It’s April 1 tomorrow, we started daylight savings time this weekend, and I think it’s safe to say we won’t see another snowflake in London till next winter, if at all. But the lack of snow here doesn’t mean it didn’t feel like winter. In a way, it was worse—many, if not most days since November have been dark, rainy, and bone-chillingly damp, the cold finding a way through even the warmest layers of clothing. I’ve never experienced a type of cold as distressing as London’s damp cold on its worst days this winter. Back home, it may feel like minus 40 in January, but at least sweaters, mittens, and a puffy parka give you a fighting chance. And the sun’s out a lot more.

One day in early December, it was like the fog had somehow frozen onto the sidewalk, creating an extra-slippery, fraction-of-a-milimetre-thick sheet of London ice. It was invisible, and I had to walk all the way down a hill to get to the Tube on my way to work, so the ice was extra deadly. Maybe I wasn’t in the best shoes for the job, but I literally had to cling to walls, fences and telephone polls the whole way down, doing an embarrassing shuffle that was at least three times as slow as my normal pace.

I can’t complain though. Trees had blossoms and lawns had crocuses as early as late January. Spring arrives here much earlier, but again, it’s different. In Toronto, you know it’s spring, finally, when the patios downtown fill up and everyone’s in an amazing mood. On the first day of proper spring last year, I was walking down Front Street, and in the little square by St. Lawrence Market North, random couples were literally waltzing to songs by an accordion-wielding busker. I haven’t seen a single patio on the street outside a London café, restaurant or bar. Many pubs here have “beer gardens” out back—pubs are supposed to be “public houses”, so these are like the backyards. I’m looking forward to visiting those again this spring, but I’ll really miss the atmosphere of dining on a crowded patio right on a busy downtown Toronto street, with sun and overjoyed people everywhere.

(It’s not much to look at now, so it’s understandable that many mistake Tower Bridge for London Bridge–including, supposedly, a rich Texan who bought the similarly unattractive 1800s edition of London Bridge as it was being dismantled in 1968 to make way for the new one. Legend has it he thought he was buying Tower Bridge; either way, the bridge he bought has been reassembled in Arizona.)

I’ve also passed by Drury Lane, home of the Muffin Man. But probably the biggest nursery rhyme moment came the other night; I was walking past Shoreditch Church, of Oranges and Lemons fame, and the melody to the rhyme was pouring out of the bell tower, sped up and really out of time, kinda like an arty East London rendition of the tune.

In other news, I visited Oxford for the day two weeks ago, to practice my music writing by reviewing this band–the first band in a while I’ve been this excited about, and worth the trip. (I’m going to keep practicing the music writing, I think.) Not sure what parts of Oxford, if any, show up in nursery rhymes, but the whole place looks like it belongs in a freaking fairy tale; it was my second trip, but my first time climbing the St. Mary’s church tower for a view of the city, and my first time watching students cavort around in the streets, and now I’m completely, completely smitten, and jealous of the students.

Pictures of glorious Oxford that I’ve been meaning to post, after the jump.

From the tower, libraries, colleges, and gargoyles:

And by the river, just before my camera batteries died, one of the quirkiest and best pieces of architecture I’ve ever seen–Isis House, apparently built for some eccentric in the 1840s:

I live in a neighbourhood called Tufnell Park, “a nice bit of proper North London,” I’m told. The neighbourhood straddles two famous boroughs, Camden and Islington. It’s strange that Tufnell Park is partially in Camden, because Camden, in its hugeness, also contains the likes of Covent Garden in central London. (Camden district council meetings must be interesting.) Islington is also huge; my flat is just past the Islington border, so I technically have a flat in Islington, although it’s nowhere near Islington proper, which would be the neighbourhoods of Highbury and Angel. (Probably the area Douglas Adams meant when he sent Arthur Dent to a party at a flat in Islington in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.)

In half an hour, or a lot less, I can walk from Tufnell Park to: Kentish Town, Camden Town, Kings Cross, Archway, Holloway, Gospel Oak, Highgate and Hampstead.

I’ve heard Tufnell Park has a bit of a reputation, but that’s probably just jealous people from Archway spreading rumours. Tufnell Park is, for the most part, as quiet and residential as you can get this near to the city centre. Brecknock Rd., the wavy street I walk down nearly every day, is rimmed with posh Victorian houses probably starting at $1 million. I took up jogging this week (don’t laugh), and the route I’ve been taking, down Anson Rd., is lined with homes bordering on mansions, that apparently used to house rich nineteenth century retired merchants and music hall artists.

