The week before the week that was

5 Things I did during the week before last:

1) Experienced extreme rush-hour squash (rush-crush)
I can accept that playing sardines on a daily basis is a factor of London life, but I think I reached breaking point a few days ago when I found myself WAY too close a middle-aged man's jowls.

You know the scenario: a lone, desperate commuter sprints to catch the tube as the doors are already closing; dead-set refusal to wait another 2 minutes for the next one, lest the delay to his journey cause the stock exchange to crash. Some guy narrowly avoided crushing his skull as the doors closed, but in the effort pushed the rest of us heavily in the same manner in which one might jerk a frying pan of onions in danger of caramelising too soon. The result was a carriage full of muttered irritation, my body pressed chest to chest and my neck forced into the face of the aforementioned middle-aged business-man.

The worst part was that I couldn't help but laugh, something which he had to experience through my neck vibrations. He took the whole thing fairly well, asking in a bemused manner if I was alright. I spent the next 4 stops with my face turned awkwardly away from his, thinking of dead cats in an attempt not to laugh.

2) Experienced 1 slight emotional break-down
A combination of some unwanted Facebook "news" and not nearly enough hours sleep.

…And so I abandoned the newsroom, blanked out somewhat and before knowing what was happening found myself walking out of Zara with a sense of achievement.

3) Joined the gym

I'd put it off for a long time, but the guilt came in waves every time I walked out of my house- the gym is metres away from my doorstep.

It was a bright, Saturday morning when I joined- the kind of day one might wake up bright-eyed thinking "Yes! Today I will ACHIEVE!" - a rarity. Which is probably why when the woman behind the desk suggested I get straight to it and go to a "toning fun" class which was starting, I did without question.

Now, I like to think I'm not a terribly unfit person but dear God the angels wept. I nearly wept after the first ten minutes of squats to the backing of hyper-go-faster music combined with an over-keen class leader shouting at me to "Give it all you've GOT!!"

The next morning when I got the tube to work, a man helped me get up from my seat because I was in so much pain I couldn't do it myself without looking physically disabled.

3) Went to cover a Texan-themed business lunch run by the council 
I went to the so called Texan "love-in" to cover it for a news story. After another unplanned night at the pub without dinner, I was horribly hungover, but figured it would be an easy day: attend the event, take some photos and then retreat for the weekend. Sure.

Having written a rather long feature on it over the course of several days, I'm still not entirely sure what the event was about. The celebration of a business partnership with Hackney, with suitably apt business jargon thrown at the walls and floor, but under the slightly surreal covering theme of a Texan BBQ.

There was indeed a BBQ (admittedly hosted by an Austrian man), very loud country music and the unforgettable stetson hats. I had one placed firmly on my head by the organiser- a man very friendly and enthusiastic but whom I expected might be on the brink of a mid-life crisis… what with all the stetsons and that.

I spent an hour or so taking photos of awkward looking entrepreneurial tech-people posing through cardboard photo-sets, had a chat with the head councillor and wandered back towards the tube, hat still in tact. Then I got a phone call and I...

4) Ran to catch a train [in said cowboy hat] to hunt down and interview Peter Andre.

In Croydon. For the opening of a Kung-fu school. Surreal… and I fear this is only the beginning.

It's starting again

I miss blogging.

I’ve pulled together a rather excellent travel blog over the past year, but since I am no longer globe-trotting, don’t feel that I can cling onto that any longer. It’s been put to rest until I escape in a year or so.

My day to day travels have morphed from volcano trekking and chicken buses across Central America, to the clammy commute from North-West to South-East London, where I have started an MA in Journalism. Fortunately or unfortunately for followers of my past blogs, my burning desire to write about my adventures still prevails. Only now, the topics include the feeling of being pressed up against rush-hour tube windows and collecting up paper cups to save pennies on tea.

Bear with me.

“Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.”

-T.S Eliot, The Wasteland