Heath Street

Trip Start Oct 22, 2005

224

Trip End Ongoing

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Flag of United Kingdom London, United Kingdom
Monday, February 13, 2006

After checking out a couple of places we stumbled across a room in the suburb of Clapham that was available for 2 weeks. Perfect. It was south of the River Thames, walking distance to the tube and would be sharing with three Aussies in their early twenties (a brother, sister and a mate) and a Kiwi we called Gary the International Man of Mystery, because he was hardly ever there and no one knew where he was. We packed up our stuff, kissed the 18 bed dorm goodbye and caught the tube to Clapham.

The flat had been recently renovated, but we've learnt English handy-man work is pretty bad. On the second day the kitchen sink was blocked so Rick bought a plunger and some caustic soda to clear it out. This worked, but it did block up a few times again (we later worked out that one of the guys kept putting a heap of food scraps down it). The downstairs toilet broke and leaked all over the floor, the upstairs toilet flusher stopped working and to top things off we ran out of electricity and gas. Over here you can get a pay-as-you-go system where you need to get the gas and electricity card topped up before you can use it. When you run out of credit you get about ₤6 emergency credit. When we ran out of gas and emergency credit, the guys we were sub-letting off for two weeks asked for our next weeks rent up front so they could buy more gas and electricity. They then went out and came back with....3 slabs of beer! Not the best as the house was freezing for a few days and we couldn't do much with no power.

The first week there was a huge flat warming with a heap of other Aussies.

01 - Heath Street

We had no idea who they were but had a great time partying on and dancing the night away. There was even a dance off in the living room during the night. The next day the flat was a complete mess, something we got used to as the guys renting the flat had only just left home and had no idea how to live away from Mum. They often looked bewildered; coming home from work to find dinner wasn't ready, waiting for them on the table. We went out for dinner one night to have our first English Fish 'n Chips. To be honest the local back home makes nicer take away. Megan did find a shop up the road called ASDA. They sell absolutely everything so she was in retail heaven.

Continuing to look for work we did setup a bank account with HSBC. Getting a bank account in the UK is almost impossible, but Megan managed to get a reference from her nursing agency. Rick was added to the account but is not allowed a debit or credit card because he is too much of a risk with no income. Geesh! Megan also managed to attend her Orientation Training with the agency so hopefully will be able to start work soon. This will allow us to earn the local pound and not have to dip into our travel savings so much.

With our two weeks sub-let coming to an end and a couple of new guys already arrived from Australia, we wanted a nicer place to live (we were a bit over living in a smelly pig sty where nothing worked). As a parting gesture, we did get to meet our local drug dealer as the new arrivals got their welcome fix - definitely time to move on as this was not our scene.