Down and Out in London

Mostly due to poor timing, we found ourselves making the move to London with only about £100 to our names.  Seriously.  Luckily the £35 train tickets had already been purchased some time ago (else they would have been over £100) but other moving costs, and living costs, would be deducted from this amount.  Unfortunately, with all our worldly belongings in eight bags (and a guitar), taxis would be unavoidable.  Happily, our new place in Bermondsey is much closer to King's Cross than our last London residence (in Cricklewood) and total taxi cost in both Dundee and London was only an additional £35.  Not too bad at all; moving from Dundee, Scotland to London, England for only £70.  Sadly, even this low amount still reduced our net worth to around £65.

With no additional income expected for at least another week, we are pinching every penny.  But, even with no money, no internet and no jobs, we're still enjoying the crap out of London.  On top of just exploring our new city, I am amazing at finding awesome free events (usually including free alcohol and food) and our first week in London has been no exception.  On Wednesday we found ourselves at the quirky and fantastic Ninetyeight in Hoxton for an event sponsored by Cointreau.  We received four free Cointreau drinks, a goodies bag (including a small bottle of Cointreau), a short tutorial in cocktail mixing, and I got a free manicure (Mike didn't want one).  We jammed to Paul Simon's greatest hits, lost track of our free cocktail glasses (dammit!) and got to see feather covered lampshades in context (they're lovely and I want them).  Cointreau, you had me at hello.

Next, on Thursday we headed into The City, to Broadgate Circle, for some swingball, including free Pimm's and hotdogs.  For free events, it rarely matters what exactly goes on because free is the magic word.  Proving that philosophy, neither of us knew prior to this event what the heck swingball was.  As we found out, it's kind of like tetherball but played with paddles and totally kicked our butts.  Three hours of intermittent play and my right forearm is destroyed, I can't make a fist with my right hand, my lower back is mad at me and Mike's right shoulder feels bruised.  GD we're getting old!  Still, we had a great time and are pretty sure our future includes our very own swingball set.

All fun aside, we're both looking forward to starting normal life in the big city and getting back on track after our Dundee detour.  Towards that goal, today I got a call from my temp agency with a job beginning Wednesday afternoon (YAY!) and Mike will be starting his job at the gallery on Friday.  In addition to these revenue streams, we should be receiving both the deposit from our previous residence as well as my last paycheck from my previous employer within the next week.  Hopefully, our days of poverty are nearly over.  Although these first weeks aren't exactly as we had hoped, living down and out in London is a vast improvement upon our recent existence in Dundee.