Evil within, more evil without

Mornings like tomorrow's, I need to start with coffee. The really strong stuff. The kind that gives me the shakes after a single cup, to rattle yesterday's London out of my head and prep me for a grand new adventure – even if it's not really grand. Or an adventure. Even if it's a group interview for a demoralising temporary job I swore I'd never ever do. Especially if it's that. And it is.

But coffee's not yet considered a necessary over-the-counter medication in England, and since I've been staying with various friends throughout the city for the past few months, I far too often find myself desperately, maniacally, selfishly and judgementally rummaging through their cupboards in search of a good old fashioned morning fix.

Usually, I find only tea. Lots of tea. All the tea in England, and not a drop of coffee to spare.

On rare occasions when I do find some, there are one of three outcomes:

a) It's Nopecafé, the freeze-dried imposter
b) There's coffee but, strangely, no actual maker
c) I binge guzzle it all away

That, I remind myself, is precisely why I'm getting up so early and travelling 90 minutes across the city to secure a demoralising temporary job. It's all so I can get a flat of my own and invite my new friends over. Friends who'll no doubt be appalled by my terrible taste in tea.

What you see here is the coffee addict's equivalent of a cigarette rolled in newsprint. Who needs coffee filters when you have paper towel? Don't judge me. I've only done it three or four or five or six times.

London and/or bust

I'm living in a privileged state of poverty. Somehow despite chronic joblessness – since my ill-fated stint as a D-list TV show host / life coach's assistant (read: fall girl) – I'm still living in one of the nicest neighbourhoods in London, in a house with a sunny garden, thanks to a sweet couple I met one year ago today.

While I'm choosing rice over roasts and eggs over chicken, and avoiding leaving the house – because even that costs money in London – my new friends have chosen me over privacy.

And it is here that I should note, they've recently gotten engaged to be married. I like to think of myself now as their trial child, as I'm currently occupying their yet-to-be-firstborn's bedroom. To make it more authentic, I've asked them to please adopt me, but they played the British bureaucracy card, claiming that laws restrict people from adopting adults older than themselves. Despite their loving nature and kindness toward me, it's become apparent I've got no chance of being the favourite.

Not long after I made my request, they proposed another living situation for me. One that'll keep me in the neighbourhood, but out of their house. I'm seeing it today, and if all goes well, I'll have a space of my own – shared with two others, that is. Meaning I might finally unpack my suitcase, hang the art I carried from Canada 6 months ago, and solidify friendships over for dinner and wine at mine.

Sure I'll have to work my ass off, working back-to-back shifts at the first jobs that come my way, be they street canvassing, conducting telephone surveys or collecting glasses at a pub for the privilege, but nothing has ever seemed more worth it.

It's about time I start thanking all my new friends for letting me in on London's best-kept secret: It's not all smog and rain.

This, I've since been informed, is the requisite photo newcomers take of London's residential streets and power lines. I may not be original, but at least I'm starting to blend in.

Motivation from the trenches

There's nothing quite so motivating as looking a call centre job dead in the receiver. Motivating, I mean, to find something else. Anything else. Anything but that. And there's nothing quite so ironic as the motivational introductory speech they give you at the outset.

"Here, we work hard and party even harder!" The recruiter's lavender eye shadow and the bright blue barbell through her tongue glimmered when she said it. Body modification often shows up where hope can't manage on its own.

Eight years of university and good experience in Public Relations does me nothing but a disservice here in the middle of Britain's credit crunch hysteria. It won't help me block out insults from irate callers when I tell them their warranty is about as useful as a Poundland umbrella. But it will help me see through management's spin tactics – intended to make me feel less like a complete failure, and more like a bolt in the wheel of the cab that will deliver me to the pub where I will commisserate and self-medicate with my new call centre friends.

"We're all Aussies, Kiwis and South Africans here, so we know how to have a good time!" she continued, as she passed me an agreement to sign stating that I don't require standard labour laws to protect me. We're all from the Commonwealth, she meant, and now England will reclaim your soul.

