London Living

Well this is one of the few weeks where I am literally getting paid to do nothing - so rather than boring myself to tears I thought I'd try and set up my own blog. So far so good. Below I have posted the group emails sent to date (yes I know they have been way too few and even further between!).

So I guess now all that is left to do is try and remember all of the weird and wonderful things I have been up to since I last updated you all. I think it will make it much easier if I group them into chapters.

Ren sees the sights:

One of the first things you need to do in London is to get your bearings and not to take the tube map literally! How lucky I was to have Carmel to give me the heads up on the tube, where to wave to Big Ben, dodgy areas to avoid, and most importantly – where the best shopping can be done.

Whilst I’m yet to see Buckingham Palace or the London Eye I have ticked the following areas off the list; Archway (lived there with Carmel for 8 weeks), Tufnell Park, Kentish Town, Camden, Arsenal, Holloway Road, Highbury, Kings Cross, Swiss Cottage, St John’s Wood (where to took photos of us walking over the famous Abbey Rd crossing - during our Beatle’s Magical Mystery Tour!), Angel, Old Street, Liverpool St, Hoxton Square, Aldgate East, Brick Lane, Whitechapel, Shoreditch, Stepney Green, Bethnal Green, Canning Town, Oxford Circus, Covent Garden, Leicester Square, Tottenham Court Road, Goodge Street, London Bridge, Kensington, Knightsbridge (home of the ridiculously overpriced Harrods), Piccadilly Circus, ‘She Bu’ (Shepherd’s Bush), East Acton, Hammersmith and Wimbledon!

Ren discovers London nightlife:

After surviving my first week in London, Carmel and I thought it would be worthwhile going out to celebrate – so we headed off to Angel, an area that is almost more like Melbourne than Melbourne. First stop The Living Room, on Essex Road, where we met up with some of Carmel’s work mates who were incredibly drunk so I ended up just mostly listening to the music duo playing really fantastic indie covers. Somehow ended up with the guitarist’s business card – he had titled himself as a ‘Sonic Creator’ so needless to say I probably won’t be phoning him! After we couldn’t handle the work friends any longer we headed to another bar The Warwick, also on Essex Road, and sat back and enjoyed some lovely beats and a much more relaxed environment – I really like that place!

The following week the girls stepped it up a notch and headed to The End, a fantastic club in Central London. Cheyne from the Archway house works as a barman there and he put our names on the door so we didn’t have to line up for an hour to get in. Layo & Bushwacka were playing their monthly 8 hour set but I’d have to say only about 1.5 hours of it was really and truly pumping – but we managed to dance away the night anyway! My feet were incredibly sore the next day.

House parties are highly underrated and should occur much more frequently I’ve decided. We had a shindig at the Archway house for one of the occupants – Jaden’s 30th birthday. Woot – it was great! And the best part was I didn’t have to catch a bus or tube to get home afterwards. Some funny photos of this night will be available as soon as I can upload them somewhere.

I finally got the opportunity to check out East London nightlife and take Lauren out for her first London drinks when a school/ family friend from home, Matt, had birthday drinks in Shoreditch at The Redchurch. Really nice little bar with Coopers for sale to keep the Aussie’s happy. Was great to catch up with Matt who I hadn’t caught up with for a few years and another school friend Dave who I hadn’t seen for about 10 years!

One of the more memorable nights out took place in a rather lush hotel in Covent Garden - which hosted an interesting psy trance party. Dan and myself met up with Linda who we met in our Turkey travels and danced the night away there - and at the after party in Brixton (yes it was scary there!).

Another outing with Matt and Dave – Vibe Bar off Brick Lane for the Australia/ Brazil game last Sunday afternoon, wow what an experience! A packed house of predominantly Aussie’s continued to aussie-aussie-aussie-oi-oi-oi and drown out the Brazil camp even though we lost to them a miserable 2-0. What choice did we have but to drown our sorrows in beer and carry on for way too long on a school night – but we survived and lived to tell the tale.

The Friday night just passed Lauren and I checked out our new digs in Angel/ Islington (we both just moved to new flats in Islington) and wandered up and down Essex Road and Upper Street before settling on my favourite – The Warwick.

Saturday afternoon/ night was spent in my new local (it is literally a 30 second walk from my front door), The Baring, drinking Magners on ice with Lauren, Chris (a friend from Village just arrived in London), and later joined by our Archway house friends – Carmel, Jaden, Dean, Corinne & Jen. I became quick friends with management and managed to get Phil Collins off and my music on the CD player toot sweet! As the bar shut at 11.30pm we made a mad dash to the off-license to grab takeaways to carry on further and the lovely manager from The Baring gave me my very own Magners glass and a champagne bucket full of ice to take home! We spent the next few hours breaking into the leafy square outside my flat and drinking our beloved Magners.

Now that I'm working I am planning to make it to as many gigs as my budget can afford!

Ren gets a job:

After 5 weeks in Turkey and another 5 in London it was well and truly time for me to start work again – my bank account was wearing thin. So off I went to register myself with Hudson Recruitment. Wow what a professional and friendly outfit they are! I have been so well looked after and really pleased with them. My first real assignment was to fill in for the PA to the Senior Vice President at 20th Century Fox – I can’t escape the wonderful world of movies. That assignment lasted for 6 days, and straight on from that I helped the Fox HR team for another 6 days and was then asked to stay another week filling in at the Senior Vice President’s office again while they are all in Amsterdam at CineExpo (I’m really just here to make sure the place doesn’t burn down but I’m not complaining as it is good money and I have free computer time to do things like create a blog!).

As soon as this assignment is finished I will be going to work full time, still at Fox, EA to the Managing Director of UK Theatrical. My boss is a lovely guy from Liverpool with a great sense of humour. I get my own office overlooking Soho Square – I’m really quite chuffed with how this turned out!

Visitors from home:

So far we have had Robbie Red Fin and Simon visit us on the way through to their new digs in the South of France, if you don't mind. Dan stayed a while before heading home after his mammoth journey around the world! All three of them joined Carmel, Lauren and I for a good old Aussie reunion in the Archway backyard which somehow grew into a thriving house party with costumes, wigs and all. It was hilarious seeing everyone at the same time (and in wigs)!

I caught up with my Auntie Jeanne a few weeks ago - she was in London briefly before heading to New York to continue her globe trotting. It was so great to see her and we had a lovely lunch in a tea room opposite Harrods in Knightsbridge and then had a look at the most ridiculously overpriced store I've ever been to - I give Harrods the big elitest THUMBS DOWN.

Chris, a friend from Village days, also landed in the UK a few weeks ago and we have caught up a few times - always good to see friendly faces from home.

Other bits:

There is no TV in my house (not that there is really anything worth watching on British TV) so I’ve rediscovered my love of reading and have also discovered many great 2nd hand book shops. When looking over my ‘new’ book collection I realised that they are pretty much all about London, bands, debauchery and heartbreak – very rock and roll.

World Cup mania!!!! It has been so great being in London during the World Cup - the city basically shuts down when England are playing. I have seen pretty much all of the Australia games at pubs on the big screen at normal times - none of this getting up at 2am or 4am! It's been nail-bitingly good!!!

Well that's it for now, I will be sure to make much more regular updates and also find a site to host all my photos for you to peruse.

Take care - bye for now xxx