Follow Brecknock Rd. to where it meets Tufnell Park, Fortress and Junction Roads–essentially downtown Tufnell Park–and you get a tube station, the usual scuzzy fried chicken joint and questionable-but-good greasy pizza parlour, a Sainsbury’s Local and an impressive, imposing old building that looks important but just contains a dingy-looking pub I’ve never visited.

But there are also gems that can compete with the best of any London neighbourhood. Bar Lorca, the comfy Spanish-themed bar on the corner, serves up exotic beer, really good tapas and Sunday paellas for 5 quid that I’ve been dying to try. Lalibela has done what Toronto restaurants couldn’t, and converted me to Ethiopian food; the lamb and pumpkin stew and vegetable concoctions I sampled there–all eaten cutlery-free with a sour, crepe-like bread called injera, and washed down with sweet, spicy tea–made for one of the best meals I’ve had here. And I’ll desperately miss Spaghetti House when I leave–it’s the sort of family-run place where Italian is spoken and mountains of cheap, home-made pasta are served, but so is a full English breakfast. And something called “spaghetti and hamburger.” And fresh, amazing seafood, and minestrone probably cooked by a nonna. It’s packed every night–the fact that you can bring your own wine helps too–and emits a warm, wonderful-smelling buzz as you pass by outside in the cold.

Other things that make Tufnell Park an interesting place to live: I never knew any of Etobicoke’s history, but I know that Tufnell Park was an area full of dairy farms for centuries, and that Tufnell Park Rd. used to be a Roman road. If you believe Wikipedia, Hugh Laurie is or was a resident. And the notorious murderer Doctor Crippen definitely was a resident, and his former house on Hilldrop Crescent is just a few blocks from where I live. So is the Spaced house, which I’ve been meaning to make a pilgrimage to.

You should visit.

It’s easy to forget you’re actually living in London, London, when that happens, and I’ve been pretty guilty of this the past few months. But now that my morning commute only involves lugging my laptop down to a makeshift office in the living room, and the sun has been out every day for a week, I’m starting to get reacquainted with the city. And we were reacquainted in a big way on Sunday, when Matt and I visited the Islington stretch of the Regent’s Canal and walked east.

I had no idea London had a canal network before I came here, but in fact, you can travel through much of Great Britain by canal, and lots of Londoners actually live in canal boats moored in neighbourhoods like Little Venice. (Which is nothing like the real Venice but so much fun to walk through–it’s like a sanctuary for oddly-decorated misfit boats with plants and lawn ornaments sprouting out of them.)

I live near Camden Town, where I’ve watched narrowboats using the Camden Lock, and where I’ve explored bits of the western part of the Regent’s Canal. (That part of the canal is home to a pirate castle, kind of a jarring sight.)

Sunday was my first time exploring the Islington stretch of the canal, and at first, it had a lot in common with the Camden and Little Venice bits, all droopy trees and quirky residential narrowboats.

And there are locks like Camden’s. (We watched shamelessly as a big group of boaters on one vessel jumped out and spent a long time heaving this one open.)

A little further down, though, and the canal opens up and the scenery changes to modern–you can even see bits of the City of London skyline.

Soon, houseboats were living beside old crumbling factories and what looked like condominium construction sites.

The further east we went, the more development we saw–looks like East London’s canals aren’t exempt from the big overhaul going on all over that part of town.

This basin opened in 1830, and had wharves for “timber, stone, manure and refuse.” Now it’s a residential mooring.

Further east, a canal-side community centre in a neighbourhood of council blocks and edgily-designed condos.

The thing about a canal walk anywhere in London is, it feels like a different world down by the canal, but you’re never far from proper civilization. We popped up into the street to look for coffee, and found ourselves in Broadway Market, which seemed way too charming of a neighbourhood to be part of Hackney. And there I discovered that a particular English delicacy is in fact available in London.

And that I should really try pie mash.

Back on the canal, we walked through some bits I wouldn’t want to visit at night, and crumbly residential sections that did look like how I pictured Hackney would look.

And ended up admiring daffodils that had bloomed freakishly early at Victoria Park–the world’s first public park, opened in 1845 to boost the life expectancy of working class east enders.

