Once Upon A Fine

This month has been a whirlwind of flat-hunting and weekend excursions and trying to carve a routine out of nothing but change. Next week, I hope, everything will begin to settle. Next week, I officially enroll at school, receive my student card, and gain access to the library. Next week, I have welcome parties and orientations in both the School of Languages, Linguistics, and Film and the School of English and Drama. My supervisor is setting up our working group on Childhood Cultures. I’m attending an eighteenth-century studies seminar. Most importantly, I am moving into my new flat. By this time next week, I hope to have the keys to my flat and have it to a livable state – with a bed and internet, electricity, and water connected. Then the real work and excitement of this experience will begin. I believe having my own flat will help cultivate a sense of belonging.

I have tried to take joy from this liminal period, but writing here has been difficult. It is challenging to organize my thoughts when everything around me feels largely incoherent. It’s also challenging to write when homesickness creeps into every line, especially when I feel like everyone expects me to feel nothing but happiness as I begin to fulfill a lifelong dream of living in London. I’ve had the best luck in the world getting to live with a friend these last three weeks (I really don’t know how to begin to thank or repay Amanda for her kindness) but it has made the time seem like a holiday from which I’ll shortly return, rather than the first chapter in a new life.

Still, Amanda and I have had the best three weeks. Since meeting five years ago, we’ve become very close friends. In past visits I’ve made here, we’ve toyed with the idea of visiting Hever Castle, the childhood home of Anne Boleyn, and three years ago we got so far as the Pooh Corner Tea Shop before abandoning a trip to the Poohsticks Bridge. Now that I live here, we’ve done both!

Hever Castle is gorgeous and we had a beautiful sunny day to visit. We drove through tiny Kentish towns, such as Edenbridge, on our way down. Amanda pointed out the oast houses, or hops kilns, that are all over Kent and used to be used for drying hops for brewing beer. Now they’re nearly all converted into dwellings, as hops are dried industrially. Once at Hever Castle, we parked in a field and then walked along by a large lake. People had paddle boats out, and there was a café serving tea, and what felt like miles of rose gardens. In the early 20th century the Astors bought Hever Castle and created gorgeous Italianate gardens for their sculptures. There was a kiosk selling Kentish ice cream, so Amanda and I each got a cone of mint chocolate chip. Then we walked up to the castle itself and took a tour – to think I’ve been in Anne Boleyn’s bedroom! Like Anne, I’ve looked over the courtyard where Henry VIII was said to enter when he visited during their courtship. Poor Anne. Parts of the castle were quite old looking – the original doorway, made of oak, was visible between the great hall and the gallery. It was put in around 1462. Other parts of the castle look more fit for the Astors and Edwardian society. Of course, they’re quite old rooms, but their furnishings and modernizations made me feel as if a dinner gong were about to sound and I should change out of my shirtwaist and into a pale pink silk gown and get my hair up into a Gibson Girl pompadour.

The next weekend, Amanda and I visited the Hundred Acre Wood. We were again blessed with a bright, sunny, cool day. For three years, Amanda has kept our laminated instructions for reaching the bridge and the rules of Pooh Sticks in her car. The sheet was a little battered, but not worse for the wear. Three years!!! We drove straight to the Poohsticks Bridge parking area, and began our walk to the bridge. Amanda found us two beautiful sticks on the walk, but when we reached the bridge, about ten other people were playing so we walked on for a bit. We passed blackberry brambles, and holly just going to berry, and saw an adorable country cottage called Mole End, and walked up through a field that led us to a view overlooking the whole Hundred Acre Wood. We saw a girl with a sketchbook drawing the scene, and decided that this field would be where Marianne Dashwood would lose her footing and meet the dashing Willoughby – and later, where she would get catch a terrible illness. Then we trekked back to the bridge and played our Poohsticks. Our sticks joined together under the bridge, and so neither of us won or lost. It was a draw. Our sticks were friends, like us. It felt very appropriate, give that this is our five-year friendaversary, and five is the wooden anniversary.

Next week, I plan to cross the threshold — literally and figuratively — into my London and PhD life, but I wouldn’t change these weeks of sweet and bitter. Nevertheless, I’m glad to think that soon I’ll be entering my scholarly pursuits in earnest, and can’t wait to begin posting on my research and all the variety that London has to offer.

(Gardens at Hever Castle; Hever Castle; Amanda in the Jane Austen-esque field overlooking the Hundred Acre Wood; Mole End; me and Amanda at Hever Castle — all photographed by me.)

Having successfully navigated airports, customs, collecting my biometric residence permit, and all the other bureaucratic details of obtaining legal entry status into the UK, I must now find a place to live.

This, my friends, is proving difficult.

Flat-hunting in the UK is very different from flat-hunting in the USA. Unlike in the D.C. area, where I could hop on Craigslist or Padmapper, in the UK there are essentially two sites everyone uses: RightMove and Zoopla. Nearly every single flat up for rent is listed on these sites, and these sites are not Craigslist equivalents: each flat listed is connected to a letting company. After I see a flat online that peaks my interest, I send a little query to the letting company, and usually within a day (sometimes hours!), I receive an email and/or phone call from an agent asking me when I’d like to the view the flat.

Well, ideally that’s what they ask. About 70% of the time, they tell me that the flat I’ve enquired about has an offer on it, or has already been let, but look here! They have another that might fit my criteria. Spoiler: their “anothers” almost never fit my criteria.

Another difference is in the marketing. Everything always looks so good and so cheap online. They love to price things by the week, so when I look at a place I love I think, “Wow, only £385! How is this so suspiciously inexpensive?!” It’s not. That’s the one thing that’s the same as D.C. – everything is ridiculously expensive.

Once you’ve found a place deemed worthy, you don’t just say, “Great, I’ll take it!” or even put in an application, like you would in the USA. No, no. Instead, you put in an offer. It feels like buying a house. You specify what you would actually pay in rent, and you don’t have to pay asking price. Of course, the landlord doesn’t have to accept the offer, but many letting agents have hinted to me that certain flats would go for under asking. You can specify conditions – such as, “I’d like a new mattress when I move in,” if the place is furnished. You can haggle over tenancy fees, and cleaning fees, and anything else you want to negotiate.

After two weeks, upwards of twenty viewings, and multiple tube trips, I’ve finally found a place to put an offer on. If my offer is rejected, well, then back to the drawing board. If you find a clean, well-maintained flat near a tube station on the District or Central lines, within reasonable walking distance of a grocery store, on a somewhat quiet street, with a gas hob and a fridge bigger than the one I had in my college dorm room, please do let me know.

(The outside of a flat that I viewed last week. All these terrace houses look gorgeous on the outside, but they can be very hit or miss on the inside. Photographed by me, but not with any real finesse.)