Domestic Thursday

After a bout of food poisoning last night (the same as American food poisoning, except the output is measured in metric), I awoke to moving day here at the Lincoln House Hotel. My original reservation over, I faced prospect of having to switch rooms as many as five times throughout the duration of my stay.

It took me almost two hours to get everything ready: shoved into bags and suitcases; sorted, folded and prioritized. On my way out, I stopped at the desk to drop off my key, and to see about minimizing the amount of my remaining time I'd have to spend packing and unpacking. The staff informed me that there was good news: I wouldn't have to move at all. Which is great, but I could have used that information a bit earlier.

I wandered off to do my laundry. A single load in the Primus Economy 7 machine at my local laundrette costs £4.40 to wash, plus 60p for each nine minutes of drying. So my load of laundry, which was still wet when I pulled it out of the dryer (having run out of 20p coins) cost about $11 American. One load, not counting the box of detergent I had to buy. There was a sign posted which read: "Please Attendant for Change," which is something I'm not sure I'd be willing to do. At any rate there was no attendant to please. Another man at the laundrette seemed to have inherited some of my traveler's luck. His machine kept bursting open, sending sudsy water streaming all over. The first time the door opened, as the water was gushing out, he shrugged helplessly a couple of times, then looked at me and said "Shit," with no inflection whatsoever. He had to hold the door shut with his knee to get through the spin cycle.

There were a bunch of trucks and such on the corner for a film shoot. I approached a red-headed gaffer in his mid-40's with a nose ring and a skull t-shirt and asked him a couple of questions. They're shooting a film called And When Did You Last See Your Father, with Jim Broadbent and Colin Firth. The gaffer was astonishingly friendly, especially compared to most members of American film crews, who don't like to answer questions and just want you to get the hell away from their location. I caught sight of Mr. Broadbent peering out a third story window, which makes him my official celebrity sighting for the trip.

And no: I didn't take that picture.