys are Waitrose, Morrisons, LIDL and ASDA and a host of high street shops that will sell you a whole platter of exotic sounding food from the far East. Newspapers are as equally terrible as in Australia, though there are moments of cleverness in amongst the terrible right wing-ness of the nation’s largest papers. Television is unabashedly terrible but there are shows like QI and Have I Got News For You that pull you through the muck. One does feel though, in London at least, that one is living in the epicentere of something (what, I cannot answer) and there is a sort of togetherness that feels rather lovely and jovial, and oddly heartwarming. Perhaps having come from somewhere as provincial as Adelaide, anything feels more happening than the Channel 7 news and the Malls Balls.
Living, it seems, is not particularly dissimilar from Australia, but the middle classes are financially closer to what we would describe as the upper working classes, and the upper middle classes are closer to what we may say is the upper classes. The difference between living in Penge or in Putney is tangible and so relevant it’s almost irrelevant. But then, the difference between living in Adelaide and living in London is so dissimilar it’s almost similar.
Lucy
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Going To London
02/11/2010
Speaking as a person who has comparatively little experience of travel, I Have to say I rather enjoy the novelty of undergoing conveyance by aeroplane. It is a constant source of amazement to me that man of engineering such a form of travel, and merely unfortunate that what preys on my mind as I actually sit aboard it is the fact that it is also a continuous surprise to me that the one I am on is still in the air. I notice then, that the experience of air travel is full of contradictions. For instance, having never been aboard an international flight before, I found every little thing that happened to be novel and, frankly, quite exciting. However, for the 90 percent of the time that what was happening was absolutely nothing, I struggle to think of a more boring experience. Compounding the problem was a massive headache caused by pharyngitis, contracted on the night before the flight, and compounded by the lack of sleep following the same nights gig. I had substantial difficulty concentrating. Even the most Mark Knopfler-related entertainment offered by Qantas was hard to watch. I remember thinking (something which now seems unlikely to my somewhat more lucid mind) that seconds seemed to be passing in clumps rather than one by one, as is customary. Fortunately I assumed that this was their own problem and not mine, and that they would sort themselves out which, I suppose, they must have.
I leave you with a short passage I wrote while quite tired and ill well into our day long plane journey.
‘It is the middle of the night. A perpetual night caused by the travel of our plane in the same direction as the sun. Rather like staying slim by running slightly ahead of a fat man, but not quite enough for that analogy to stand up to any scrutiny or indeed, any reading. I realize that I have a substantial flaw in the shape of my inability to sleep anywhere other than in a bed, at night. The only exception to this had hitherto been when I was ill, and yet one of the defining features of my present deluxe illness is a combination of cold sweat and an inability to swallow without intense pain which together make sleep almost impossible. Even so, I think flying may be my sort of thing…’
Love, Thomas J Williams
Speaking as a person who has comparatively little experience of travel, I Have to say I rather enjoy the novelty of undergoing conveyance by aeroplane. It is a constant source of amazement to me that man of engineering such a form of travel, and merely unfortunate that what preys on my mind as I actually sit aboard it is the fact that it is also a continuous surprise to me that the one I am on is still in the air. I notice then, that the experience of air travel is full of contradictions. For instance, having never been aboard an international flight before, I found every little thing that happened to be novel and, frankly, quite exciting. However, for the 90 percent of the time that what was happening was absolutely nothing, I struggle to think of a more boring experience. Compounding the problem was a massive headache caused by pharyngitis, contracted on the night before the flight, and compounded by the lack of sleep following the same nights gig. I had substantial difficulty concentrating. Even the most Mark Knopfler-related entertainment offered by Qantas was hard to watch. I remember thinking (something which now seems unlikely to my somewhat more lucid mind) that seconds seemed to be passing in clumps rather than one by one, as is customary. Fortunately I assumed that this was their own problem and not mine, and that they would sort themselves out which, I suppose, they must have.
I leave you with a short passage I wrote while quite tired and ill well into our day long plane journey.
‘It is the middle of the night. A perpetual night caused by the travel of our plane in the same direction as the sun. Rather like staying slim by running slightly ahead of a fat man, but not quite enough for that analogy to stand up to any scrutiny or indeed, any reading. I realize that I have a substantial flaw in the shape of my inability to sleep anywhere other than in a bed, at night. The only exception to this had hitherto been when I was ill, and yet one of the defining features of my present deluxe illness is a combination of cold sweat and an inability to swallow without intense pain which together make sleep almost impossible. Even so, I think flying may be my sort of thing…’
Love, Thomas J Williams
Monday, September 27, 2010
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
What to do when you don't know what to do?
...become a film buff.
move over margret and david here come the aves.
Due to my Goldblum infatuation the aves have recently viewed some horrible B-grade movies, mostly featuring the dynamic duo of Geena Davis and THE Jeff Goldblum.
Despite the title, "Earth Girls are Easy" was surprisingly entertaining. Most of the enjoyment came from the scene when Goldblum (whom is playing a fur covered alien) recieves a makeover and emerges as a alluring male specimen. three point two five golsblums out of five
"The Fly". This is one to watch with friends as you're going to need to make fun of the entire film to make it entertaining. Needed more Goldblum. one point eight six goldblums out of five
untill next time folks...
move over margret and david here come the aves.
Due to my Goldblum infatuation the aves have recently viewed some horrible B-grade movies, mostly featuring the dynamic duo of Geena Davis and THE Jeff Goldblum.
Despite the title, "Earth Girls are Easy" was surprisingly entertaining. Most of the enjoyment came from the scene when Goldblum (whom is playing a fur covered alien) recieves a makeover and emerges as a alluring male specimen. three point two five golsblums out of five
"The Fly". This is one to watch with friends as you're going to need to make fun of the entire film to make it entertaining. Needed more Goldblum. one point eight six goldblums out of five untill next time folks...
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