A tough twelve days in London

We caught the bus from Lille back to London. Due to our aforementioned visa issues, we would now be spending 12 days in London before flying to Holland on Christmas Eve.

It was an interesting couple of weeks.

Firstly, it was a pretty tough come down for us. Normally when finishing up with a holiday there is an element of excitement as you get to go home, catch up with friends and family, relive all your favourite stories and begin settling back into normal life. Not so for us on this occasion. It was a very hollow feeling arriving at our hostel with no jobs, nowhere to call home, no family and very few friends. The weather in London was particularly cold and miserable and Monique rapidly developed a nasty cold with a particularly nasty cough – not great when sleeping in a fifteen-bed dorm room.

Secondly, we spent our days sitting in the hostel’s pub looking for jobs (who wants to do that after travelling for four months?!?) and somewhere to live. We got a fascinating insight into the dirty and corrupt state of London’s rental property market. We inspected two properties that were bordering on being uninhabitable before heading to a third place. It was a three bedroom and one bathroom flat with no common area, that was reasonably clean and freshly painted. Perhaps blinded by the relative cleanliness we promptly signed a three-month lease, handed over a wad of cash, and arranged to move in four days later. We didn’t really give too much thought to the fact that it was in a ghetto and we didn’t have the faintest idea who we were moving in with. When the time came to move in we arrived at the front door with great trepidation. Our worst fears of moving in with drug-dealing, gothic Satan-worshipers were allayed when a delightful Swedish girl opened the door. Our new housemates were Tanya and Sofia – two Swedish girls in London for work and study and had moved in the day before. We were very relieved.

Thirdly, the time finally arrived when Daniel had to make himself look vaguely employable again. This meant a haircut and a shave. It was a big moment  - the first time his hair had ever been cut by anyone other than his Dad – a barber by trade for over 50 years. It was a fairly traumatic experience. The guy we went to was not a pinch on Arthur Misson. Aside from making Daniel’s head bleed from brutally hacking at his scalp with a comb, the straw that broke the camel’s back was the manky, bloodied band-aid that slipped off the barber’s finger and landed on top of Daniel’s head. It sat perched on Daniel’s head for a solid five minutes before the barber noticed and discreetly tried to remove it.

After twelve days in London, we were well in need of a holiday.