Fashion

Ironically, here in fashion-forward London, I miss fashion. It's all thousands of miles away, tucked into a closet in the frozen Northwoods of Wisconsin. Well, mine is at least. The Londoners seem to be doing pretty well for themselves. All around me are beautiful people, or at least people made more beautiful by the clothes they put on. I see swirls of color and pattern, mixtures of textures and fabrics and jewellery everywhere: on the streets, in the cafes, in museums, in the tube, everywhere! Women wear bright lipstick and improbably large earrings and mile-high heels to the grocery store. TO THE GROCERY STORE!

I've never been particularly concerned with being strictly fashion-forward, as long as I avoid being fashion-backward, or worse, fashion-inside-out. Lucky for me, I have a sister who loves to dress me like a human doll. She likes nothing better than to go shopping for me. No, I don't mean shopping with me. I mean, shopping FOR me. Sure, I like going myself, but she gets such joy from choosing my wardrobe, and I hate to deprive her of so simple a pleasure. I always tell her I have veto power. Ha. If she wants me to wear something, I wear it.

At home I love dressing up. My favorite night of the week is the night I go formal ballroom dancing. There is no better feeling than wearing a particularly swirly skirt while waltzing, or better yet, Viennese waltzing with a skilled partner. Dancing made me add skirts to my wardrobe. I discovered just how amazing they are. Men don't know what they're missing. I have skirts in every color and every pattern and every material imaginable. I love bold prints, but sometimes a classic black satin is just what I need to execute a truly wonderful tango. It's strange how much clothing changes an experience. When I wear the black satin skirt, I don't feel shy or embarrassed; I can become Roxanne.

I don't know what I was thinking when I came to London. I brought with me only one smallish suitcase for my entire semester-long life. I brought only one pair of boots and two pairs of walking shoes and one pair of going-out heels. I brought 4 pairs of jeans and one skirt. I have 1 nice dress, 2 tshirts, 3 tanks, 3 sweaters and 5 long-sleeved ts. What was wrong with me?! I brought nothing nice to wear! I thought I could get by with plain black tshirts and jeans. I didn't even bring any flats. Obviously I was suffering a bout of mental illness when I packed. It made sense at the time, but now I am stretching the limits of patience, trying to live without color or pattern or just nice clothes. At least I brought 40 days worth of undergarments and socks. Brilliant.

Slowly, I am filling out my pathetic closet. The mismatched hangers in my solitary cabinet are gradually being filled. One of these days I'll be able to go a week without cringing at my minuscule options. Hopefully that day will come before I have to pack it all up and cross the Atlantic.

Assignment 4: Food

Meal 1: Cadbury Caramel and a granola bar

Meal 2: Toast (qty2) with butter, apple slices and peanut butter, a banana

Meal 3: Grilled gouda cheese sandwich, an orange, Mars bar

Snack A: Granola bar in class

Snack B: Rees’s snack bar, dried fruit, later in class

Meal 4: Sausage, green beans

Snack C: Chocolate heart

Meal 5: Big bowl of rosemary and lemon rice, dark chocolate cashew cluster from my Grandmother

Snack D: Jelly babies

Meal 6: Toast (qty 2) with butter, banana, gouda cheese

Snack E: Chocolate

Yes, this is a list of all the food I have eaten today. No, I did not make it up. Actually, I omitted several smaller snacks, like a handful of cereal between Meals 1 and 2, and a Milky Way between Meal 5 and Snack D. There also may have been Jelly babies who got eaten throughout the day. Oh, and an extra  Mars bar between Snacks A and B. I really am not inventing this, though I kind of wish I was. I knew I’d been eating way more than I probably should be, but listing it like this…wow. Just, wow.

I thought I ate a lot at home, but this list is more than even I should be consuming in 24 hours. It’s really quite embarrassing, or it should be. Instead, I’m a little proud of it. I think I may eat more than anyone else in the building, perhaps even including some of the males. Maybe we should have medals, or trophies.

Where does the food go?! I don’t think I’m gaining weight at all, let alone as much as that list would suggest. Considering the amount of food going in to my mouth, I should probably be rolling down the stairs every day. Scratch that. There’s no “probably” involved. I should be freaking huge. I’m glad I’m not, but really, this is ridiculous!

My only hypothesis is that living here produces more activity than at home. Well, duh. Just going to class is a 20-minute walk. But I don’t think it’s just the actual physical activity level. At home I walk all over the place. I don’t even ride a bike, preferring to go to and from class on foot. I also walk to my dance practices several times a week before proceeding to wring every last drop of energy from my body in the form of a salsa or a foxtrot or a waltz. Then I walk back home. I’m a very active person. I like to move all the time, so when I study or read or even watch a movie, I’m usually tapping out a beat with my foot, or stretching my muscles. I do eat a lot at home, and my friends and family make fun of me for it, but I shudder to think of what they would say if they saw that list.

