Hey, if I go out less and stay in more, and avoid more creative projects by blogging, we all win!
Big things that are going on in my current life:
a) we're moving. August 1st apparently. Pray for us to find the best apartment and find it soon! We're looking at a few places and waiting to hear back on one we rather loved... It's tough and a bit stressful!
b) I'm feeling better about my creative stuff/acting stuff than I have in awhile. The ongoing curse I felt I was under (curse of feeling not-good-enough, curse of self-sabotage, etc) seems to be lifting. I've got to keep this on the upswing.
c) I get to be a bridesmaid at Carla Ghee's wedding next summer! aw aw! I'm excited for her to be marrying such a kind and lovely man who is my dear friend as well. And I'm excited for the fun party that this surely will be.
Carla Ghee and I have been spending more time together than ever before and I'm finding it nothing if not the best. What a kind, warm, and easy-going woman. Also so fucking funny that it's unreal. What a treat!
(which reminds me, I still need to post all the photos from my very dear Violet's wedding. So much to catch up on, it's unreal.)
Okay, now more about my big trip, there's so much to say and so many photos to post. I really underestimated.
(Moleskine from Violet for my trip! I did a lot of writing in here [never enough, of course] and it was a super nice thing to store all my keepsakes in.)
It's still hurting my feelings to go through my pictures from London and Paris, but at the same time, I really am happy to post them. Hopefully I keep on with the uploading!
You may remember Charlton from last year's trip to NYC. He's now my travel bud and he's so tiny and just the best thing to clutch in my fist. What a cute!
This is from the train in from Gatwick. Oh, the trains, guys! I love love love love taking trains! I'd live in England just to train around all the time!
Seeing the British countryside for the first time was neat neat. My mum's parents came over from Britain when Granny was pregnant with Mum and a lot of the stories I grew up with were British ones, and the only country I feel any sort of actual tie to (besides Canada, of course!) is England. I felt super pleased with the train and the countryside and I wept a little (from exhaustion and nerves? maybe.) while looking out at all the little houses with their millions of chimneys.
I was beyond lucky that my friend who's living in London these days encouraged me to take this trip and then offered me his living room for the week I was there. OUTRAGEOUSLY NICE.
And it wasn't just a normal living room, it was a big room with a big TV, a door I could close, a huge blow-up bed, and one of the most comfortable couches I've ever napped on or sat on.
I cannot get over this guy's hospitality. And his roommates' hospitality! What terrifically nice folks!
Also, he met me at the train station and brought me on the tube back to his place. He got me an Oyster card (for tube and bus travel in London) and a coffee! What the eff! The two things that I so badly needed the moment I stepped from the train.
This was the view from the living room.
So many double-deckers going by non-stop! Double-deckers are so fun!
The area was beautiful and perfect and there were all the shops I needed right around, and pubs and dreamboats of babes. Man, I don't know, no wonder people travel and travel and never stop. But how do you get over the missing of it? I'm tearing up right now with nostalgia! ha!
I bought flowers and treats and Sainsbury's has a whole line of gluten-free products!
My stomach was wonky for the first few days so I did watch a lot of British television.
Ginger beer was my lord and saviour amen during these days. Not that I needed to be drinking alcohol. Leave me alone.
(the liquor store here sells ginger beer and I have some in my fridge I keep forgetting and I'm extra excited to drink it now)
Anyhow, Britain's Most Embarrassing Bodies!
I can't get over that this is a TV show!
I can't get over how much they show! I saw breasts and penises on this show! I saw a guy get surgery on his curvy penis! He was sooooo happy when it was fixed.
My host showed me around the city and gave good advice on where to go and what to see. Also, he's super interested in history and is full-fledged in love with England (even though he grew up mostly in Canada) so he was a constant stream of information and a cool tour guide!
(vegan buffet place thing that my host took me for lunch one day and it was so boho and so charming and delicious and yes please. all those pots in the window, that's all the food. It was crazy packed just a few minutes before I took this.)
I felt rather... at home in Britain. I liked how people spoke and I like how everything looked and it all kind of made sense to me! I had been a little bit worried that everyone in London would be so much more beautiful and chic than me, but nope, I was clearly just not even thinking! I mean, everyone was lovely but I maybe think that Toronto has the most beautiful people I've ever seen. And New York. But also Toronto.
I said to my host, "In Canada I'm like a 7, but here I'm basically a 9.5" and he said, "always a 12, but I see your point" aaaawwww.
Classically, I immediately got a crush, luckily on my host's roommate. I only say luckily because it's handy to have someone nearby who is too cute! British sense of humour, man! I can't actually tell if some of them are funny or if I just prefer the way they deliver everything all the time.
Anyhow, I didn't get to see enough of this roommate, and I wasn't as forward as I should have been seeing as I was on vacation, but I did encourage him to come to Paris with me. I like to think he almost came and met me. It's stupid when people have jobs and can't just take off on a whim and meet up for a week in Paris.
Imagine!?
I have no pictures but you'll have to trust me that he was adorable and if he comes to Canada you'd probably want to hold his hand or some nonsense.
I was coming home the second night I was there, after seeing Louis CK (!!!) and after picking up some falafels and chatting up the handsome Turkish falafel guys and I was going to eat my falafels in the park across the road but I saw there were lights on in the living room window and I thought "I bet the roommate is hanging out in there sort of waiting for me to come home!" so I rushed upstairs. He tried to pretend like he should vacate my room but I was having none of that and I made him stay up way way late with me drinking weird horrible tiny drinks like Cherry B and a weird tonic and talking about everything in the world.
"she's got massive tits and he's staring right at them!" - the roommate about the Magnum Tonic (best read in a British accent, of course)
Like, maybe he was mad about the terrible Cherry B hangover I caused him, but probably not too too mad.
(I'm writing casually about this on here because a- who cares and b- I'm considering being more frank with whatever the eff I feel like writing about [respecting others' privacy of course] on here because no one reads it now which is kind of awesome and c- I'm into good stories)
Look at the cool things from the supermarket! I would pay so much money for some of those pre-mixed pimm's cans right now. Love love love.
I took several pictures of signs that said "To let" because I thought it was utterly hysterical that you could just add an "i" in the middle and it would said "Toilet!" Is this just a joke that Brits have gotten over? Why isn't every sign graffitied this way??
I was super enamoured with these doors, which were much more impressive in real life and the building was twice as long as all this blah blah anyhow, I like buildings!
One evening I met up with a lovely Toronto lady who was living in London and she took me to a bar with a teepee on the roof! It was so windy it felt like it would blow over at any moment but it did have hot rum drinks and a fire to roast marshmallows. We went to see some comedy as well and yep, there are comedy babes in London. In case you were wondering.
Okay, that's all I've got in me for now. Still things to say about England. And mostly next about Brighton. Brighton. And the countryside! One million sighs.
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