Farewell, London!
Dec. 4th, 2010 05:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lunasarielI don't know why, but cold and/or dreary weather makes me so sleepy. I got up at about 10:30 AM today, it's nearly 8:00 right now, and my eyelids are drooping. Maybe I'm subconsciously telling myself that I had better get all my sleeping done now, because I sure won't get any next week. I mean, not only do we have inter-department presentations on Monday, finals on Tuesday and Wednesday, and free ice-skating at the Tower of London on Wednesday, but we're leaving on Friday! And that's not even factoring in all the last-minute shopping, sightseeing, and studying that I've got to do this weekend!
There are some parts of London I'm going to miss like crazy, and some that I'll frankly be glad to leave. I won't miss the (literally) freezing temperatures, that's for sure. Nor will I mourn leaving our apartment, which, ok, is kind of cool, but having to leave for the cleaning lady at random times every Friday was getting kind of old. But I will miss the Tube, the way that it's perfectly acceptable to take public transportation or even (gasp!) walk everywhere. I'll miss checking in the fridge before going to class so that I can hit the grocery store on the way home (do we have enough milk for tomorrow? Probably. Do we need more bread? Damn, forgot to check.). I'll miss the city itself, old and majestic and gritty and with more secrets and history than any one person could possibly understand. I'll miss the communal feel of the apartment, where I'll pop into somebody else's room to say hi, and then will stay for hours, drinking or watching old movies or just talking. I'll miss living in the city, with restaurants and shops and everything a two-minute walk away. I'll miss strolling down the street and coming across Gothic churches and Victorian mews before coming to Kensington Park, with its squirrels and dogs and palaces. I'll miss the English Breakfast, which turns out to be delicious, but I don't think I'll miss the fish and chips. Actually, I just won't miss the fish; I like chips better than fries.
It started snowing earlier this week, which I gather is unusual even for the UK. Heathrow has been closed for at least two days (yikes!) and our planned daytrip to Leeds was canceled, so I'd hate to see what it looks like outside the heat and steel of London. I won't say I'm not disappointed about Leeds; I had wanted to see a real, old-school castle, especially in the snow, and the accompanying Christmas Market sounded fun, but c'est la vie, I guess.
But it certainly isn't all bad: London in that first snowfall was gorgeous. London in the dry cold and wind is just miserable, hunkered down for a long, ugly winter. London with ground-in snow, with its dirty slush and unexpected ice, is just depressing. But that very first day, when I woke up and the whole world looked fresh and clean and new...there really is nothing like it. I was walking around the whole day with a stupid grin on my face, thinking, "I'm in London. There is snow on the ground and on the trees and on the cars. It's actively snowing, right this minute. I'm in the snow in London," and catching snowflakes (London snowflakes!) on my tongue. I haven't gone all starry-eyed like this for a little while (more on that later), but sometimes, life is just too beautiful to ignore.
I will admit that I did get starry-eyed on our daytrip to Oxford a few weeks ago. I actually had lunch in The Eagle and Child, better known as the Bird and Baby, where inklings themselves ate! I had my ham and fried tomatoes in the very same room where Tolkien himself did the very same thing for years and years! It was a cozy little nook within the pub called "The Rabbit Room," and had on the wall, among other things, a signed affidavit from the Inklings (John and Jack included) that they ate there, and that the food was good.
There was, of course, more to Oxford than just (ha!) the Bird and Baby. The University itself is...impressive. You can feel how the centuries, the knowledge, and admittedly, the arrogance have just seeped into the stones. It's blatantly obvious that this has not been just an intellectual powerhouse and safe haven for all the scholars who would otherwise be crushed by the woes of the world, but the turner-out of royalty, aristocrats, Prime Ministers, and politicians for a thousand years and more.
