Foggy London Towne

Monday morning has dawned blue and beautiful here in the Big Smoke. I’m told this is rather unusual.

I woke up at 7:30 this morning and went for a longish run around Clapham Common, a big green park just down the road. It’s terribly nice to be able to run outside again.

Now I am up and drinking good black coffee and blogging. I slept past the first family meal—I’ve been on the Patrick Kuehn Jet Lag Rehab program, and I’m told I did well to sleep through the night—and so missed out on a proper English Breakfast. Instead, I’m starting out with a British sort of Raisin Bran and a banana. I know, it isn’t very English, but the nutrition facts were inscrutable, and I ate it out of a Babar bowl, so I figure it was exotic enough.

BUT to begin at the beginning, I slept for 3 of my 7 airborne hours and hit walked off the plane into a rainy midmorning in London. Good Ol’ Uncle Pat met me at the airport and drove me home in his French car. (This carmaker, Renault, once introduced a spectacular failure of a vehicle in America. It was called Le Car.)

I love my aunt and uncle, and they’re marvelous hosts and good-looking people, but they really didn’t stand a chance, photogenically speaking, against my adorable little cousins, Flora and Callum. Here they are lying very oddly on a couch, for reasons that remain unclear.

Flora Mae, 6, like many little girls and plenty of grown women, has a habit of screwing up her face into a nasty scowl whenever she sees a camera. I tried to view this as a mixed blessing—Sure, it’s nigh on impossible to get a picture of her where she doesn’t look like a prune with pigtails, but at least she’s modest!—but her habit of leaping into the frame of every photo kind of put the lie to the excessive modesty point. E.g. this photo of Callum:

Here’s a good one. She recently lost both of her front teeth in a tea-drinking accident. She cannot eat apples.

Callum likes to climb things and crash his bicycle. As a four-year-old he is not quite as with it as his sister (especially with a relative stranger like yours truly), but I still had a couple of good talks with him, and one night he asked me to read him a bedtime story.

Callum tells a lot of jokes, the best of which goes like this:

Q: Why did the giraffe and the seesaw go to the hospital?

A: Because they wanted to eat the entire hospital

Do not worry, Uncle Pat is writing these down.

Pat and I took the kids to the park, which was 1. Very wet and 2. Very full of small children. As a college student surrounded by college students I often forget that children even exist, and this beautiful neighborhood of Balham has one of Europe’s densest populations of children under four. Now I have an impression of London as the land of tiny little human beings who haven’t been alive for very long.

Pat rescued me from all of this wholesomeness and dragged me down to a genuine English pub to watch the rousing gold medal Olympic hockey final between The Greatest Country On Earth (USA USA USA) and a pretty nice kind of a general location (Canadia). We had originally planned to hit up the Maple Leaf, a Canadian bar proud to have Molson on tap and poutine on the menu, but as the line was already 20 meters out the door an hour before the game started we opted instead for a nearby bar whose name escapes me (The Blood & Cuspid? The Winking Sow?). This place wasn’t officially pro-Canuck, but was packed nonetheless with ex-pat Neighbors to the North and a healthy number of Brits hungry for some vicarious victory for a member of the Commonwealth. I think the only people rooting for America were me, Pat, and one very drunk young man from Chicago who gave me a huge hug when I told him he was not alone.

This guy had a Gretzky jersey signed W. Gretzky. Pat asked him about it—turns out that it was actually from Walter Gretzky, father of the Great One. One could accuse this fella of being a little disingenuous, but I guess Walter chose to leave his first name as a just a W, and the jersey-bearer deserves some credit for being able to recognize Wayne Gretzky’s dad in a crowd.

I don’t want this to be a boring blog, so I’ll avoid describing hockey. I’ll just say that it was a good game and a close game, that the crowded basement viewing area got painfully loud when Canadda scored and satisfyingly silent (except of course for the quickly booed-down “USAUSAUSA” chant from our patirotic three-man contingent) when America buried one, and that once the better team that wanted it more (Candada) finally got the stupid gold medal it probably deserved the crowd broke spontaneously into the most rousing, heartfelt, tear-jerking rendition of “Oh, Canada” anyone has ever heard. I guess they thought that they were safe showing a little patriotism as long as they were out of the continent, but I’m breaking the story here first: those moose-lovers were proud of their country for a couple of minutes, and I think they owe everybody an apology.

I tried and failed to take some photos. See?

So then I went home, went to bed, woke up, ran, and started this blog post. Pat was kind enough to take me on an awfully touristy but still very interesting tour of his city. Cost us 22 pounds for an all-day hop-on/hop-off bus/boat tour—pretty cheap, as far as my still-limited understanding of European money takes me.

Only once I was on top of a friggin’ tour bus did I not feel awkward taking a bunch of photos, so I took a bunch of photos. Here’s the best few, with commentary:

Two unexpected statues: George “CannaTellALie” Washington and Honest Abe Lincoln. I found these both a little mysterious—Lincoln won a war against the British-backed Confederacy, and Washington of course led a bunch of farmers to an embarrassing victory over Her Majesty’s Finest—but ultimately understandable. I got the feeling that the Brits still have a lingering sort of gratitude for America’s role in the World Wars, and there seems to be a natural affection between the two countries.

Here is Trafalgar Square through some mysterious pom-pom trees.

As Pat explained to me, London is older than dirt, so it has plenty of dirt-old buildings, but bombing during the Second World War opened up big gaps in the ancient facades where very modern structures have popped up:

Some teriffically old ones are still around, of course, like the good ol’ Tower of London. Here I am posing serenely in front of this famous torture dungeon/jewel hoard.

London is constantly under construction. These two cranes make a Y.

That last photo was taken from atop the highest gallery of St. Paul’s Cathedral. We slogged to the top of the dome and it was completely worth it. The only thing above us was about 10 meters of gold cross.

The best stained glass window:

I really dug on this vengeful Christ. He looks so frustrated. “Oh that is IT! You are SO damned!”

Dinner was a delicious lamb dish and boiled potatoes, follwed by an extensive cheese dessert. Jemima, who is preparing to begin a very demanding round of medical exams, was an exemplary hostess, whom I, like a blockhead, neglected to photograph. Just take her marvelous kids, subtract all of that nasty Pat Kuehn business, add some mid-length blonde hair, and you should have a pretty good picture.

Next morning I was off to Heathrow, but not before a final photo session with the kiddies. I’ll leave you with this picture. See you in Deutschland!

(Editor’s note: I am of course already in Germany. I’m v busy and behind on my blogging, and a lack of an adapter was keeping me off my precious laptop for the past day or so. I’ll post this now, then try to make some progress on an intro post tomorrow and into the weekend.)

P.S.: The names they give to places here absolutely slay me. It’s all “Endsquattings” this and “Twupley” that. My friend Diana lives in a place called Marleybone. I couldn’t come up with a name that funny if I tried. I think this must be the key to British humor. Every street sign is a joke. This scene happens in a bar twice a day in London:

“Oy where do you live mate”

“Oy in Clappinghamshire-Fiddlecourt”

“Har har har let’s start us a sketch comedy troupe”