Living and Working in The Chandos

From In and Around Chandos

So here are some pictures of the place I'll be calling home for the next few months.



So far so good I think. I worked the entire afternoon yesterday by myself which was a little difficult and definitely a little frightening. I think I managed to do pretty well though. I only screwed up a few drinks yesterday and I don't think it hurt that the bar was really slow all afternoon. The weather here has been cold and dreary lately so they're aren't many people coming out. That, and Uni has started for the students here so there is a much smaller pool of people available to come out and drink on a Monday afternoon. Except for these three guys that were in the bar all day yesterday. I just couldn't believe them. I must have served them or seen them be served about ten rounds of stout. I was off at 8 last night too. They apparently went and kept drinking the entire rest of the night, another four hours. Two of the old guys were sitting together but one guy just sat there the entire time by himself pounding beers. I'm not sure if I should be impressed or scared.

Everyone I work with seems like they'll be very nice. I went out after work with some of them last night for a drink to a place that was still open just off of Picadilly. It was an Irish bar with a decent live band playing. Nothing really spectacular about it but I got to meet a few more people from the crew that I hadn't met before. There are two bars with in the Chandos. One is at street level, where I work and is a pretty standard pub. The other on the first floor is more of a lounge kind of place with great big leather couches and they serve hot drinks as well as having a full bar. I think I've met most of the people who work in the kitchen and my bar, but I've met almost no one who works on the top bar expect for a couple of girls who will be leaving in a short time. One of the girls is leaving tomorrow and the other is leaving next week. The girl leaving tomorrow, who's name now escapes me, is actually from Arizona and was on the the same program that I am currently. She's been able to travel a lot more though since she won't have the same restrictions that I do. Oh well.

Also got out to a play last night called Six Characters in Search of an Author. The basic premise of this play is that these characters have become an abandoned project and are looking for someone to bring it to fruition. It had been updated quite a bit and become substantially more existential than what i had read for class last year. I still enjoyed though. It was weird going to a play by myself too. I am really used to doing that sort of thing with other people, whether it be in London or just going to a movie back home. I don't why, but I just feel weird sitting by myself at something like that. Don't know.

Something I'm calling a positive that's been happening a lot lately is that people have been asking me for directions as I'm walking around. That feat took me a couple of months last time I'm over here so I think its cool that its happening now. It just feels good to at least seem like I know where I'm going as I'm walking around the streets here even though things feel a lot more alien. Its a really odd sensation, as if I'm looking at things out of focus so everything is just not quite clear. Part of that could be that I'm lacking a routine yet. Now that I'll have some semblance of a constant schedule, I'm guessing that feeling will go away. I know I missed that coming to the pub from the hostel. I had laid down some roots there and it was hard to tear them up. It occurred to me too that I've just been drifting around for the last couple of months. I've gone from one place to the other with any sort of stability to what I've been doing. This will be the first time that I'll have a set living space for a really extended period of time since I left for the RNC.

Well, I'm off to get some dinner before I have to go to work. Hope to hear from you all soon.