The Susanne

I’ve left the parents’ house which was my home for the summer and returned to my beloved flat. It’s a complete shambles even after several days of ‘tidying’ as I’m not great at cleaning and neither is The Boyfriend. We (read: I) wanted to give the flat a good tidying up, getting rid of some of the junk that’s accumulated over the fourteen months we’ve lived here, in preparation of a Fresh Start (read: new semester). In addition to making our flat the most perfect flat in student housing history, we’re going to become model students and start going to the gym regularly. Yeah, that’s right: we’re going to become nauseatingly perfect! But all that’s happened so far is we’ve bunny-proofed the place to make sure the little guy doesn’t accidentally chew an electrical cord and get himself fried, moved a lot of stuff out from its original hiding place and scattered it around the flat, and moved our desks around along with the sofa and the television to make room for — wait for it — Our Very Own Dining Table! Yeah, that’s right! We’re (read: I’m) finally fed up with eating all our meals on the sofa, hunched over the coffee table in front of the telly and have decided to make room for a separate dining table. It will be small of course as we only have a tiny flat. But it will be the right height and it will have chairs that go with it so we can sit upright and eat our meals like normal human beings. Yey!

But sadly, for now, this is My Reality:

I’m also looking forward to another addition to our little home: a new kitchen counter! (you thought I was going to say ‘baby’, didn’t you!?) I’m not replacing the one we have (as we live in student housing that’s strictly verboten), but instead I’m adding 80×60 cm of wonderful work surface and storage in my (until now!) ridiculously tiny and useless kitchen. I’m ecstatic! The counter top is going to be (treated) solid wood so I won’t have to muck about with silly cutting boards that slip on the lino surface that we have now and that are too small to be of any real use (because the counter tops available to me now are so small I’m sure the people who designed these units four years ago couldn’t imagine students ever eating anything but frozen pizzas and take-out). So I’m sure you can all imagine my excitement and relief.

Another bright spot on my horizon is my trip to London which will happen in just ten days! I’m going on a girls’ LONG weekend (more like a week, really) with my best friend Maria who’s studying to be a doctor in Hungary and we’ve not had more than a couple of days together in three years. I’m so excited about this trip I’ve a long list of things I want to do there:

• I want to see the Broad Street pump where Dr John Snow first proved that cholera was a water-borne disease thereby disproving the (then) popular theory about miasma, and have a drink in the pub bearing his name.

• I want to visit the Dickens museum and the Sherlock Holmes museum, and have a drink in the Sherlock Holmes pub.
• I want to go to the Notting Hill Carnival which is happening while we’re there.

• I want to visit Dennis Sever’s house which is a kind of mystery-tour/museum/time capsule.
• I want to go on a guided boat trip on the Thames as soon as we arrive.
• I want to drink Pimms at the White Horse Pub.
• I want to visit some of the cool markets and try jellied eel (jellied ewww?).
• I want to visit the Museum of Torture.
• I want to go clothes shopping (of course).
• We’re definitely going to see The Merry Wives of Windsor at The Globe Theatre
• and Chicago!

I’ve never been to a musical before but I have seen a Shakespeare play. Not at his own theatre, though! Oh, the excitement!

Plus loads of other stuff that doesn’t come to mind at the moment but I’m sure it will as soon as I’ve posted this. If anyone has any suggestions for us, what to do, what to see, what to drink, what to eat, please let me know.

After all, I’m a London virgin… -for another ten days!

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