/15/ The Lungs of London

On Tuesday I went to London.

The rest of the week was, on the whole, grey, windy, snowy, rainy and bitterly cold. I spent most of it with my parents and brother since I went home for the last week of the Easter vacation, and life in Reading is slo-o-o-w. Pretty much all I did was read, catch up on TV (New Girl, How I Met Your Mother, Doctor Who, Hart of Dixie, Fringe and Community are my go-to’s at the moment) and occasionally shuffle outside to get some milk from the shops. But the day I spent in London shone like a beacon of light in that dark and dismal seven days, for a number of reasons.

Firstly, I was excited because I got to see a part of the planet that I’d never seen before. Admittedly, it was only Hampstead Heath, but it was a place I’d seen countless times on television and in movies, and it seemed ludicrous that I had never visited such an iconic part of London despite living so close for over a decade. Seriously, coming to London as a teenager, I would head to Camden Market with my friends, trudge around feeling alternative for a few hours, and then head home.

Had I just stayed on the tube from King’s Cross another 20 minutes, I would have ended up near this gorgeous park, known by some as the “Lungs of London” (though that is applied to almost every park in London so probably doesn’t mean much!). And for good reason – it. is. HUGE.

I like Nature. A lot. The lack of it in a metropolis such as London is what put me off applying to UCL in the first place, despite the fact that I may well have got in to study my favourite thing – you all know it by now so chime on in – Scandinavia.

Secondly, I got to meet up with some people from College. And after last week’s melty-squishy-I-love-my-friends entry, I’m sure it’s no surprise that I was pretty excited about that. This lovely lady’s name is Tristan, a bona fide American who is a first-year studying English at my College. She’s a girl who has got her head set solidly on her shoulders, which is one of my favourite things about her, but she’s also got such a finely tuned sense of sarcasm and bone-dry humour that she’ll often have me in splits before I realise it.

Meeting up with her along with Sarah, another first-year English student whom I dubbed “Favourite Fresher” right off the bat and never looked back, and Sam, who is simply one of my best friends, was such a treat. We got a coffee and lunch at a pretty manor house; walked around genteel North London neighbourhoods discussing this, that and the other; and played ourselves silly on a playground, where Sarah, Tris and I read poetry to one another on the swing while Sam tried to break his neck by clambering up everything. In fact, it was so enjoyable that these two touristy shots of Tris and I in front of the London skyline are the only photographs I took all day.

And knowing me, you must know that means something.