Back to the Big Smoke of London

Well all,

We are now officially back to the grind. We have been working pretty damn hard over the last few weeks, in an attempt to make some money to pay for all of these travels. Here is what has been happening over the last few weeks:

Our first week in London is nuts. Shuffling our luggage from room to room in the hostel. Hours and hours on the Internet sending resumes. We spend Saturday looking at rooms to rent. After much rushing around from place to place and lots of walking, we ventured upon a room in West Hampstead. Two Aussie girls rent the room and are heading away on summer holidays. They are both teachers. Really cool girls.

After meeting them, we go a different way home, and find the High street, main road full of shops and banks and restaurants is right around the corner. We look at each other and agree we want the room. We dash to the ‘cashpoint’, and take out the money for a deposit and walk back to the house. They open the door and we say, we’d like to take the room! Relief! A place to live! We go down to the local pub for a beer to celebrate!

Here is our new house:


Sunday, World Cup final day. We spend hours on the internet trying to find somewhere to stay, everywhere is booked out. We would put all our credit card details in the booking form and it would come back the room you requested is no longer available! This happened at least 6 times. We almost lost hope and suddenly this place pops up with every room available. We quickly book it in and miss the beginning of the big final. Brooke has made us spaghetti Bolognese, we eat and head out for the second half of the game. All the pubs are at full capacity and we can’t get in! We end up at a Lebanese restaurant to watch the game! We are delegated to the tables near the door furthest from the TV screen, as we aren’t eating! They don’t even sell alcohol, so we buy cappuccinos, Brooke and Anthony get freshly squeezed juices. We are so disappointed that Italy won we get back on the train to our hostel and go to bed!

Monday comes along. Nat meets with three agencies today. Cam spends more time on the Internet sending out resumes. We meet back at the hostel and drag our cases on the tube to our new accommodation. We arrive to find it has no sign. We go in to find that it’s a hotel and they are renovating a few of the levels to hostel type accommodation. They haven’t finished the renovations and the hostel isn’t meant to start trading until Thursday and its only Monday today. They put us in a double room in the hotel, which in itself is pretty dodgy and they usually charge an extra £20 a night to the hostel rooms!

Tuesday Nat meets with another agency at 2pm. After meeting there, she gets a few calls from the same agency confirming her availability for some jobs she may be interested in. Come Wednesday morning, 8.00am Nat gets woken by a call saying that she has an interview at 5.00pm for a temporary assignment for work with a bank. The assignment is a week or maybe several weeks, the bank aren’t too sure. Nat meets the bank and starts the next morning!

Cam walks the streets, handing his resume in every place possible. From bars, to furniture shops, to bakeries, to photo shops! Nat is working and poor Cam is getting miserable. After almost giving up hope Cam gets a call from The Spotted Dog, a pub he had put his resume in to. They want him to come for an interview on Friday night. Cam heads to his interview and is asked to start on Saturday afternoon at 4.30pm for a trial. Cam is given a quick half hour trial/training session and is asked to come back at 9pm to work until 2.30am. Finally some work has come through for Cam!

We moved in to West Hampstead on Monday 17 July and slept on the lounge for 3 nights. Better than spending £40 a night in a hostel! We moved in to our room on the Thursday night. Finally we could empty our suitcase. Three months of living out of a suitcase really sucks!!

Our mission is to send as much money back to our Aussie bank account as we can.

Nat has been working at the bank, 9-5pm Monday to Friday. They have extended her contract until we leave for Germany in September which is great. Cam works at the pub on weekends and takes what work he can get during the week. A couple weeks back he installed £50,000 chefs’ kitchen in to a restaurant. He landed a two week contract as a painter! He’s painting rooms in different areas of the famous British department store Debenhams. This has been extended for another couple of weeks, but the painting is really starting to give Cam the shits!

He worked on Wednesday 8am to 5.30pm as a painter and from 7pm to 2:30am as a barman. Then has to get up in the morning to be painter again at 8am! The proper painter returned this week, Jim. He has shown us some good tips to save a lot of time painting, and things have improved considerably. So anybody needing some painting done, give us a call!

They have extended Nat's contract another week and have shown a keen interest in hiring her on a full time basis. Since we are going traveling again, we are not sure how it will work out. We will have to keep my options open.

Well that's about it at the moment. Settling into the grind for another 4 weeks, before we head off to Germany. We will be catching up with Cam's rellies in Cologne, then off to Munich for the Oktoberfest, Stuggart and Berlin, pretty much covering the whole county! Should be great.

Well guys tell us what's happening in Perth! We miss you guys heaps...

Speak soon,

Cam & Nat

ps - The photos to go with this will be on the Blog soon.