MissLeonie.com

I’d run into a housemate on my way into the centre of Nottingham. After exchanging a few words, I went on my merry way, and I was only a few blocks farther along when she rang me. She forgot to tell me when we met before, but I should stay away from the shopping centre, because there was a riot of sorts. Police were running about, arresting people. Shop somewhere else, Leonie.

The only way I confidently know to get to the city centre is past this shopping centre. Not through, at least, but past it anyway. When I got there, there were plenty of policemen. Not three or five investigating a bit of a scuffle, but more like twenty, all wearing bullet proof vests. It was extremely unsettling.

My housemate and I decided to go to a pub where we’d agreed to meet up with some fellow students in our department anyway. I’ve got to live here, and I don’t want to let fear keep me from going about my day like I would if I lived in a neighbourhood not known as Nottingham’s absolute worst. We had a great time shouting over the music, trying to hear each other’s stories. Housemate and I decided to leave fairly early, though, not wanting to risk anything, with a strange atmosphere still enveloping the neighbourhood. Taking a stand not to be frightened away from daily pleasures is one thing, looking for trouble is another.

I made a point of going out to feed the ducks at the river nearby today. I’m not scared when I’m outside, but vigilent, and certainly not at ease. Feeding the ducks was another refusal to let fear dominate. My neighbours are normal, lovely people. I have reason to believe a drug dealer lives a few houses down, but I’m sure he’s lovely too. We’re all people cooking dinner at night, doing the dishes, taking showers.

But I was most disconcerted when I heard that yesterday’s riot was in fact a shooting. A guy was shot dead in broad daylight, in the middle of a shopping centre. Apparently, it’s gang-related, but this doesn’t comfort me as much as it could. Gang-related or not, I could have been shopping there; I could have been caught in the crossfire. I wasn’t planning to, but I can’t help but think, what if I had been?

PS. I currently don’t have internet access at home, and I’ve been clever enough to leave my Australian notes at home. As a consequence, the Australian stories will have to wait till December, when I go home for the Christmas holidays, and uploading these current updates will have to happen on days I take the laptop to uni with me.

As much as I’m struggling to settle in here in Nottingham, there is one redeeming factor. The university grounds are absolutely bafflingly beautiful. There’s an array of trees, a goose-filled lake, lush green lawns and a good selection of tall, impressive buildings.

The second my plane landed last Wednesday, it was clear that autumn had moved into England well before it had at home. And I do love my autumn. The rich colours in the trees, the crispy leaves, the refreshing chill in the air.

In addition, everyone in the English department seems to have a great sense of humour, barring only a short, sweaty guy who’s asked me out for a drink three times in a row now, despite my ignoring it the first time, running away the second (after my friend who I asked to save me, and who ran to the toilets, playing it up as an urgent matter), and my friend proposing a group get-together the third time. He knows I have a lovely boyfriend, and I wish he would back down and get the hint. I don’t want to be mean to him, but I don’t want him to keep making me uncomfortable either.

Anyway, I was talking about the humour. We had a postgrad seminar organisation presentation (try saying that ten times fast), and when the chair closed (should I say “slammed?”) the door, it locked itself. There was no phone reception. I’d come in with two glasses of wine for me and my housemate/co-student, and a handful of pretzels that I proceeded to share with the guy next to me. The guy next to me turned out to be a post doc researcher (nerd speak for “Jesus”), not to mention a nice and funny person. Cue jokes along the lines of “How many postgraduates does it take to open a door?” (mine) and “Perhaps you should have brought more pretzels” (him). Heh.

I spent quite a lot of money my first few days here. The everything-a-pound shop was a saviour (replacing a mouldy grout? Leave it to my dad and his one pound DIY setup), but you can’t exactly buy phones there, so I had to throw some money around.

I had initially planned to just buy a sim card. I have a phone. But. The phone I bought in Australia last year was stolen a few months ago, and since then I’ve been using old Nokias we had lying around the place (hello green & black screens), and a little Siemens phone. However, I’m so used to Nokias that I kind of wanted another one.

Now, my phones don’t need to be able to sing and dance, access the internet, have bluetooth or a computer keyboard built in. It should be able to make and take calls, and send and receive text messages. That is all.

Of course, I stumbled across the attractive Nokia 5300 and now my phone has a camera and can access the internet. Mind you, I’ve only used the camera, and the pictures it takes aren’t half bad. Like the above one of one of the million quirrels at the uni. Cute!

I dropped off my parents off at the bus stop to the airport this afternoon. On my way back, I noticed three blokes sitting on a fence on the side of the footpath ahead of me. Now, I should explain that the neighbourhood I’ve moved into is really quite bad. Police-raid-in-the-next-street-down bad. Bad. So I was a little worried.

But I have to live here, and I don’t want to be scared in broad daylight, and surely it’s not really all that bad (I didn’t know about the raid yet at this stage). I kept walking, and as I passed the guys, one of them goes, “Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello, hello.” His friendly persistence made me laugh so I looked over and said “Heya.” As I kept walking, he went, “How are you?” I looked over my shoulder with a big grin and said, “Good, thanks!” Funny stuff. Then he went, “Would you like my number?” to top it off, and kept repeating it, and I almost laughed out loud. That’s fantastic stuff. Ego boost plus one, general comedy and a slightly safer feeling about my new neighbourhood. I like it.

We went for a walk at my favourite nature park in the Netherlands, the Posbank. The heather was still blossoming, the sun cuddled the hills and dark red blackberries were catching the rays to ripen. But what’s more important, there were hoards of Icelandic horses walking about. And I happen to love those to bits.

So does my sister, evidently. I mean, I like horses and all, but… heh.

(Not really - horses will breathe into each other’s noses in order to sniff each other out, they seem to like getting to know people that way too. She’s kneeling down so that she doesn’t look quite so big to the foal, who is much more likely to come forward and check her out now.)

Just thought I’d post a quick note about what I plan to do. I’ve been trying to think of the most logical way to post about Australia, and here’s what will happen: I’m going to post up on the homepage in a random order - that’s to say, subsequent posts that are about things that happened weeks ago will be posted after this one. In the archive, however, I’ll put everything in chronological order. That should make sense, right?

Yeah, totally don’t think so either. Heh.

I’ll also be uploading photos to the Flickr page. And I took quite a few.

I should have posted this a while ago, but here goes. I’m currently in Australia to visit Liam (evidence: this little dog was in my bed). I’m noting things down, writing up posts by hand and taking Gigs and Gigs of photos along the way, but I don’t have the time or the tools to update my little website as frequently as usual. I’m too busy having fun, as it were.

However, I’m going to do some serious back-dating once I return to the Netherlands, to tell you all about what I got up to. I’ll be back around the 14th of September, probably half-human again by the next day. I hope to see you then!