on my own again

Deadlines met, my fansites sort of updated, now it’s time for my personal blog update.

Soon, it’s going to be one year since I moved into my new home and room. As I had mentioned, we had to move out from our shared house. My sister decided to try and go back to Poland (she came back to London after one month), other people’s life situations had changed and in the end we all went our own ways. As soon as I came back from Poland (where I saw FFD), I started looking for a single room to rent in the same area we lived. The room I found that I felt was the right place with the right people (young Polish family with a 5 year old son and from Masuria, just like me) was the third place I saw and found after three days of hunting. I moved in at the end of August.

It was sad leaving that shared with friends and family house. Lots of great memories there. Our last supper was a pizza bought for the money I saved from selling my home made bread (that wasn’t very profitable ‘business’) eaten with my sister and her boyfriend on the floor in an empty living room.

I also started working in a different shop, much closer to my old home and even closer to the new one. To save money, I walked to work. It took me 30-40 min on foot to get to work. It was the same amount of time to go by bus, when and it often did stuck in traffic.

That change I welcomed more gladly. Different manager, luckily not Polish, but there were 6 Polish, including me, working in that shop anyway, the rest was Hungarian, Lithuanian, Slovakian and French for a little while. Area managers were British. That’s just the reality description.

I liked working with that team there. The atmosphere was a bit more relaxed, customers more friendly. It was getting worse when the shop was busier. That was one of the reasons why I left, but I’ll write about it another time.

Moving to a new home with strange people and going to work to a different shop made me feel that my journey continued on and a new sub-chapter of my life in London had just opened.

a day at the V&A

I didn’t want to stay home another day off after Easter, especially when the sun was out and shining all day. Thanks to my work at the RA shop, I have a pass which lets me in to if not all then most of the galleries and exhibitions in London for free. Yesterday, I decided to go and see “David Bowie is…” at the V&A.

As I had suspected, it was crowded. I didn’t think there was so many people, just we were all cramped in a few small exhibition rooms and there wasn’t much space to move anyway. At the entry, I got an audio guide which was automatic. It was causing some chaos whenever I moved, because not always it was catching the track it was supposed to catch. Sometimes I had to listen to something from previous room or different display cabinet. So these were the negative sides of the show. I tried not to let them throw a shadow on the whole experience and content. It was great to see Bowie’s handwritten lyrics, stage move notes, amazing stage costumes and jumpsuits. I think my favourite were the coats designed by Alexander McQueen. It’s understandable that the most exciting for me were things related to my own first ‘meeting’ with Bowie. I stood a bit longer at the glass ball and other props from Labyrinth and the boots Bowie wore when he had a 3 minute cameo as Pontius Pilate in Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ.

That was quite a time travel and since I was already in the V&A, I went a bit further in the past and visited one more exhibition at the same Museum, Treasures of the Royal Courts – a display of various gifts exchanged between Tudor and then Stuart families and Tsars. The gifts survived thanks to the fact that they were in Russia, otherwise they would perish during Oliver Cromwell’s Commonwealth. Yes, I love the history of Great Britain…

Anyway, I recommend visiting both exhibitions once you are at the V&A.

Easter Sunday

This was the weather on my way to work yesterday morning. The last photo is the one I took on my way back from work. One hour of sleep has been taken this weekend but at least I come home when it’s still bright.

This Easter I’m spending alone. Sister is in Wales, brother in China and I was working. Luckily, today and tomorrow I’m off having well deserved rest. March was a pretty crazy month when I worked 7 days a week, often 10-12 hours a day. Time to catch up on sleep and… blog!