Twenty-Eight Weeks in London
Takes me longer each post to count the weeks. Please clap.
Between jet lag, unemployment, and the alternating Halloween/Christmas decorations in storefronts, I have 100% no idea what day it is. The next several paragraphs will be scattered with little to no segues between them; the mood is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Strap in!
Somehow in my travels back to the UK I managed to watch the full Hobbit trilogy in under 24 hours. I am now reading The Hobbit, which I checked out from the library. I’m also, unrelated, worryingly coming around on the whole “mayonnaise is good” thing. Overall: I’m not entirely sure what’s Going On with me.
Trying very hard to be awake for the whole day instead of napping 2-3 times/day for 20-70 minutes/nap. Difficult!
Happy Halloweek! I keep being told Halloween is not as big a thing here as it is in the States but to someone who Rarely Went Anywhere when she lived in the States, Halloween here seems just as big! I was on the tube en route to a Halloween party on Saturday (brag), and each stop was filled with people in fancy dress1. I’m happy(?) to report that most everyone here, just as in America, went as Spooky Makeup Atop A Hot Outfit.
The number of times since moving here that I’ve said “I think he is so cute wow” for it to be met with “Lianna that man is gay” is rapidly becoming on par with that same count from my high school drama club days. God works hard but my type2 works harder.
I know as a non-UK citizen renting a flat here I don’t really Have Rights, but this week the water was shut off for the exact 25 minutes during which I had hoped to shower. Idk, just seems like something it would be cool to give people a heads up about? But I’m not going to say this to anyone official! God forbid someone from Th*mes W*ter find this blog and shut off our water indefinitely! I rinsed with absolutely frigid filtered water from our Brita, fresh out of the fridge. In a way, luxurious, but in another, much more real way, terrible.
When it comes to things going awry in the flat, we’ve adopted a “no worries if not!!!!!” stance into eternity. Sorry for existing! Please let us stay in this flat as long as the UK lets us live in this country!
Could someone please tell me if an Americano is the same as a drip coffee because I’ve been ordering them recently to stop consuming so much goddamn milk after my cappuccino days but is it possible to order something cheaper for much the same effect? Could I google this? Yes. Has the caffeine kicked in enough for me to do so? No.
Is there anything better than a sandwich served on a toasted baguette?
A simple but sumptuous pleasure.
My lap is simply full of crumbs.
We (royal edition) are gigging almost nightly and we are doing our best to avoid the existential distress of “what’s this all for where is this all leading is anybody waving back at me.”3
The sun came out today which was pretty cool of it to do, but the way I gasped when I saw she is going to set at 4:37 pm THIS AFTERNOON. Even the sun is saying “it’s 5 o’clock somewhere!” Scary to me that the winter solstice is still nearly two months away. The upcoming days are going to be, much like the men whom directors kept having me audition opposite in Los Angeles, s h o r t.
Me to myself when dressing for this 10 degree (50° Fahrenheit) weather:
Omfg I just remembered that I went to a museum on Friday afternoon4 and was going to make this whole post about that visit! Oops.
A visit to Sir John Soane’s Museum
Did I know who Sir John Soane was before going to this museum? No. Do I know who he is now that I’ve visited the museum? Uhhhh…
Listen. This museum was one of those that only has captions for its pieces / explanations of its rooms available if you scan a QR code and read them on your mobile, but doing that is in neither god’s nor my cellular data’s plan for me! Ergo I blissfully learnt next to nothing.
The park across the street - Lincoln’s Inn Fields, three words the order of which I couldn’t for the life of me remember later that day - had a poster which informed me that Sir John Soane was the architect of the Bank of England (I think??? Coasting on vibes here, I do not care about this man, soz). This museum is his house and is filled with his trinkets. I visited on my own but found myself repeatedly having to refrain from saying to those around me, “Hey, do we think this guy maybe had…too much stuff?”
As with many museums that were once a now-dead guy’s home & collection: one person does not need all these objects! Sorry! Why do you have a fragment of a sculpture that is just a leg? I would hate that being in my house! Bad vibes!
Anyhoo. Some highlights from the visit below.
Three things I saw in London this week:
The clocks fall back an hour. Huge thank you to the person in the gym locker room who warned me this was going to happen; I’d’ve thought I was losing my mind waking up to find my phone’s clock mismatch my oven’s
The backs of my eyelids. Y’all I have been n a p p i n g
A HalloWEEN
xoxo,
Lianna “don’t trim your own fringe5 while hungover & sad” Holston
For my fellow Americans: “fancy dress” means “costume.” British English is whimsical and silly
Tall, haunted, unavailable and most crucially: uninterested in Me
You know it’s time for a wellness check when you spiral into Dear Evan Hansen lyrics
Is she cultural or is she unemployed?
Bangs 🫡