Living the grown up life in London

As to satisfy my English readers, which apparently I have?!, I decided to write a little piece in English about some of the challenges that I faced so far while living in the big bad (and amazing) city of London all by myself.

About a week a go I set forth on a mission to Lidl to do my groceries for the coming week. Feeling very proud of myself for doing my groceries without any help and for only 15 pounds (although the credits for this last part obviously go to Lidl), I walked home with only one more obstacle to conquer if I wanted to reach the glorious goal of eating mac and cheese for supper: where to get pasta? (Lidl is great, but since everyone in the neighbourhood seems to think so, there was no pasta left) The little cornershop opposite my house offered the perfect solution! Only it seemed a bit inappropriate to squirm myself inside the little shop with two packed Lidlbags on either side of me, especially since the shop itself is hardly big enough to enter with two bags of any kind altogether. So I placed the bags on the treshold and quickly ran to the shop. After all, who would steal a bag that only has groceries in it, right? When I came back with my pasta however, I found my doorstep empty. Realizing that except for groceries, the bags had also contained my keys, I have to admit that I slightly panicked. With which I mean to say: ran up the street, started asking startled passerby’s if they had seen anything suspicious and ended up in the shop looking at the reversed camera images of my house (that apparently is being filmed 24/24…). While the shopkeeper tried to cope with her customers and one upset and heavily breathing individual (=me) at the same time, I watched myself grapple innocent passerby’s and causing full-blown panick in reverse, which is even more awkward to look at, believe me. Finally the recording reached the point where I disappeared in the shop and my bags were left unattended at the doorstep. A few minutes passed but nothing happened. And there I was again, walking backwards out of the shop in the direction of Lidl. I was baffled. No sketchy figure had stolen my bags, no neighbour had taken them inside, nothing of that sort. If not for the kind shopkeeper I don’t know how long it would have taken me to realize that the cute and very similar houses of my own street were the ones to blame and after two weeks of living in number 91a, I had managed to put my grocery bags at the doorstep of number 89 without realizing my mistake. Feeling not quite ready yet to face the friendly shopkeeper again, I bought two packs of pasta yesterday in the Lidl, just to be sure.

A second issue that this damsel in distress had to overcome last week concerned the can opener. The thing looks as if it came right out of prehistorical times and of course I do not want to confirm the stereotype, but I honestly did not know how to hold it, let alone open a can with it. After ten minutes of trying different positions between can opener and can, I decided that another tactic was required. Vaguely I remembered a friend explaining a survival technique to me with which you can open a can just by scraping it on a rocky surface, but the simmering pan on the fire urged me to decide quick and the kitchen seemed deprived of rocks for the moment. Therefore I had to be content with a big blunt knife as basic tool. I don’t want to claim that the results were as bad as the ones in this short movie, but it still gives a nice image of the situation that took place in my kitchen following the decision to use the knife to force the can open:

For those who wonder, I do not only encounter embarrassing moments: I do my laundry (30 or 40 degrees..?), I bought a bike (seriously, the left side? How crazy are you people?!) and I do the required readings for my classes (oh, you want us to read the whole book by next week? Sure. No problem at all.). In short, I’m acting like a real grownup. Only it seems that they too don’t always know what they’re doing in life.