It also turns out that parts of Christ Church College, one of the schools within Oxford University, as well as the University's main library, the Bodleian Library, were used as sets for the Harry Potter movies. Kylee had a fair-to-middling geekgasm when we entered the Great Hall...I mean, Christ Church College's dining hall. The Great Table looked so much the same that I almost expected to see Dumbledore, McGonagall, Hagrid, and the rest of the staff sweeping in for lunch, removing their thick cloaks and adjusting their pointy hats. It turns out that CCC is quite the powerhouse, having churned out John Locke, William Penn, Samuel Pepys, and one Charles Dodgson, a.k.a. Lewis Carroll, all of whose portraits were hung around the hall. They were evidently quite proud of Mr. Dodgson and his LSD-fueled love-letter to an underage girl, because there were quite a few references scattered about the place. The anirons in the gigantic fireplace were cast to look like the long-necked, "Eat Me" Alice, and the White Rabbit, the Cheshire Cat, Alice herself, and a few of Lewis' other creations were tucked into the exquisitely detailed stained-glass windows.
The rest of the University was almost equally impressive. We went into the Divinity School, an adjunct of the majestic Bodleian Library, which has done double duty as Hogwarts' hospital wing. The Divinity School is basically a long, empty hall where aspiring graduates conducted their final exams, which were always oral, usually in Latin, and often took the form of debates. In Latin. In front of all your professors. Eeep. In that situation, I'd feel rather like Harry Dresden when he attempted to address the council in its official language, Latin. He tried to tell them that he wasn't wearing his official robes because they were dirty, but ended up asking the White Council, the governing body of all wizards (who, incidentally, almost all hate him), to do his laundry.
Those were pretty much the highlights of my Oxford trip. It's very much a university town, in that it has existed almost solely to cater to the needs of students for the past thousand years or so, and it knows it. It's also a very old town, so it's pleasantly rife with churches, winding cobblestone streets, and random spiky things in the middle of roads.
As far as fandom stuff goes, I'm still deep in Jamestown, Co. Sirius, Potterland. Some determined digging has given me a slightly more hopeful outlook for this blighted land than I'd had previously. I still value![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kubrick_potter more as an organizer and reviver than as a writer in her(?) own right, but I have also dug up a fanwriter or two who tickle my fancy: garderob (the ficjournal of the combined efforts of fictionalcandie and duva) and gailsauce (which is really just fictionalcandie's ficjournal with frequent additions by duva, and therefore basically the same thing, but whatever). They manage to perfectly capture everything I love about Padfoot and Prongs: the caustic wit, the loyalty, the sexiness, the "certain disregard for the rules," the...dynamism, I guess. Their James and Sirius flirt, argue, tease each other, get frustrated with each other, sometimes even fight, but never fall out of love.
There are some parts of London I'm going to miss like crazy, and some that I'll frankly be glad to leave. I won't miss the (literally) freezing temperatures, that's for sure. Nor will I mourn leaving our apartment, which, ok, is kind of cool, but having to leave for the cleaning lady at random times every Friday was getting kind of old. But I will miss the Tube, the way that it's perfectly acceptable to take public transportation or even (gasp!) walk everywhere. I'll miss checking in the fridge before going to class so that I can hit the grocery store on the way home (do we have enough milk for tomorrow? Probably. Do we need more bread? Damn, forgot to check.). I'll miss the city itself, old and majestic and gritty and with more secrets and history than any one person could possibly understand. I'll miss the communal feel of the apartment, where I'll pop into somebody else's room to say hi, and then will stay for hours, drinking or watching old movies or just talking. I'll miss living in the city, with restaurants and shops and everything a two-minute walk away. I'll miss strolling down the street and coming across Gothic churches and Victorian mews before coming to Kensington Park, with its squirrels and dogs and palaces. I'll miss the English Breakfast, which turns out to be delicious, but I don't think I'll miss the fish and chips. Actually, I just won't miss the fish; I like chips better than fries.
It started snowing earlier this week, which I gather is unusual even for the UK. Heathrow has been closed for at least two days (yikes!) and our planned daytrip to Leeds was canceled, so I'd hate to see what it looks like outside the heat and steel of London. I won't say I'm not disappointed about Leeds; I had wanted to see a real, old-school castle, especially in the snow, and the accompanying Christmas Market sounded fun, but c'est la vie, I guess.
