Lost

I got lost tonight, and it was almost scary. My plan was simple: I wanted to go to a bar which had free jazz concerts every Tuesday night. The place was on Kennington Street. I used the TFL (Transport for London) website to figure out which subways to take to get there, and tonight I followed the directions exactly and ended up at Kennington Street. The only problem was that Kennington Street is a big place. I looked around for the bar for awhile, and eventually decided to explore. I walked for a couple miles down Old Kent Street, a wide, main road with buses running up and down it. All of London’s seedier neighborhoods, which I seem to be individually touring, have the same assortment of tiny, dirty shops. On any given block, there will be about twenty tiny shops. Ten of them will be selling fried chicken. Three of them will be boarded up. One or two will be selling some exotic food, like Thai or Chinese, and the other five will be electronics shops. I walked through different variations of this theme for an hour or so before deciding I’d had enough. I wanted to take a bus back.

The only problem was that the regular buses stop running at ten, so I was left with the night buses, which are far less frequent. I waited at a bus stop for about fifteen minutes before one showed up, and I jumped on. I had looked at the bus map and thought it would take me downtown, where I could take the tube back to Mile End and the QM campus, but instead I ended up kicked off into the cold at the far southern end of the bus route. As soon as I got off, I knocked on the door and asked the bus driver where the closest tube station was. He realized I was lost and told me to get back on the bus. An hour later I was back on campus, a little wiser and a little warier. As much fun as it is to use public transportation (you get to sit quietly and avoid eye contact with the other passengers, it’s one of my favorite things to do), I think I’d like to avoid the situation in the future.

I received in the mail a card from Grandma Rosemary today (thank you, Grandma, it was very nice). It gave me proof that my wacky mailing address is functional. I don’t have a street number, like 1720, followed by a street. Instead I have the name of a house and the name of a street. I don’t really understand the system, but as long as my mailman does I guess I’m in good shape.