sunday special

As I write this I'm sitting in the common room of the hostel, and a bunch of people are watching Sister Act. It occurs to me that it's Sunday night and I'd usually be at church, but at least I'm watching a religious movie ;-)

Marguerite was fantastic last night. Emotional, beautiful, political, and romantic. Apparently it's a new musical, and consequently it was bolder than most other musicals I've seen.

I had a later start today, I slept in a bit and found it hard to get up. Eventually I was on my way...in search of a decent cup of coffee. These English might very well know how to make good tea, but I'm a coffee drinker through and through and so far my coffee experiences here have been below par...true to Larissa's descriptions. I'm trying all the coffee chains, and the little funky looking cafes, and no real success. They keep asking me if I'd like chocolate on top of my cappuccino. Ah...yes. Otherwise it wouldn't be a cappuccino. That's why I order that kind of coffee, for the chocolate. The English think a cappuccino is 3 millimetres of coffee with 10 centimetres of foam. Maybe I should change my order. I will not give up. Not least because if I don't have coffee before 10:30am I usually have a headache and get nauseous.

Anyway, after a coffee in the sun in some kind of court I forget the name of near St Paul's and Temple Bar, I headed to the Museum of London. I've been wanting to go there since I was in Year 12 studying Roman Britain in Ancient History. So it was a life achievement of momentous proportions. Well...it was interesting at least. Just as I was entering "Medieval London" a free tour was starting with this young English guy who was to London archaeology what Ross is to paleontology. One for the Friends fans. Anyway, he was full of interesting stories, and was a source of amusement in and of himself, mostly because of how he pointed out all his favourite artefacts and told stories about why this particular piece of unrecognisable iron is his favourite, and made self-deprecating jokes about his own geekiness.

I found the faith and religion exhibitions particularly interesting. It made me think about all those people in 1st century Roman London, taking bits and pieces of whatever religion was going around (Roman gods, Egyptian gods, local tribal gods) to create meaning and stories of salvation. I was thinking about how, even though they had no concept of the God I know, that He was still their creator. Yet, they had no way of knowing it...does my head in. I also learnt interesting things about how the Reformation and the printing press were significantly related. If you're unlucky I'll tell you about it one day.

Next, a spot of shopping in Oxford St. While enjoyable, I was revisited by the familiar sense of frustration that is English shopping. Normally I'm a good shopper, too good sometimes. But here I'm a bad bad shopper. So many ques, nothing fits, and things are the same amount in pounds as they would be in dollars, effectively doubling the price of any item of clothing. And I find that in England it's hard to find any alternative sense of style. Even in London there's a lot of fashion victimisation going on, where few people have a sense of individual style. Not quite what you expect from a European capital. Anyway, maybe it's just that the style is not me. I had more luck in the markets yesterday.

Sister Act is finished, and so is this post.