"So we'll need you to be flexible with your hours, and the rate is 6 quid per hour! Sound awesome!?"

It sounded like I'd be commuting on the London Underground 2 hours in each direction every day for an 8-hour shift, consuming 12 hours of my day, 5 days a week. It sounded like a 60-hour work week actually.

"I feel really good about you!" she said. "I'll call you next week and maybe get you started on Monday!" She over-punctuated everything, as though the blue barbell wasn't enough.

What she meant was, "You will soon be the bane of modern existence." But that's a hard sell, so she was right to cloak that one.

"Great!" I lied, with emphasis.

During the 2-hour tube ride home, I calculated how much I would need to live on versus how much they intended to pay me per month, and wondered how everyone else managed to still self-medicate at the pub – each pint costing a full half-hour of work, before taxes. By my calculations, there's not enough left over for food.

It's good, I decided, that I'd be on a 60-hour work week for peanuts. It wouldn't leave time to live life, which is a relief, because that costs money. Besides, I'm Canadian, and I love peanuts.

Then, I came home and applied for 30 more jobs.

This is a one-stop board in Brixton. You can find work, a room to share, get your hair done, and have an erotic massage.Oh Brixton, you've got it all.

The Heathrow Effect

The Heathrow Effect is apparently the name for what's happening to me. Not the standard 60-day vortex of depression newcomers suffer as a rite of passage, but rather the fatty buffer that seems to be forming between my belly and the rest of London.

In a way I'm grateful. I'll need the reserve to live on when my bank account runs dry.

I'd previously thought the extra luggage had something to do with my sugar-obsessed boyfriend's ready stock of sweets – I'm loading up on carbs because real food is too expensive.

Don't pity me because my new-found poverty might lead to malnutrition, scurvy and teeth that live up to the English stereotype, I've got Guinness on my side. London's pubs are especially generous in the caloric respect and the diet there is mostly liquid anyway.

Getting a little squishy is a minor, common side effect to attempted survival in the United Kingdom – as I've recently been enlightened – and the thousands of other working migrants from old Commonwealth countries have come to know it simply as The Heathrow Effect.

I think I'll fly out of Gatwick from now on.

This was my inaugural pub crawl, following the route of the original Monopoly properties. It's a popular outing for the English, who usually dress as moustachioed millionnaires for the tour, but we buccaneered a little tradition. The fact that I'm packed far in the back only means I was the first one in. If I look scared, I was right to be.

London, in a nose-hole

During my first four months in London, I only had work for five weeks. And since London ranks among the most expensive cities on the planet, if you do the math, whatever else you do, don't share your findings with me. If that burning turmoil in my torso is agitated any further I might just auction a few organs before they're ruined.

Anyway after a month-long respite in Canada – where I did things other than stress about money, my career, and finding reasons to get out of my (borrowed) bed in the morning – I'm back in London, recharged and ready for Round 2.

And I'm hopeful, because this time I have an advantage. Now I usually remember that pedestrians do not have the right of way and it's in my best interest to look left before crossing the street. And I know how to count quid and pence and queue for groceries without making people think I'm stealing their PIN.

This time around, I won't work for a super-achieving life coach and compare my accomplishments with his. Nor will I work for someone with a Jesus complex. I won't bother trying to get a bank account without specifying whether I am a Miss or Mrs. I'll accept the fact that authority figures and strangers will address me with diminutives, like 'sweetheart' and 'honey'. I'll ignore the ubiquitous tabloids objectifying young women and the celebrity-obsessed culture.

And dammit, I will find a job I love.

People told me London wouldn't be easy, but that it's the sort of city that gets inside you, and once it does, it's always got a place in your heart. Maybe I'm ready to admit that I feel like I'm finally getting closer to that day.

I just hope that when it comes, The Big Smoke will stop trying to 'get inside me' via my nose.

This is both what I find in my nostrils every day that I ride the London Underground, and the reason I'd never raise kids here.