enough already

After seeing three more apartments yesterday, the world looks a bit clearer now than it did before. At the first place, probably less than twenty minutes on foot from where I will work, I was so impressed that I almost signed. It must have been the exhaustion from the day before because it wasn't really that nice, apart from the location.

The last place on Saturday was bipolar. A large living room and small bedroom, both freshly painted and waiting for new carpet on one side. An ancient bathroom and a kitchen that looked like someone had regularly performed religious slaughterings in it on the other. The best and the worst, combined with a neglected backyard, a similar little front porch, and reasonable rent. The agent said he might be able to convince the developing company to spring for a new kitchen and bathroom. If he does, I'll take the apartment. If not, I have nothing because I stopped looking after that, and I'm not ready to do more.

Well, too bad, but I'm done with it for now. I can't no more. My friend offered me to crash at her place – even with my stuff if I pare it down to the bare essentials. Does anyone need a sofa?

This morning we took the tube out to Camden town, the famous street market that's on every tourist guide's top-ten list. It was there that I had bought my last pair of dress shoes, three years ago. To make it sound less bad, I didn't go entirely without buying shoes in the intervening years. I got a pair each of sandals, running and cycling shoes. I own two pairs of dress shoes, one brown, one black. How much more does one person need? Zilch was what the salesperson apparently thought. After I had given him a shoe I liked, already the right size, he came back with a sad look on his face and the damning words, I can't find the other half of the pair. Well, I'll be back in the store before another three years are over.

I didn't go entirely without spending money, though, because I found a shirt with a design that I had seen on a poster in a store in Barcelona two months ago. Back then, the store was closed and I was left looking at the poster through the window. Now, everything was open, and I bought the shirt, surely more useful than the poster, especially since I don't have an apartment yet.

All this happened before we really hit the market. What a crazy place it is. One could fill books just describing the stalls and their offerings that cover the range of the imaginable. You can buy all sorts (and I mean all possibly imaginable sorts) of shoes, shirts, jackets, arts, crafts, music, furniture – just imagine it and you'll find it, while walking through crowded little alleyways, into converted industrial buildings and along the canal. Oh so lovely.

After eating at what resembled an international food festival more than a food court, we walked along Regent's canal for nearly two hours, surrounded by green and water, calm and relaxing, light years away from the busy city. Tea (we're in England, after all) and cheese cake at Café Laville refreshed us and prepared us for the last bit, along Little Venice to Paddington station from where the tube took us home. Throughout all this, the sun shone radiantly, and London summer presented its finest side. I'm going back to Grenoble tomorrow, but I haven't got nearly enough of London yet.