We ended the journey deep in East London, in Bethnal Green, with a view of Canary Wharf, further than I ever thought was possible to walk to from the middle of North London in less than three hours.

London was suddenly a whole lot less intimidating.

This afternoon was interrupted by a fire at a bus station in Stratford, East London, that set a cloud of black smoke free to loom ominously over the city and cause panic on Sky News. After assuring us that the “incident” was not “terrorist-related,” the frantic news anchor took phone calls from “eye witnesses,” resulting in some of the worst “disaster” coverage I’ve seen. “There’s a huge cloud of smoke,” one caller described. She said she was about nine miles away from the scene, meaning she was probably less of an eye witness than I was. After a few similar calls and no reports of injuries, the newscasters sheepishly moved on to a murder story and the dramatic “BREAKING NEWS” banners disappeared from the screen.

thelondonpaper also had some impeccable coverage:

“Thelondonpaper.com video reporter Pru Vincent who was driving close to the area at the time said: ‘It smells odd, it smells like plastic.’”

“Eyewitnesses David Buik said: ‘There is a huge plume of smoke hovering over Canary Wharf, nobody knows what it is.’”

“Emma Brompton, a film production worker in Forest Gate, five miles from the blast. Said: ‘It is black in the sky, it almost reminds me of the black smoke that came out of the Twin Towers.’”

I bet the reporters totally just interviewed their friends.

It took longer than the bank account, and securing the bank account was a lengthy, horribly annoying ordeal. It’s so difficult to get one here that my flatmate Kate, who’s Australian, tells me she actually resorted to crying in front of the bank representative. I couldn’t even begin applying for one until I had a job, a carefully worded letter proving I had that job, and a proof of address. And even after I was successful, it was weeks before I had a working bank card thanks to the excessive security measures Lloyd’s TSB likes to put its new customers through.

But the national insurance number wins in the red tape department. You can’t make an appointment to get one until you have a job. Then, when they let you make an appointment, the earliest one available will be a month away. Then, a month later, you hand in your forms at the Jobcentre Plus office in Camden on a Tuesday morning, and you think you’re done, only to be told your national insurance number will arrive in the mail in four to six weeks. Only then can your employer start paying you properly. I can finally get on that tomorrow.

At least I won’t have to go through the process again in my lifetime. A UK national insurance number becomes yours for life, even if you leave and come back. Thousands of twentysomethings come here on working holidays and get national insurance numbers, but it’s made me feel more like a proper resident, ever so slightly.

But it also means I didn’t blog about the houseboat warming party on the Thames I attended last month. (The boat was a newly-renovated former Dutch floating hotel, and I woke up on a mattress in the control room on deck the next morning, with a view of Tower Bridge.) I also didn’t get to write about the St Albans Beer Festival, put on by The Campaign for Real Ale, a nonprofit group crusading for the preservation of genuine UK pubs–and the pouring of proper pints. (There, I found out that proper English cider tastes nothing like Strongbow. It’s kinda vinegary.)

I didn’t blog about my first Monday night pub quiz at the Pineapple, the adorable pub down the street that’s exactly how you’d picture an English pub, if the usual English pub had pineapple ornaments hanging everywhere and served Thai food. (My team lost badly, partially due to my lack of knowledge of British history, partially due to the fact that pub quiz-obsessed old men frequent the place.)

I would have loved to blog about the picnic I had on Hampstead Heath, the massive park in the middle of North London that feels more like a nature reserve, with woods and unruly grass, until you stumble upon Parliament Hill, with its view of the entire city. And about my first time in the Lebanese supermarket on Kentish Town Road, which sells more varieties of baklava than I knew could exist. And about how much I loved the tube until the day they shut down the Northern Line on my way to work and I became as frustrated with it as the typical bitter Londoner normally is, which I didn’t think could happen, considering I’m from Toronto.

Anyway, the missing out on blog-worthy moments can end now. I don’t know how often I’ll update, as my new and unexpected career as a lead and zinc reporter at a metal industry magazine can be life-consuming–a couple of weeks ago, metal industry events took me out well past usual working hours. (Surreally, to some of London’s swankiest hotels, where I roamed the corridors in a cocktail dress drinking bottomless glasses of champagne in the company of metal traders from around the world–literally the last thing I expected to be doing here.)

But London keeps proving itself too interesting not to write about, and I intend to start taking advantage, lazy procrastination be damned.