![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
London calling, yes I was there too
Jun. 22nd, 2019 05:54 pmyou know what they said? Well some of it was true!
On Tuesday night I flew to London for a business trip. The ostensible purpose was to give a talk on transgender inclusion to a big roomful of baby managers (there was a managers' training week there, and most attendees were reasonably new to the gig), but I also got to see a baroness speak -- I am under orders not to mention her name on social media, but she was a fucking badass and worth the trip in her own right. And the London office is beautiful. I was briefly and wrongly disappointed in the free weight section of its gym, until realizing that the numbers printed on the weights were in kilograms... duh. My hotel room was super tiny and spartan, one step up from a hostel, and I loved it for its good design. It was peaceful and a 10-minute walk from the office, and what more did I need? Nothing at all.
I got to have some very grounding talks with a friend of mine who just got to director, about making director, with the result being that maybe I don't care about that as much as I thought. (I once had three reasons for wanting it; one went away a few months ago, and this conversation killed another one. Only one remains, and I frankly think it's the weakest.)
Almost got flattened by a double-decker bus coming from the wrong direction, but that was on the first morning and only happened once. After that I managed to switch into assuming all streets were one-way in an unknown direction and I had to just watch for cars.
My talk was fun to give, and apparently people kept talking about it off and on for the rest of that day. So I got to feel good about that.
Saturday, today, has been the best. I purposely booked a ticket to fly out in the evening so that I could spend some time wandering the town, and one of my co-workers gave me a good route to walk along a canal to Camden Lock Market so that's what I did, carrying all my crap. It was gritty and urban (in a good way), and I enjoyed the sketchiness and scrappiness of all the boats on the canal and the graffiti on the other side of me, not to mention all the hot British guys out for a run on a nice summer day. :-) On my walk I finally saw some of the spiked fences that were my primary memory of England from the time I visited at age 18. They're not such a big deal now.
The other thing I loved in that last visit, more than half my life ago, was the shopping. I remembered little boutiques selling kicky little skirts. This time, I couldn't find much for women's streetwear online so I decided to just wander, and at first I could only find rocker stuff -- I fell victim to a nice salesguy at Dark Wear UK, because they had a tank top with a vampire-bat-kitten on it and c'mon that was just adorable, but it wasn't really what I was after. But then I fell headlong into a Psylo Fashion store, and oh my god. Psylo, where have you BEEN all my life!? I was there for a long time. Thank goodness some of their stuff didn't fit right, because the damage was bad enough. (Two of my new pieces are from the men's section; raise your hand if surprised.) I then stumbled across Sai Sai punkwear, and I want everything from there too but it's not as good for work and I was All Shopped Out. So I spent forever getting a burger, and a coffee, and finding my way onto a bus and a train to get to the airport, instead.
As with any kind of vacating or changeup, I wonder how re-entry will be. Jet-lag hits me worse when flying east to west, and then there's the time away from circus training. But still, I think this trip has been a positive thing (baroness! Psylo! Seeing a bunch of place names that I mostly only know from Conne Willis stories!) and I'm surprisingly glad I went.
On Tuesday night I flew to London for a business trip. The ostensible purpose was to give a talk on transgender inclusion to a big roomful of baby managers (there was a managers' training week there, and most attendees were reasonably new to the gig), but I also got to see a baroness speak -- I am under orders not to mention her name on social media, but she was a fucking badass and worth the trip in her own right. And the London office is beautiful. I was briefly and wrongly disappointed in the free weight section of its gym, until realizing that the numbers printed on the weights were in kilograms... duh. My hotel room was super tiny and spartan, one step up from a hostel, and I loved it for its good design. It was peaceful and a 10-minute walk from the office, and what more did I need? Nothing at all.
I got to have some very grounding talks with a friend of mine who just got to director, about making director, with the result being that maybe I don't care about that as much as I thought. (I once had three reasons for wanting it; one went away a few months ago, and this conversation killed another one. Only one remains, and I frankly think it's the weakest.)
Almost got flattened by a double-decker bus coming from the wrong direction, but that was on the first morning and only happened once. After that I managed to switch into assuming all streets were one-way in an unknown direction and I had to just watch for cars.
My talk was fun to give, and apparently people kept talking about it off and on for the rest of that day. So I got to feel good about that.
Saturday, today, has been the best. I purposely booked a ticket to fly out in the evening so that I could spend some time wandering the town, and one of my co-workers gave me a good route to walk along a canal to Camden Lock Market so that's what I did, carrying all my crap. It was gritty and urban (in a good way), and I enjoyed the sketchiness and scrappiness of all the boats on the canal and the graffiti on the other side of me, not to mention all the hot British guys out for a run on a nice summer day. :-) On my walk I finally saw some of the spiked fences that were my primary memory of England from the time I visited at age 18. They're not such a big deal now.
The other thing I loved in that last visit, more than half my life ago, was the shopping. I remembered little boutiques selling kicky little skirts. This time, I couldn't find much for women's streetwear online so I decided to just wander, and at first I could only find rocker stuff -- I fell victim to a nice salesguy at Dark Wear UK, because they had a tank top with a vampire-bat-kitten on it and c'mon that was just adorable, but it wasn't really what I was after. But then I fell headlong into a Psylo Fashion store, and oh my god. Psylo, where have you BEEN all my life!? I was there for a long time. Thank goodness some of their stuff didn't fit right, because the damage was bad enough. (Two of my new pieces are from the men's section; raise your hand if surprised.) I then stumbled across Sai Sai punkwear, and I want everything from there too but it's not as good for work and I was All Shopped Out. So I spent forever getting a burger, and a coffee, and finding my way onto a bus and a train to get to the airport, instead.
As with any kind of vacating or changeup, I wonder how re-entry will be. Jet-lag hits me worse when flying east to west, and then there's the time away from circus training. But still, I think this trip has been a positive thing (baroness! Psylo! Seeing a bunch of place names that I mostly only know from Conne Willis stories!) and I'm surprisingly glad I went.
