Day 17

(Playing catch up, now.)

Had lunch with my advisor, who was in town briefly, at what I think could fairly be called a boite roughly equidistant between where I'm living and the British Library. I was startled to realize that this was the first time I've been in a sit-down restaurant since arriving here, the kind where they even bring your food out to you. Guess what? It's lovely, and far preferable to being served with a ladle from a gigantic pan of stuff. I miss having a kitchen terribly: although being in a catered hall has its pluses (one never forgets to buy milk, for example, and the bananas are always fresh), planning and preparing my own meals lent a certain amount of structure to my day. And the food here, in the markets and in the grocery stores even, is really quite different from what I'm used to and therefore more interesting. I'm sad I'm not getting a chance to explore cooking in another country and extend my pallet beyond candy and crisps and beer (bitter, I've learned, is what I prefer, which according to some jackass in the pub around the corner makes me a lesbian, since it is a "man's" brew. The assumptions about sex and gender here, and the matter-of-factness with which they are articulated, are something else entirely).

But that's not where I was going with this: the food was tasty, the conversation was interesting, it was a good lunch on the whole and in many ways quite productive. In addition to kitchens (and I think I've commented on this before), I really miss the luxury of having a group of people around me on a regular basis with whom I can discuss what I'm doing and who force me to articulate my ideas in an intelligible way. It would be possible to do as much over email, I suppose, but I'm a terrible email correspondent and much prefer talking face to face. Anyway.

The weather hear has been truly lovely the past few days-- highs in the mid-sixties, sunny, all of that. Accordingly, after lunch I decided to go buy a winter coat, and planned a walk down Oxford Street (the equivalent, perhaps, of lower Broadway or Herald Square in New York) from Charing Cross to the Marble Arch tube station, shopping along the way. Oxford Street, for those of you who've not been, is perhaps the main middle-brow clothes shopping area in London, and features a lot of the large department stores and chain clothing stores you might expect to find in an American mall, or their UK equivalents. It's not that long (maybe a mile?) but many of the chains (Uniqlo, H&M, and so on) have multiple branches along the way, which lends a weird sort of capitalist deja vu to one's journey. My friends, this was madness. I made it there and back all right, but the sheer sensory overload of the stores, and more to the point the crowds of people in them, was such that I was rendered utterly incapable of summoning the critical faculties needed to select and complete a purchase.

Topshop was the heart of the storm (there was no eye). Their circus themed-decor is very apt.

Also, clothes are expensive! (Unless you go to Primark, I've learned, which case they are cheap in every sense of the term. Not necessarily a bad thing, but one that requires time and dedication to sorting out properly. And, ladies and gentlemen, what have I got but time?). The exchange thing is weird. People do say that eventually you get used to it, and your brain stops converting everything you buy from pounds into dollars. If this is indeed the case, it hasn't yet happened with me. But a certain sort of delay did set in, thanks to my totally overstimulated state. Here's a coat for fifty pounds! I'd say, flipping through the sales racks, and try it on. If it were a particular lightweight black trenchcoat at Uniqlo, I would become enamored of it and the way it makes me appear to have a waist, and I would be walking to the register before I realized, "hey! That's $100! No way!" and then put it back.

It was all very stressful, and the groups of 14-year-old girls cutting school and seemingly impervious to the crowds and noise around them made me feel old. I was very greatful to run into not one but two claques of men in chef's hats handing out free samples of Lindor truffels on my way back home to lie down in a dark room for a while before dinner.