Urban Nautical Adventures

Paddington Basin

pat...pat...pat...

Is the first thing I hear when I wake up in the morning. That and the soft murmur of voices sharing an early morning gossip before heading their separate ways to conduct their daily lives. The first is the sound of joggers on their morning runs, a surprisingly peaceful way to wake up compared to the ...STOMP...STOMP...STOMP of commuters at Paddington station. The stress of commuters bounces off the tall glass buildings and settles into your dreams during the night until you are abruptly awakened by the harsh metallic clang of the footsteps of urban civilization. I am generally ambivalent towards Paddington, but I never want to live there on the canal again.

Morven making breakfast

 Boat life suits me greatly. It's impossible to be stressed out on a boat and as a person who likes to juggle a million things at once this is a great benefit. Unless you are living in Paddington basin of course. Otherwise, it's great. After being gently summoned from the deep recesses of sleep, you fling the curtains, windows and doors open and you're outside. Fellow boaters are probably having breakfast and coffee outside as well, the occasional cat will blink at you vaguely for having interrupted his own private sleep. You learn to ignore non-boating folk and greet your neighbors cheerfully and they smile and nod back contentedly. Back inside you make yourself and your fellow marinero a fresh pot of coffee and breakfast and watch other narrow boats pass you by as they make their way towards new adventures. You're always meeting someone new on a boat, whether it's a neighbor or a tourists staring gawp eyed at you trying to save a flailing boat in a windy thunderstorm.

But back to breakfast. Definitely a cosy affair which requires excellent timing otherwise you end up with burnt toast and coffee paired with hardboiled eggs instead of runny centers. Five steps and you're outside again in the 'dining' area, or a further two steps and a hop and you're on your rooftop garden enjoying the view and sun. 20 minutes of sun and food later and it's time for your day to start, get dressed and go. Close the windows, lock the doors, make sure the mooring ropes are secure and you're set to go. You glance back at the boat you call home and start humming the theme tune of the day. "I've been dreaming of you since I don't know when..."

Hackney

Windhagen

The windy hills of yonder, the sheltered forest, the land where cows are your neighbors and frogs are your friends. I wouldn't call myself a city girl, but I certainly felt like one the first time I was confronted by a moo and a croak in my own backyard. Now three years later, this is the place I like to call home and enjoy exploring.

Take this morning for example, a rather late start to the day but the whole valley was still covered in thick white fog, yet all I wanted to do was jump into the still whiteness and disappear into the forest. It took some time to get out of bed, fed and washed - the cats received their quota of attention for the day as well - and I embarked on a short walk past the fields towards the babbling brook. Each journey is always different no matter how many times I've walked down the same route. There's always a new hidden path to explore, a new shortcut to be found and different farmers to annoy and I always end up trekking up some hill or other. What starts off as an intended 20 minute wander towards the edge of the forest often turns into a 40+ min hike.

I took my camera with me this time. The fog was already clearing but there was still plenty of pretty dew on the ground. You can tell autumn is just round the corner.

Joys of travelling

After a totally groovy and beautifully relaxing - as relaxing as it can be while you're writing your MA thesis - month travelling around London's backwaters on a boat, I started missing nomadic life again. Travelling from place to place, discovering and observing the curious behavior of resident natives, meeting people, drawing and listening to new music. Boat life brought on a wave of mixed feelings toward my already uncertain future, but these were cast aside to enjoy the present. I found myself singing again like I haven't since I was a child, and felt like writing again. All because I was on the move once more. I decided the life for me must be the life of a traveler.

Sure the toilet and shower situation was not ideal, but I quickly discovered ways around this. A flicker of doubt stirred when I was confronted by an enormous mound of possessions I had left at a friend's house, but these were resolved by purchasing a cheap transportable suitcase. It was annoying having to transport my life on foot the weekend that London decided it had had enough of summer and opened up the heavens to welcome torrential rains. It also wasn't terribly comfortable sleeping on friend's floors and couches, but wasn't until a the mother of all dilemmas that I finally remembered: I hate travelling. I had missed my flight.

The two hours prior to a flight are the most intensely stressful regardless of whether you make the flight or not. This is particularly the case if you have fallen out of touch with stress of flying. Neverthelless, everything happens for a reason and I have emerged if just a tiny bit wiser.

Things I learned in the process:

• It is VERY important to check your flight details a day in advance.
• You can pay for as many bags as you like on an easyjet flight, but the sum weight of all bags must not go over 20kg (21kg if you're extra simpática).
• If you have excess baggage it is cheaper  to get it shipped rather than paying the airline for the administrative manpower to process said baggage. These admin positions must be the best paid jobs ever. Furthermore, all airports have such shipping areas, you just have to ask for them. 
• Old ladies at check-in desks will say and agree to virtually anything to get over-inquisitive young whippersnappers away from their counters. "Can I get a refund for my unused baggage allowance?" "Of course!" "Can I get it after the flight?" "Most definitely!" Do I have to do this online?" "Yup!" "Is your website the most deceiving, uninformative, useless website ever?" "Uhu!" thanks. Harassed men at ticket sales desks are much more honest.
• The security metal detectors select people at random regardless of the amount of metal or sharp objects they have on them. You might as well wear whatever you want.
• Lady Gaga's first scent smells exactly like Britney's.

Things I already knew:

• Airport food is ridiculously overpriced and bland
• WHSmith books are ridiculously overpriced
• Perfumes are ridiculously overpriced
• Airport travel is the most annoying and stressful activity ever, yet this is the preferred medium of travel?!
• Departure screens are shameless liars.

So the decision I came to after all of these important life lessons? I am going to buy a boat.

Endangered Languages Week 2012 podcasts

Today is the 2nd May and my blog in 2012 has remained decidedly bare. Much of my time has instead been spent studying, exploring back alleys of markets, and discovering new foods, but for the most part, it has really been all about linguistics so far. This is not to say it hasn't been fun. Here are the most recent fruits of my labour, the production of podcasts to promote Endangered Languages Week at SOAS.

Enjoy!

Facts for Newbies
Language Landscape Web launch
Sand Drawings of Vanuatu - Mike Franjieh
Palatography - Jenny McCarthy
Scissor Dance of Peru - Jose "Pishtaco" Navarro

For more podcasts, visit soasradio.org

Columbia Street

Post-travel blues are a real thing, something which I've been trying to recover quite unsuccessfully from with a succession of various activities such as copious amounts of socializing, eating, drinking, sports, studying, sleeping, and tv watching. Some of those things don't necessarily go together, but there you have it. Finally today, I threw myself at the mercy of my flatmates and went out into the world to discover, gasp, London.

What a refreshing breath of vibrancy. The ultimate goal was to get to Columbia street, the flower market "at the end of Brick Lane". Lies. If it hadn't been for the mass migration of hipster hoo haas and young professionals making their way to and from Columbia Street, we would never have found our way through people's back yards.

I ended up buying myself a plant, a lovely cheerful little thing, with tiny little red buds making up cone shaped pom poms.