When Tamara called, she asked if we had made any new friends. Well, we have not. We haven't really met anyone. Tamara said that we should go to the local pub and try to meet people. I have done one better. I got a job at the local pub.

The pub is just up the road, about a 4 minute walk. We were trying to find the laundrette, and we passed a pub with a hiring sign in the window. I dropped off a CV, on Thursday and had my first shift last night. Things went pretty well. I was a bit shaky on pulling pints at the beginning of the night, but 200 pints later, I think I've got it. I made a few mistakes, nothing too major. In Canada, you typically pay for the alcohol, the mix is free. Shot of vodka? $3.50. Vodka and coke? $3.50. Here, not so much. Shot of vodka, £2.20, vodka and coke, £2.80. I didn't realize that on the till, I had to add the pop as well, so I undercharged for drinks for half the night. But that was not the worst part. There was a group of rowdy boys that were buying rounds. One of them bought 3 gins. The pub does not have rocks glasses, so they get poured into the same glasses as pop and highballs. My co-worker took this order, and poured the drinks while I was collecting empties. While she was pouring the drinks, the boy that had ordered wandered back over to his mates, leaving the glasses on the bar. I saw nearly empty glasses on the bar, with a small amount of clear liquid in them and thought that it was the remains of melted ice. I dumped 3 shots of gin down the sink.

If after that, they still want me around (and the do) then it looks like I have a job.

August 28th

By this time next year I will be married to a girl that dries her clothes in a salad spinner.

James may be the washing machine . . .

but I'm the dryer!

We have learnt that the major drawback to doing laundry by hand is that it takes forever to dry. I have often hung all my clothes to dry, but this is after they have been through a spin cycle in the washing machine. This leaves them only damp. When you are washing by hand, you do not have the luxury of a spin cycle. This means that clothes are often still dripping wet. We do our best to get the water out, squeezing them, and wringing towels, but not wringing most things as we don't want to stretch them. We hung a few t-shirts and socks yesterday, about eleven a.m. It is now nearly 9 p.m. The clothes are nearly dry. We looked on-line to see if it were even possible to buy a wringer or a "mangle" as they are known here in the UK. Well, no, you really can't. Instead, while looking, I came across this. James and I want to buy on when we get settled in New Zealand. But it got me to thinking, and it reminded me a lot of a salad spinner. And I wondered if that would work the same way . . .

Today, we were in yet another second-hand store. We have visited about 5 already, and they are great. In this particular store, they happened to have a salad spinner. For just over a pound, I though why not? let's give it a try. It's not perfect, but it works OK. After squeezing two pairs of socks the best I could, I put them into the spinner and gave it a whirl, and managed to pull over a quarter of a cup of water out. I know that is not a huge amount, but it is still water that now doesn't have to evaporate. For now, it is my new toy, and hopefully our clothes will start to take less than 48 hours to dry.

five pounds!?!

When we first got to Bristol, I was hoping to find a second hand shop to help furnish and fill our flat. We found one, but it didn't have much in it. I was really hoping to get great mismatched dishes like Tamara and Deron got at ValueVillage, but the store we found didn't have any, so we got new ones. I would have preferred second hand dishes, even for a slightly higher cost for environmental and consumerist reasons. I'd rather that my dishes weren't shipped from Asia, and I'd rather that they weren't wrapped in plastic and cardboard.

Today, nearly a week after buying dishes and the like, we came across a GREAT second hand store. We hadn't noticed it before because it is only open 3 days a week. We got wonderful things. Interestingly, much of the smaller stuff doesn't have prices on it, so when we took our assorted items to the counter, the employee just looked at it and said "Five pound? Sound good?" Here's the haul:

There is a copy of Fast Food Nation that I have been told to read dozens of times, but just never have, a small tea pot just right for two cups of tea, a mug for James' coffee, a canister to keep our brown sugar soft and a sugar bowl for the white sugar. Oh, that's right, and BOGGLE. Original old-school BOGGLE. Take that, Laura and Dom! We have the big noisy shaker, and everything.

And now, du coq à l'âne, from the rooster to the donkey, or, and now, about other things, if you'd prefer. As you have read, James and I are doing much of our laundry by hand. This is a move to save money, as we don't want to use the laundromat, or laundrette, too much, but also in a move to save water. We have tried, over the past year to be more aware of our consumption, both or resources and general consumer goods. This is why, when we finished our first quart of milk (not a litre, let me tell you) I filled it with water and placed it in the tank of our toilet. This way, we are saving over a litre of water each time we flush. Over the time that we are here, we figure we will save about about 2000 litres of water. I encourage each of you to do the same. Take a 1 litre plastic bottle, like a milk jug, or anything similar, fill it with water, screw the lid on, and place it inside the toilet tank. You will save water and money on your water bill.

Totterdown

Our new place is in Totterdown. Totterdown is a nice neighbourhood just south of the river in Bristol, only about a 25 min walk from the city centre. It is a very cosy top floor, one bedroom flat on what I used to think was a steep road, but after climbing it a dozen or so times it doesn't seem that bad. It is not the most modern of places, but the price is right and we are not living in the ghetto. We have spent maybe 150 quid on setting the place up so far. We have almost a fully stocked kitchen and plastic bins galore for storing our clothes. We are sleeping on an air mattress and I wake up most mornings with a sore back, I really can't wait until we find a real bed. The trouble is that we really need to find a very cheap bed because we will be paying to have it delivered. Last night we walked up the road and bought a small patio table and chairs from a guy that advertised them on gumtree.com. It only cost us 15 pound and the guy lived close enough that we could carry them back to our place. It is really nice to sit on something other than the floor.

