I moved to London in November and I never talk about it. It occurred to me this morning when I saw this older man with a REALLY bad toupe' [looks like a 4" wide strip of black fur on top of his bald head with a few white fringes of hair left around the base of his scalp] ... this was the second time I had seen him. So, it occurred to me that I haven't talked about my time in London and it is really different than having lived in Bristol. A little bit like moving from LaGrange, KY [you can Google it] to New York City.
For one thing, I don't drive anymore. The ugly Renault is just a reference point for me to tell the taxi drivers where to stop to drop me off. I live on a "close" which means a street that ends with no place to turn around. If you could, it would be a cul-de-sac.
To get to work in the morning, I walk down a path between the gardens and use a card pass to open a gate which pitches me out onto Crescent Road. From there, I grab a bus on Worple Road to the train station. I talk an overland train from Wimbledon Station to Vauxhall. At Vauxhall, I get on the Tube [Victoria line] to Oxford Circus and I walk to work.
On the High Street outside of Wimbledon Station I have access to everything I need. Grocery stores, electronics, my hair salon, cobblers, restaurants, pubs and so on. Usually, when I get off of the train at night, I drop by the grocery to grab what I need for dinner and then take the bus to the top of the hill and walk down to the Close [easier to walk downhill!].
Speaking of the bus going up the hill, unlike in the US when buses will stop along their route to get back on schedule. Here in London, they just run every 6-8 minutes and what happens is they get bunched up. This morning, as I was coming to Worple Road, two buses went by, so I walked to the station since it would likely be 15 minutes before the next bunch would arrive. At the same time, six were coming in the opposite direction off of the High Street having just dropped their folks at the train station.
One night last month, after a REALLY long day traveling, I stopped at Morrison's [grocery] after getting off of the train and I decided that I had enough in me to take the bus to the top of the hill. Typically, if it's after 800pm, I take a taxi from the train station. It's worth the £5. Anyway, the bus was uncommonly crammed with people for it to be 8 o'clock at night, so when we made the last stop before going up the hill, I was busy balancing my briefcase, purse and grocery bags on my lap so that folks could sit down. We slowly dragged up the hill into the village and made it about 1/2 mile more, and the bus stopped working. Just dead. Had to walk the last mile to my house ... in the rain. Couldn't very well hold an umbrella... and the briefcase, purse and grocery bags. Can't make this up! Got off of the bus giggling, as was the walking woman behind me.
The week before I was on the same bus, got up the hill and the bus was diverted due to construction [that wasn't there when I left earlier that morning]. Apparently, a water main had burst, so the bus was diverted off of Ridgeway for SIX STOPS! There was literally a two-mile stretch where we drove alongside the Commons, but mad no stops. And of course, BEFORE the diversion, we didn't know that we were being diverted, so folks that thought they were getting off at the next step had to WALK BACK 2 MILES to their stop! I only had to walk 1/2 mile. It wasn't raining this night.
So, since I've moved, I've lost about 9 pounds. I walk everywhere, unlike Bristol when I walked out the door and either sat in the car or on trains. Just to get to a train, I am walking 0.5 to 1.5 miles every morning.
And then there's the Commons where I take the dogs, which I have written about. In a future post, I share some photos of Wimbledon Village. It's at the top of the hill.
