Two Londons 2007

There was a box of herbal tea bags on my desk at the language school I taught at in London. It was an assortment of lemon, ginger and orange. I bought it at the beginning of winter when I was optimistically theorising that citrus could replace sunshine. After my afternoon class, I would take a tea bag from the box, walk into the kitchen, place the tea bag in a large yellow mug, add boiling water until it was two thirds full, walk back to my deskand sit the tea down. I would then walk back to the kitchen, get a glass of water and a spoon, walk back to my desk and sit down, pour the water into the tea to cool it down, strain the tea bag by placing the tea bag into the bowl of the spoon and wrapping the string around it to squeeze out the water and throw the tea bag in the bin. Then I would drink the tea while preparing the next day's lessons.

One day I noticed Paul, who sat next to me, watching me intently. I looked at him quizzically. "Just watching the ritual", he said. At the time I hadn't thought of it as such, I was just making a cup of tea. But now, looking back, I do the same thing.

Recall and watch the rituals.



There are two Londons for me. There is the London of my first impressions which turned my expectations upsidedown. I had not expected to like London. I thought it would be grey and dreary and lack lustre but I changed my mind before I got off the tube coming in from Heathrow. London was bright until eleven and excited and pulsing with energy ( I arrived in summer). London was brilliant. London was brilliant even in my jetlag haze.This is my first London. This is the London of my touristic squeals at Big Ben, and Tower Bridge and the Thames. This is the London first coffee at the cafe at the top of the Tate Modern overlooking St Paul's.This is the London of the excitement at getting on Red Double Decker buses ( actually, that particular excitement never really wore off). This is the London of feeling like I was walking around on a giant Monopoly board. The London shown in the snapshots of tourists, but MY snapshots. I remember that first visit before I headed off to Italy and Scotland for six weeks, in snapshots, and in a giddying rush of excitement and overstimulation. My first London is a crush I will never quite get over.


That is of course my first London.There is the second London that I lived in and worked in and paid bills in. The second London that I eventually cracked and made a life in. A place where I had daily ritual, weekly pleasure and pet peeves. The first London is a place where I took photos, the second Londin is a place where I made tea.

Working London 2007

The English school I taught in was tucked inside one of those terrace houses that line New Oxford St (and for that matter, most streets in London). It had three flights of narrow stairs and ten or so classrooms perilously stacked up around them. Before and after class, the school would swell with students as they spilled out of classrooms and out of the front door. In summer, when the school was at full capacity, you’d swear the whole building was about to topple over.

I loved teaching there, which came as quite a surprise to me. When I had left Sydney I was burnt out. I had sworn that I was never stepping back into a classroom. But in London with a bank balance of Australian dollars being pillaged by the UK pound, I had to reconsider. And I am glad that I did.

Maybe it was the diverse and dynamic exam class I had in the mornings, or just being in a new environment, or the three months traveling I had just had, but somehow I got my teaching mojo back. Teaching was great, teaching was fun, and teaching was paying for my weekends away. Yay.

I guess it was the students. London had impressed me with its multiculturalism from the moment I got on the Piccadily Line from Heathrow and my English classes took it to a whole other level: there were the two sisters from Bogatta Columbia who forever changed my opinion on the seeming innocuousness of cocaine use, my student from Yemen who changed his mind weekly about his university choices, a rather temperamental Georgian with visa issues and issues in general ( I once remarked upon him being late to class again and asked what he was going to do about it. ”You can’t change me” he yelled in response “Nobody can change me”. And promptly walked out of my class), a Russian student who would occasionally freak me out by wearing purple contact lenses ( very disconcerting) and the grumpiest woman I have ever met, a ridiculously good looking partially deaf Italian who was brushing up on her English before taking a senior position in a bank ( she was great, when she learned I was heading to Berlin she told me it was her favourite city and wrote me a list of everywhere I should visit). And Lucia, who was working on her PHD on Brazilian literature and was also a Portuguese and Italian teacher ( - it was laughable that I was her teacher and not the other way round but she was my student and is now still my friend). And that is but to name a few…

And then there were my colleagues who were both highly amusing and highly likeable. Just as well as the staffroom was so small that when I pushed the chair back I would consistently hit the Director of Studies desk, threatening daily to send his milky tea sprawling all over his keyboard. ‘Oh no, not to worry’, he would retort to my daily apology with distracted politeness. But that small staffroom worked for the most part, mostly due to the quirkiness and general good nature ( generally) of English language teachers.
As the token Australian in the room I was the recipient of the occasional odd question -What is a flaming dingo? I think you mean Flaming Galah. - You don’t have real universities in Australia, do you? Well if we don’t who on earth is sending me those HECS bills.

Most of them I could answer

Robert, tall, lithe and kind of sexy for sixty came to me one Monday morning – “ Gemma, there are these Australian young guys live near my home and they have these parties with so much beer, so much beer. Why do they have so much beer? And they insist on wearing flipflops and shorts even in winter. Why do they do that?

I just don’t know, Robert, I just don’t know.