I think that here, everything requires just a little extra effort. Even going to the grocery store takes more energy here than it does at home, because as I walk down Gloucester Road, I can’t stop looking up at buildings or swerving to avoid little dachshunds and yorkies, or crossing the street to get a better look at something that might be interesting. In the store, I cover easily twice as much ground, trying to find the seemingly common items on my list. Cooking involves a multitude of little extra steps around the kitchen, searching for pots and pans, or washing dishes. Just moving around our flat takes energy. I’m a particularly forgetful person, so sometimes I need to walk the long hallway between bedroom and common room many times before I can settle down to whatever task needs completing.

This is my excuse for that horrible list: life here takes more energy, and so I eat more calories. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. Meanwhile, I need to add Snack F: Banana.

Assignment 3: 37 Hyde Park Gate

The flat at 37 Hyde Park Gate has become my home, but out of necessity, not out of love. I suppose it’s perfectly adequate: I can live relatively comfortably. I don’t mind sharing with 20 other girls, despite the occasional annoyances that come with cramming so many individuals into a narrow, confined space. The living areas are comfortable, when they’re warm enough to be habitable. Most of the door handles and light switches usually work. None of the cracks in the plaster leak water, at least not in any important parts of the building. When the fridges spontaneously turn off, we usually find out before much gets spoiled. I have gotten used to the strange noises that occur when the cold water is turned on, and I can generally jump out of the way in time to avoid being frozen or scalded when the shower gremlin decides to get playful.

Really, though, it’s a fine flat. The location couldn’t be better, and it’s functional, and I’ve become comfortable here. Flying back from Dublin last weekend, I caught myself thinking, I can’t wait to get home. Home. When did I start thinking of London as home? It’s a wonderful thing, changing homes, but I can’t help but compare this new home to my old one, the one that’s waiting for me an ocean away. That home is a fortress of brick and stone, designed by my mother to be perfect. From the Tudor-style front to the gothic windows overlooking the lake, from the copper roof accents to my custom-built koi pond, that house is perfect. I was just getting ready to finish middle school when we broke ground in 2004. The old house and land had belonged to my grandparents for 50 years. They needed to downsize, and we needed to upsize from the lakeside flat my parents had built into their downtown office space, so we traded. We knocked down the old red house my mother and uncle had grown up in, leaving the floor and the fireplaces. The old house was transformed in a year into a beautiful customized space, a home my mother had been dreaming of for decades, piecing together like a collage. She picked up ideas and objects in Europe, poured over books and magazines for inspiration, and just made up what she couldn’t find. The results are incredible, a building that is more than a building, a home I am proud to call home.

Even the yard is perfect. My grandmother began most of the gardens years ago, and my grandfather carted in wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of black soil from Price County, where the best dirt grows. In the front, five oak trees grow from a single base right in the center of the property. My grandfather, who knows about such things, believes that a century ago, when the land was a farm, a big red oak tree had been cut down to a stump, and from that stump had arisen five little sprouts. Today those little sprouts are huge trees. A long time ago, my grandfather carved a sign to hang at the mouth of the driveway: Five Oaks. Over time many gardens have sprung up on our property, tended first my grandmother and great grandmother, then by my mother, and now by me. Nothing brings me more joy than playing in the dirt of my gardens. I could never imagine life without mud and trowels and worms and wonderful, growing plants…until now. 

An ocean away from my gardens, I miss them. Here, I have nothing to weed, nothing to water, nothing to tend. I have seriously considered passing myself off as a legitimate gardener in Hyde Park across the road, but I have a feeling the Queen would frown on such activity. I tried to content myself with wandering through the park and other gardens as much as possible, but looking at other people’s gardens just isn’t the same. There is no sense of pride or accomplishment. Finally I gave in. I found a little corner greenhouse when I was lost in Camden Town a few weeks ago, and purchased a bright pink cyclamen. I watched every window in 37 Hyde Park Gate before deciding on the perfect ledge for my precious plant. The kitchen was far too dark, and the East windows all had heaters below, bad conditions for a flowering cyclamen, which needs very cool air and dry soil while it flowers. Eventually I decided on a low window where the light isn’t quite perfect, but at least there’s no blasted space heater to ruin the blooms. Unfortunately for me, the maids decided to "help" me tend my little plant, help that was not only unwanted but also detrimental to my poor cyclamen. At first I couldn’t understand why the once hot pink flowers were turning white and deformed, but then I realized that the maids had decided to “help” me by watering my little plant vigorously every day. The poor thing was drowning! A polite note has halted the flood, so I can only hope my cyclamen will perk up soon.

The little cyclamen has made me feel so much more comfortable in this flat that is otherwise so devoid of anything I would associate with a home. It gives me not only the joy of it’s pretty flowers, but also the satisfaction that only comes from tending a living thing. Silly as it sounds, I don’t think 37 Hyde Park Gate would be a real home to me without the pink cyclamen. I’ve decided that I just can’t leave my little charge here when I return home, so my plan is to stress the poor thing horrifically with heat and darkness in the weeks before I pack, sending it into forced hibernation. Cyclamens are wonderful plants that can retreat into their bulb-like tubers to wait out bad times, sprouting again when the conditions are perfect, reminding me of the great oaks growing in front of my Wisconsin home. Unlike the oak tree, when my cyclamen hibernates, I'll be able to slip it into my pocket and carry it across the Atlantic, where it will grow next to my other cyclamens, in the bay window overlooking the five oaks.