But it certainly isn't all bad: London in that first snowfall was gorgeous. London in the dry cold and wind is just miserable, hunkered down for a long, ugly winter. London with ground-in snow, with its dirty slush and unexpected ice, is just depressing. But that very first day, when I woke up and the whole world looked fresh and clean and new...there really is nothing like it. I was walking around the whole day with a stupid grin on my face, thinking, "I'm in London. There is snow on the ground and on the trees and on the cars. It's actively snowing, right this minute. I'm in the snow in London," and catching snowflakes (London snowflakes!) on my tongue. I haven't gone all starry-eyed like this for a little while (more on that later), but sometimes, life is just too beautiful to ignore.
I will admit that I did get starry-eyed on our daytrip to Oxford a few weeks ago. I actually had lunch in The Eagle and Child, better known as the Bird and Baby, where inklings themselves ate! I had my ham and fried tomatoes in the very same room where Tolkien himself did the very same thing for years and years! It was a cozy little nook within the pub called "The Rabbit Room," and had on the wall, among other things, a signed affidavit from the Inklings (John and Jack included) that they ate there, and that the food was good.
There was, of course, more to Oxford than just (ha!) the Bird and Baby. The University itself is...impressive. You can feel how the centuries, the knowledge, and admittedly, the arrogance have just seeped into the stones. It's blatantly obvious that this has not been just an intellectual powerhouse and safe haven for all the scholars who would otherwise be crushed by the woes of the world, but the turner-out of royalty, aristocrats, Prime Ministers, and politicians for a thousand years and more.
It also turns out that parts of Christ Church College, one of the schools within Oxford University, as well as the University's main library, the Bodleian Library, were used as sets for the Harry Potter movies. Kylee had a fair-to-middling geekgasm when we entered the Great Hall...I mean, Christ Church College's dining hall. The Great Table looked so much the same that I almost expected to see Dumbledore, McGonagall, Hagrid, and the rest of the staff sweeping in for lunch, removing their thick cloaks and adjusting their pointy hats. It turns out that CCC is quite the powerhouse, having churned out John Locke, William Penn, Samuel Pepys, and one Charles Dodgson, a.k.a. Lewis Carroll, all of whose portraits were hung around the hall. They were evidently quite proud of Mr. Dodgson and his LSD-fueled love-letter to an underage girl, because there were quite a few references scattered about the place. The anirons in the gigantic fireplace were cast to look like the long-necked, "Eat Me" Alice, and the White Rabbit, the Cheshire Cat, Alice herself, and a few of Lewis' other creations were tucked into the exquisitely detailed stained-glass windows.
The rest of the University was almost equally impressive. We went into the Divinity School, an adjunct of the majestic Bodleian Library, which has done double duty as Hogwarts' hospital wing. The Divinity School is basically a long, empty hall where aspiring graduates conducted their final exams, which were always oral, usually in Latin, and often took the form of debates. In Latin. In front of all your professors. Eeep. In that situation, I'd feel rather like Harry Dresden when he attempted to address the council in its official language, Latin. He tried to tell them that he wasn't wearing his official robes because they were dirty, but ended up asking the White Council, the governing body of all wizards (who, incidentally, almost all hate him), to do his laundry.
Those were pretty much the highlights of my Oxford trip. It's very much a university town, in that it has existed almost solely to cater to the needs of students for the past thousand years or so, and it knows it. It's also a very old town, so it's pleasantly rife with churches, winding cobblestone streets, and random spiky things in the middle of roads.
As far as fandom stuff goes, I'm still deep in Jamestown, Co. Sirius, Potterland. Some determined digging has given me a slightly more hopeful outlook for this blighted land than I'd had previously. I still value
kubrick_potter more as an organizer and reviver than as a writer in her(?) own right, but I have also dug up a fanwriter or two who tickle my fancy: garderob (the ficjournal of the combined efforts of fictionalcandie and duva) and gailsauce (which is really just fictionalcandie's ficjournal with frequent additions by duva, and therefore basically the same thing, but whatever). They manage to perfectly capture everything I love about Padfoot and Prongs: the caustic wit, the loyalty, the sexiness, the "certain disregard for the rules," the...dynamism, I guess. Their James and Sirius flirt, argue, tease each other, get frustrated with each other, sometimes even fight, but never fall out of love.
