A letter

What am I doing?

♫ The Paper kites - Featherstone

I am in London. It's beautiful, amazing, incredible, I have fallen head over heels in love with this city. Although at the same time I am broke, a mouse ate half my food supply and I don't even have enough money to travel to a hair casting I have tomorrow for a L'orreal hair show which I can possibly get paid £1500 and see a little bit of England in the process, only catch is I will be going blonde and they will cut my hair, hopefully not short and no fringe please I don't think I am ready for that.

I owe Lewis a ridiculous amount of money at this point and he is paying my rent for the next 2 weeks for this shit hole because my money is in Limbo right now between my Australian account and my british account and because I have to stay in this place for a minimum of a month.

The good news is I will hopefully be able to move in with my friend Georgia who is currently my lifesaver and I wouldn't be surviving very well if I didn't have her or Lewis. But that still isn't a definite. Plus the rent will be more expensive at hers but it is completely worth it. I will show you pictures of the house when I fingers crossed can call it the house I live at. 

♫ Call me maybe (cover) - Ben Howard

Ideally my perfect situation right now would be that 

•  I get the job tomorrow
• I can use my 1 week's deposit on the room I am in now that the landlord has and have that to last me the rest of the week
• I move into Georgia's at the end of the week
• I get my National Insurance Number sorted out (which I need to get a job in retail here)
• And I have at least a bit of money left over to get to the airport to fly to Poland to meet my mum and then at least for a little while I won't have to spend money on food and travel.

But that is the ideal situation, and things don't always work out how we want them too. 

I have been writing letters to my friends a lot lately. I have been going to coffee shops and spending hours there alternating between writing letters and when my hands get sore reading. I don't know what to say in the letters though. All I want right now is to go home and be hugged. A Leilani hug, a Saya hug, a Yolanda hug, a Sharkey hug, a Rick hug, a Mum hug, even a Sassie (my dog) hug. 

♫ Love More - Bon Iver

I want to be at home cuddling with my beautiful sausage dog in my chakboard wall with the cranes hanging above my head watching Daria. 

I want to be sitting on my verandah with Yolanda and Saya drinking cheap wine from Illawong shops talking about everything under the sun, listening to various music on my laptop and smoking silly ciggarettes. 

I want to be at Sharkey's house with a chicken sandwich from the Illawong bakery, playing NBA and messing up his rubiks cubes.

I want to be at Sutherland with Rick eating sushi and making a mess at the sushi train, then renting a film from the video shop with a tub of Ben and Jerry's , then going back to his and beating him in a game of pool. 
I want to be driving in my car with Lani singing along to Jesse Mcartney and his beautiful soul, and the rest of my awesome cds. Finding random places in the middle of random streets to have a smoke.  Beating her at our Monopoly games which never really had an end, we would just get bored eventually. Mostly I just want to be with her, I don't care where. She is my best friend and I need her now more then anything. 

I want to be home.

But at the same time I never want to leave London because I know I can't come back knowing how hard it was leaving the first time. 

I need to be strong but I am slowly falling apart.

♫ Cry to me - Solomon Burke

Today I killed a mouse. That was my breaking point. It began when I was sitting in my room, had a shitty day, the city was too crowded for my liking so I came home. I heard the familiar rustling of a plastic bag which pretty much means the mouse is behind my cupboard. This mouse has visited my room a few too many times for my liking. The worst was most likely when it was 2am and I was already having troubling sleeping and the bag kept rustling. I freaked out and turned the light on to see a little scum of a mouse sitting in the middle of my room. It ran away and that was my first completely sleepless night in London, and I hadn't even gone clubbing or anything.

Basically today I heard it again and I couldn't deal with this shit anymore so I moved all my furniture and found the hole in the wall that the vermin had been visiting me through. I spent a fair while blocking it up with tissues and paper and anything I could find and I then rearranged my furniture. 

I got hungry so I went to the kitchen to get some food. Opened my cupboard and thought whatever I still have chocolate may as well eat some. Took a piece out of the plastic bag I had put it in....it was already half eaten, in fact the bag was nearly empty, I put my hand in to be greeted with fur, the scum was in the bag. Yes I screamed. I grabbed the bag and tied it up ridiculously tight, then I got the head of the vacuum and hit the bag around a bit. I do like animals so this did pain me a little. But the dead mouse is now in the bin, along with half of my food. It got into a loaf of my bread and my crackers.

♫ Not while I'm around - Jamie Cullum

I know it sounds stupid that I am upset about this food being gone. But I already had a housemate steal and eat an entire loaf of my sourdough bread, and now to have this on top.

My fridge/ cupboard consists of:

• less then 1/4 light cottage cheese
• pint of milk (which is pretty much a schooner of milk)
• salad fucking dressing
• disgusting bbq sauce (british bbq sauce taste terrible)
• soup which I can't cook because recently I discovered that I actually can't use the pots and pans in the kitchen as they belong to the other housemates, even though my landlord specifically said I could use anything out of those drawers.
• 1 packet of migoreng (not as good as the one at home)
• dorset berry cereal which is quite good.

♫ Waves - Rick (I got a dedication, whatofit)

So this is my life currently. I know I have disguised this shit storm pretty well with photos of me out and about in the city. It's true I have had a lot of fun while I have been here. Like going to the zoo last week and AC/DC although behind all of that I have been stressed as fuck and as I type this I hear my stomach rumbling. Although I had lunch so there is no point wasting food on a late dinner when I don't know how long this food will have to last. 

I love writing letters to my friends, although I am putting it on hold until I sort out everything that is going on in my life right now. I love you all so much even if I am approximately 17,000km away.

With Love from London

Erica