Stop The Pajama Drama: Tesco Has a Dress Code

Britain, being a comparatively tiny country with rather good gun control regulations (i.e. I’m pretty sure Brits do not have the right to bear arms…), has fairly little violence. And if you think about it, what is a US newspaper composed of if not violence?

So here the Brits are, trying to supply enough news for a menagerie of newspapers, and they are reduced to full reports on a parking meter that is misreading in German and a woman who has caused uproar by insisting on doing the grocery shopping in her pajamas, leading to the conclusion that even quick shops like Tesco must uphold some standard of dignity.

Those are the kind of stories I start and end my day with, thanks to the free papers ‘Metro’ and ‘Evening Standard’.

What with the pigeon upset on Monday I’ve been somewhat remiss in proper blog maintenance, so forgive me if I neglect to recap the better part of a week.

Vivid recollection of our Sunday in Camden Market have begun to escape me, but it was absolutely brilliant. A bizarre punk-Mecca meets faerie land, contained in a former horse stable with chandeliers. Little shops and kiosks sell everything whimsical you could imagine. Chloe and I kept remarking upon how much it felt like walking into a Neil Gaiman novel and eventually remembered that’s probably because he lived near here.

I procured several gifts which I shall not describe in the interest of keeping the element of surprise for the reciprocates who happen to be blog followers, and also a lovely dress for myself because all my flat mates are now sporting Camden Market dresses. They basically all have the same empire cut in different fabrics and we all look super cute in them.

You barter for everything, even the food. We negotiated for peculiar Chinese-Indian-Japanese fusion dishes with “free” soda and –drawing upon memories of my mother’s epic forty five minute interaction with a sundress vendor in the streets of St. Thomas over a decade ago- managed to talk my dress down five pounds. The half-turn away and the ‘maybe-for-ten-but-certainly-not-for-twenty’ techniques are key.

Chloe and I had tentatively decided that some Tuesday she should go to Trafalgar Square and see what shows she could get cheap tickets to, since she doesn’t have class that day. Which is how we went from “whatever-maybe” to front row balcony seats for Billy Elliot in the span of a few hours. For under thirty pounds no less!

Between being lucky enough to have culturally-inclined parents and my stint on the Cappie theater reviewing circuit I have seen many, many musical theater productions. Which I only mention because I want the full weight to sink in when I make the statement that Billy Elliot may be the greatest musical in the history of ever.

I laughed, I cried, I smirked smugly when I was able to decipher the thick accents and British slang, and my heart skipped a beat when he started doing pirouettes. You could not ask for anything more.

Classes here consist of walking tours of various qualities (some involving the professor trudging wordlessly onto the tube without mention of where we we're going or why, getting off and walking several blocks before pointing out some landmarks that were totally irrelevant to the course and then getting a pint at a pub Christopher Marlowe used to frequent) and lectures delivered in perturbing lulling accents that are so hard to absorb information from but otherwise quite good.

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned that every crosswalk has the traffic-direction-appropriate “look right!” or “look left!” painted on the concrete to aid pedestrians in the avoidance of incident. Its little things like that that make you love this city.