So I guess we will need jobs to pay for all this, right? Heather is really just waiting for the start of the school year for the work to come rolling in. I signed up with a recruitment agency last Friday and they seemed very optimistic. They seemed to think I could be working before the end of this week. I told them I would take any job that they had, that may have been a mistake, but really I just need a job, any job right now.

I have just tried to upload photos onto the blog and it has failed on me five times, so I give up. Just visualise an enormous castle on top of a hill, with fast cars parked in the driveway, and that is pretty much where we live.

BBC SCORE!

We had mentioned to a few of our friends that we wee probably not getting a TV here in Bristol. We don't watch much TV, and it would not be worth the cost of tracking one down. Our English friend Dom assured us that was the right decision, as the BBC put many programs on the Internet for streaming or downloading. We checked out the website last night, and it ROCKS! There are loads of programs available, and in really great quality too! now, we can watch TV if we want, and with no commercials, too. I'm never watching real TV again!

I am a washing machine.

Our new flat has a fridge, it has heating, it even has a hinged front door. But the one thing that it doesn't have is a washing machine. I figured I would just wear my clothes for as long as possible, until I could stand the stench no longer, and then just biff them out and buy new ones. But really, that is just a bad idea, and expensive. So today I am proud to announce that I did my first ever load of laundry by hand. That's right, by hand. We purchased a small tub and some eco-friendly, skin-friendly laundry detergent from Asda and then I went to work. It was fairly painless to be honest, almost relaxing, and very satisfying. We will see how long it takes for the novelty to wear off.

So do we have many readers? Please leave a comment if you are reading our blog. I do like an audience.

The blue light district

We were in Asda, a Zellers-type store the other day. I went to the washroom, an noticed that all the lights above the stalls were blue. I thought it was a power saving feature, that blue lights were calming of that blue lights encourage people to spend more. I was wrong. James let me in on the secret today. It is hard to see blue things under blue lights. Like veins. The blue lights in the stalls discourage junkies from using the stalls to shoot up. Who knew?

Bring on the visitors!

We have a place to house anyone that comes to visit! James and I signed a lease to a flat this morning! It was kind of a rush job, but staying in a hostel is expensive, and we had been browsing ads online for nearly a year, so we knew what kind of price range to expect. We had heard good things about this area, and I got the okay from the employees at Protocol (the agency I'm working through) so we jumped at it. It is about a 20 minute walk from the downtown core. We have a Tesco Express (a tiny supermarket) about a 5 minute walk away, so we can get fresh food daily. This is nice, as we have only a bar fridge, and no freezer. We also have virtually no cupboard space, so close groceries are good.

We bought a few things today to make the flat livable. We have an air mattress, which we will hopefully replace with a real bed and keep for visitors. We also bought some dishes, sheets and a duvet cover. We are trying to buy the least possible, both because we are not yet working, and because we found out at the end of last year how hard it is getting rid of a flat full of STUFF. The less we buy, the less we need to deal with then.

We had quite the adventure cooking our first supper in the flat. We set off the heat detector 3 times (I learnt that the trick is not to reset it, but just switch it to mute) and the smoke detector 5 times. It was an adventure.

Hopefully we will get some pictures taken tomorrow to post and show you where we are living. Right now, we have too much stuff everywhere to take pictures.

We also spent time tonight laughing at this. You should go check it out.

Where?

A couple of days ago, we had made an appointment to view a flat to let (an apartment to rent). We decided to take a cab, as it was fairly far away, and we had been walking a lot already that day. As we got into the cab, James explained to the cabbie why we were headed out that way. She was a bit surprised, and James asked if it was a good place to live. She replied that it was fine "if you don't mind living in downtown Mogadishu". Turns out the area is a bit of a ghetto, where it is not particularly safe to be white after dark. Needless to say, we did not take the place.

By the way, could someone please get a Zellers over here? There is no place really similar that carries all different types of products like they do!

Bristol calling.

I think Bristol is just what the doctor ordered. Heather and I have been feeling rather under the weather since we arrived in England. A combination of jet lag and hauling around several thousand kilograms of luggage between tube stations, bus stations, hotels and hostels has left us utterly exhausted.

We arrived in Bristol early this afternoon. It is a Beautiful city. It is clean, the people are friendly and the beer tastes good. After some serious luggageering (this is my new word for touring about loaded up with bags and packs like a donkey) we finally found a YHA hostel to begin our stay. The hostel is very nice. It is clean and tidy and seems to have all the facilities that we need for now. The WiFi is free, provided you purchase something at the cafe, I chose a Samuel Smith's Organic Lager and Heather is trying the hot chocolate.

Bristol is sweet, in your face, Gumby!

We made it

So we are now in London. The trip over was long! We had a 6 hour layover in Toronto, which we used to our advantage to visit the Hockey Hall of Fame. It was about what I expected, pretty interesting. We got out picture taken with the Stanley Cup and saw some interesting memorabilia. We will hopefully post some pictures shortly.#

We got to our hotel with a minimum of fuss. It is small, but nice. We are just outside the Wembly Stadium, where the English Football team plays international matches. We are spending part of today in true Kiwi fashion, watching a rugby game.

In other news, pounds are wider than dollars (NZ or CAN) so they do not fit in James' wallet, and he needs to get a new one.

Enjoy the rest of the Olympics!

I should be doing something else

Last night Heather and I had our farewell party. I took this as the perfect opportunity to get absolutely smashed. Oh what a mistake, I have been ill all day. I still have bags to pack and stuff to organize before we get on the plane to Toronto tomorrow. But I really can't get excited about packing and travelling right now, so instead I am messing about on the internet. End transmission.