Worse than a lost purse is...

A stolen one. Especially when someone steals it off your person. Happy Saturday everyone! Good Lord.

So, I haven't written all week because it was a slow week, but I have broadband at home finally...I went to the Borough Market on Friday, it was heaven, and then I went out last night with a group of girls who travel and share ideas on where to travel, etc...we had a great time.

And as I walked with another girl to the Charring Cross station, leaving Soho, I felt someone touching my black blackpack/rucksack...which I stupidly was actually wearing as a backpack and which contained my brown purse. By the time I reached behind me, my backpack was empty.

You see, accessorising is important :P I decided to go with my black boots tonight, not my brown ones, because they're much more comfortable. So that necessitated a black bag and since I haven't replaced the black purse I lost last month, my interim solution has been to stuff the brown purse in my little black leather backpack, which is cute enough to qualify as a purse. It kills me a bit that I started out with the brown boots...had I worn those, I'd have been carrying the purse itself and it wouldn't have been stolen.

But. I am a long-time city dweller and I know better. To be in the busiest part of all of London on a Saturday night and carrying one's personal items on one's back is just plain stupid. The worst part is, that occurred to me once and I ignored the thought.

But perhaps it was a hard lesson, learned without too much pain: now I know that there are actually pickpockets :D I have to admit, I sort of always thought that only happened in the movies :P

The loss felt momentarily catastrophic, as I suddenly saw myself marooned in Soho with no money, no phone and nowhere to sleep. In the chaos, I'd lost track of the girl I was walking with (but, lol, she was in front of me and most certainly wasn't the culprit!) so there I was, all alone and freaked out, but I'd just happened to clean out my purse just yesterday afternoon and as I did a quick mental inventory of what I'd put back in it, I realised that my phone and my Oyster card were loose in the backpack...and sure enough, there they were. Better yet, I'd programmed my landlady's number into my phone and god bless her, when I called, she answered and was more than happy to meet me at the flat to let me in. And in that mental inventory, I remembered that all that was in the purse was approximately £10, my UK debit card and my flat key...except the purse, though it was a gift and I didn't fork over the actual $$, was a Vera Bradley bag and so not cheap. Oops :( Funny enough, I'd tried to go to a cash machine before dinner, worried that I didn't have enough on me, but I never found one...so if I had, I'd have lost a good £70 instead of £10. So, ok, catastrophe averted, I could now get home via my Oyster card and was going to be able to sleep in my own bed :D

So, much less of a headache than last time. But, for crying out loud, can I please go for at least 30 days straight without losing anything major?

The card's cancelled, I got into my flat and my landlady showed me how to turn on the heat...a rather complicated system that I've been trying to figure out for 2 weeks, so I suppose there was a bright side.

No Sunday roast today because a) I now have no cash on me or access to it until tomorrow and using my American credit card would just be dumb and b) I have oodles of goodies left over from my trip to the Borough Market and I really should eat those instead.

*Sigh*...I still love London, but sometimes I wonder if small town life is really just better. I was just praising London to someone, who called it "anonymous and dirty, like any big city." But tonight, when I - a single woman - cried out in utter panic and shock in the middle of Leicester Square that my purse had just been stolen, a well-dressed American man, holding a woman's hand, looked at me, shrugged and said "I didn't see it, sorry." And the two of them walked off. A woman who was alone loses an object that very probably contained her only way to get to shelter and he walked away. There's that anonymity I was just arguing against...

And Card Guy, who I'd texted while waiting for the landlady, just because I was still freaked out and needed to tell someone my tale of woe, called me back at 2 AM, quite obviously drunk. After asking me 4-5 times what happened to my purse, where I patiently explained what did happen all 4-5 times, he exclaimed that I was a "typical American whiner." Which, of course, was totally what I needed to hear right about then. Lovely. Mercifully, my phone died shortly thereafter. It does all make a person wonder about how we treat each other.

I've scrounged up £1.50 in change, which will allow me to buy bread and butter for breakfast tomorrow, as I'm out...and if I had to go all the way to the bank before breakfast tomorrow, I'd be mighty cranky, so thank heaven for my disorganised nature and the random coins laying about.

But still! It's Sunday, this is England, Sundays are for relaxing. So I am now going for my walk/run through the park and then later, I'm going window shopping for a new black purse ;) I had a spare brown one, so that's set for now. And then after that? I'm making a list of all the precautions one should take when one lives an ocean away from nearly everyone they know (keep a decent chunk of spare change at home being item #1!).