Playing Catch-Up (Part 1 of 2)

I know, I know. I'm a slacker. But the more that's going on, the less time there is to write about it. So this post will be in two parts: this half will get you up to date on happenings in London, and Part 2 of 2 will talk about my awesome trip to Scotland this past weekend.

A Quiet Weekend in London

The Thursday of my last blog post had a particularly fun evening. I met the awesome group of Carolina alumni at Bodean's BBQ in Soho to watch the Carolina/Duke game, and then I met the girls at Strawberry Moons to celebrate Christina's 21st birthday. We had a really great evening out dancing and laughing, and we didn't get home until 2:30. As a result I didn't leave the house all day Friday, mostly because I was attempting to begin a paper that in reality I didnt start writing for another couple of days. Saturday morning Amanda and I found Camden Town markets, which is one of the greatest places I've ever been. Plenty of cheap clothes and shoes and trinkets, and the best people watching I've ever seen -- it makes New York and the Atlanta airport look like small-town America. There are street vendors all over the place and shops that have been squeezed into unimaginable spaces. And there are these old stables that have been converted into spaces for shops and cafes; they sell everything from coffee to wall posters to furniture to earrings, and there are people everywhere. We did some shopping and I got a whole pile of Indian food with rice, which was very very tasty. The canal area of Camden is really quite picturesque, although I didn't stop to take any pictures because I was too busy taking it all in. I will certainly be stopping by there again later this semester. Sunday I went to church (we had bread pudding for dessert), and Monday I did the wash -- just as it should be. The only eventful part of Monday was when I tripped and fell on the wet sidewalk on the way home from class. It hurt, and it wasn't much fun at all.

My Night as a Twenty-Something Scene-ster

Tuesday night Amanda and I went to a concert at the Barfly in Camden. We saw three bands: Snowfight in the City Centre, Air Traffic and Ghosts. (I've included all their MySpace links so you can actually hear them.) The venue was a lot like Cat's Cradle, only smaller and British, but it was a great place and a really great crowd. Air Traffic in particular was so good that we have since bought tickets to their next show in London on 26 March. It happens to be the same day their first major-label single is realased, so that should be extra exciting. Our night at the concert was wonderful, and it was only made better by the tiny Thai restaurant we found for a quick and yummy dinner on the way.

Happy Heart Day

I had two papers due in one class on Valentine's Day, which I thought was rather mean of my professor. But that evening I went out to meet my friend Emily and her roommate for a nice dinner. There was a bit of a communication mix-up about where we were meeting, and I ended up learning more than I needed to know about how complicated the District Line of the Tube gets once you get to the Earl's Court station. Basically this line, which is fairly simple and useful for most of central London, suddenly splits into about five branches, all of which take you in entirely opposite directions, and all of which go through Earl's Court. So after some extra train-swapping I finally made it to Fulham Broadway, and we went to Gourmet Burger Kitchen for a very good dinner. Afterwards we went to see Music and Lyrics at the Vue cinema. Orange, my mobile phone company, has this great deal on Wednesdays where you send them a text message and they send you a code for a two-for-one movie ticket, which saved us about $17. We missed the first 30 minutes, but the movie was still funny and very cute, even if it has about the worst written script I've heard in quite a while. There was more train-swappage on the way home, due not to my own fault but to a problem with the signals and signs in the station. But I did finally get home, and Amanda and I watched Mighty Ducks on peekvid.com.

Pressing Complaints

On Thursday my journalism class visted the Press Complaints Commission, which is an independent bureau set up by all of the major newspapers in the country to handle reader complaints. Because the court system is so time-consuming and so ridiculously expensive, readers can make a complain to the PCC for free. The PCC then contacts the newspaper in question and deals with the issues of corrections, etc. If there are major things that have gone wrong, the PCC will launch and invesigation, making decisions based on a Code of Practice, which was written by a group of editors and dictates what is and is not OK in the world of journalism. It's a really short document that mentions specific policies, many of which I've had the terrible fortune of discussing for hours while trapped in a conference room in Wilmington. (I'm sure anyone else who has ever been to an editor's retreat of any sort has had a similar experience.) If the PCC finds that the paper was at fault and broke the rules of the Code, then they write up an adjudication, which the paper is then required to print in a prominent area. According to the guy who spoke to us about it, this is not only embarrassing for the paper, but it also costs them thousands of pounds in advertising space. Whether this particular body is effective or not, it's really difficult to say. The PCC makes themselves sounds like they do a lot of good, but there are also many critics who say the organization hasn't got any teeth to make their work stick. After our presentation it was about lunch time, and so I caught a bite to eat at the next-door Melton Mowbray pub, where I had a steak and ale pie. I highly recommend it.

The next morning we hopped on a plane to Scotland, about which more in the other post. In other news, I have added a little widget to the right side of this page that shows a map of my most recent trip. I hope to be able to change it regularly. But what I like more is the map below, which lets you personalize it and give it a bit of character. I've made this first map of my neighborhood, and I hope you enjoy it.