London calling

I’m starting to give some serious thought about darkening London’s doorstep this fall. This is a city I love to a tingling degree, yet I haven’t been there since 1999. Part of me wants to take a break from working 800 jobs and do something fun, frivolous, and relaxing with some of the freelance money I’m pulling in. That money is meant to fund a future house and travels, but I’m starting to get antsy for a quick wallop of immediate gratification—something that will allow me to say, “Ah, yes, this is why I work seven days a week and constantly risk burning out—so I can be irresponsible every once in a while.”

You know how some people go on monastery retreats to get in touch with their spiritual sides? My trip to London would be like that. Not that I’d fall on my knees in Trafalgar Square and begin praying to the god of London; I just mean that a trip back there would be very…mmm…restorative. Calming. I’ve always thought of London as my spiritual home (I mean that in a non-religious way), and it’s time for me flutter my fingers once again in that glorious church o’ mine.

It would have to be a budget trip—as budget as possible, anyway. Sadly, the halcyon days of $300-and-under plane fares to London are long gone, especially with fuel prices being the way they are. But I’d still aim for as cheap a flight and hostel as possible. I’d eat cheaply, too.

My tentative plan at this point would be to fly out on a Thursday night in September and return home the following Monday afternoon. That would give me three full days to wander the streets, snap a ridiculous amount of photos (I’ve never been in London with a digital camera!), and do whatever I want to do. My goals would be to hit my old stomping grounds in Deptford, New Cross, and Greenwich; check out things that have only come into existence since the last time I was in London, like the Tate Modern; do a ghost walk tour (I did ghost walks in Edinburgh and San Antonio and loved both of them) or a gory history tour (a bit like the Jack the Ripper walking tour I once took in London); and maybe see some things I’ve never seen before, like the Design Museum and the Institute of Contemporary Arts. I’ll keep y’all posted.

Last night I browsed through the Time Out student guide I got for free when I started at Goldsmiths, because I thought they might provide tips on cheap accommodation in London. The guide is 12 years old, so it’s horribly outdated in a lot of respects, but my rationale was that the cheap lodging suggestions would probably still be valid. What’s funny is that at one point they made a comment about geeks and the internet, basically saying that only geeks use the internet. It made me smile because it was so outdated—like reading something from the dark ages. But it was true! The Internet and Web were so new at that point, and they seemed so unnecessary to anybody who wasn’t a geek. There weren’t many websites in existence, and I don’t even know if graphic browsers existed. After a while the relevance of email seemed obvious, but hardly anybody had accounts, so email was kind of purposeless because there was nobody to email. Heather had to drag me kicking and screaming into the world of email and ISCA during the spring of ’94—both of which I reluctantly accessed on a text-only browser. During the fall of ’95 I finally had someone teach me how to get onto the Web. But it took until late spring before I worked up the nerve to tackle a graphic browser (I was a bit of a technophobe back then); up until that point, I only looked at websites on a text-only terminal! Now I can’t imagine being without the Web or even knowing anybody without an email address (apart from my grandfather, of course). Even my hermit-like mountain-dwelling dad has got email and a cable internet connection.

Meanwhile, I was sniffing around the Internet Archive, and I found a five-year-old incarnation of my website, which was created seven years ago. It’s fun to see how simple it was in the beginning. Not that it’s elaborate now, mind you, because my skills are still rather limited, but compared to how it used to be, it’s downright futuristic nowadays. I also snickered at earlier bare-bones versions of my employer’s website and my alma mater’s website. How far we’ve all come!



song heard most recently before posting: Fade to Black—Apocalyptica