A New London Christmas

For 17 years I have been making the same trip, same time, same general routine.

I leave from Dulles the Sunday of Thanksgiving, arrive in London Monday morning, go to the office in time for my morning meeting (10:15 back home, 3:15 London time).  

Regular visits to this coffee shop or that bookstore, depending on where I'm staying.  Beers with MRDC'ers, a lunch or dinner with the team, maybe meet a friend.  It never never dulls.

Whether a drink at the Jamaica Wine Bar, pasta at Guiseppe's, a walk amid the Christmas lights on Oxford Street, I never tire of this city, listening to these people, watching.

In the shadow of the Paris attacks there is an unease that has replaced the usual holiday joy.  

Maybe it's no different back home, but riding the Tube here you can sense everyone looking more closely at each other, the bags they are carrying, wondering.  

Someone in our office, apropos of nothing, mentions how his morning train gets backed up at the same point each day, three trains lined up in the same tunnel and they all think the same thing, easy target.

Piccadilly Circus is filled with tourists, lovers surround the Eros Statue which is shrouded in construction materials.  A group of Muslim men walk the area with pamphlets that read, "I am Muslim and I love Christ."  Police stand by, waiting for trouble.

My plane taxis away from the gate, Thanksgiving behind me, another ritual on the horizon.  I exhale, take my Melatonin with a glass of red wine and am asleep before we are in the air.  I am awakened by the woman sitting next to me as she leans in too close, bumping my shoulder and asking why we are flying so low.  The Captain announces we are returning to Washington.

Everyone thinks the same thing.

We land, surrounded by firetrucks, the lights are stark through my rain splattered window on the cold dark night.  It turns out we've hit a bird.  Even in the bleariness of my Melatonin coma I know we are not leaving any time soon.  The rush to the Virgin desk, the luggage, home in time to put the girls to bed and back at the airport at 7 the following morning.

We all want to believe that we are keeping calm and carrying on, but we know it's coming.  Just like the shooting that occurs in California while I'm there, is it Middle East terrorism or just more gun violence?  Either way we are not surprised.  

It has penetrated our thinking.  The 20 minute Tube ride, the 10 minute walk through the train station, the 8 hour flight home, it is there.  They have won this battle.

"So now we're bombing them," the cab driver says to me, referring to the Parliament vote from the previous day.  He is driving me back to Paddington Station early on my last morning.  The Prime Minister said Britain is safer now that the bombing has begun. "What good does it do bombing Syria," he asks, "if they're living next door."

Upon Returning

Like most things the anticipation was worse than the event.  The return was fraught with worries about ruining it.  Taking the good, trying to do too much, capturing another year in a four-day stretch.

But the return is also filled with things to do, meetings to attend, work to get done.

There is a familiarity.  I find my Oyster card in the bottom of a desk drawer.  I write down my Barclay's bank card number on a piece of paper in my wallet.  I find my meetings by walking down vaguely familiar streets that come alive with memories as we pass a pub.  Like college campus after a long time away I re-discover places I once knew.  I stumble on new treasures.  If there is time I find a new path.

And then there is a trip back to the swim club where so many nights were spent.  The smell of the chlorine, the wood in the coffee shop brings me there again.  I suspected I would be sad, but I'm not.  My heart fills, like seeing the kids after they've been away at camp for seven weeks.  A friend from long ago.  I am glad to be there and the happiness lingers.

When we first returned home the cold water of life had the potential to ruin all the good from the previous year.  The memories and moments soaked by the frustrations of day-to-day suburbia.  The return brings them back to life and reminds us of how we lived and how we were happy with less space and more time.

Closing the Door

There are any number of quotes about London that come to mind as we leave.  But this best represents the sentiment:

"If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast."--Hemingway

London is the new Paris.

It was before seven in the morning a few weeks ago and the captain said we were landing at Heathrow. He said it in the way they say it, two words, Heath--Row. And my stomach was excited in a new way, all the thrill of going home coupled with the anticipation of being away.

We would only be in London for 10 days, some final clean up at the office, pack up the apartment, attend the Olympics.  And ten days later the call from the stewardess was "We are arriving in Dulles Washington" as she called it.  It didn't have the same appeal.

I’ve tried to identify the emotion we are experiencing.  Why can't I put my finger on what it was that I felt when I closed the door on that house and this year?

It is an ending.  It’s not a movie or a vacation or a restaurant we can return to.  It's most akin to the end of college.  

I can go back to Ann Arbor, but not as an 18 year old. I can walk down State Street but the bars are filled with different students making their own memories.  There isn't a Sammy house full of brothers, those aren't my books, my beer, my teachers or my first taste of freedom. They now belong to someone else.  Only the memories are mine.

So yes, we’ll go back to London.  And we'll even return to 9 Abbey Gardens, but not as a resident.  We'll never stay in that neighborhood as a neighbor.  And in the end that's what makes me long for it, as I did when I left anything for the last time and it was termed a Commencement:  Because you can go home again, but sometimes the home isn't there, just the house is.

Thoreau said when he left his cabin on the shores of Walden Pond: “I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."

And so we return to the common hours.

Small Town, London Town

The town is festooned in a pinky-red color that is officially magenta-pink or Olympink as they call it.

"It's a great time to be British" screamed the newspaper headline, "The Greatest Show on Earth" another shouted.

The world is coming to London and what they will find is a small town.  The little island that it is.

When Bradley Wiggins won the Tour de France there was discussion of him being Knighted, how much he should make and the pride of the country.  A cabbie remarked to me the other night on a ride home:  "You know Wiggo is from around here.  Just over by Maida Vale."  The Queen wrote him a note.  He is part of the family.

The context for the Olympic newscasts is based around the weather and the UK medal count.  There are countdowns and medal watches as the Brits claim their first medal, or the heroes that are born:  "This is the first gymnastics medal since Stockholm 1912."

It is all about Team GB.

There is pride at the Summer they have had with the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, The Premier League finish, a good run at the Euro Cup, and now the Summer Olympics.

After the opening ceremony all the Brits wanted to know what the visitors thought.  And inevitably non-Brits expressed their enjoyment of it, but questioned certain parts:  The bouncy hospital beds?  An ode to the NHS? The Arctic Monkeys?

The Brits enjoyed the confusion.  When you express your skepticism they smile and say, "Yes, it was all very British."

They are very pleased that London is the center of the universe.  Again.

The Warmth of the Crowd

What if they held an Olympics and nobody showed?

Earlier this week I switched tube lines because they threatened mass chaos.  They were on time and lightly traveled.

Sunday at Camden Market one of the merchants asked another: "This is the week of the Olympics, right?"


And then the real controversy erupted over empty seats that weren't dotting the venues, but covering vast swaths from football to fencing because "corporates" didn't show up.

Finally last night we got on a packed tube, crushed between the unwashed masses who crammed the train, walked among stumbling people who didn't know where they were going.  Finally, the Olympics were in full swing.

The Big O

In London there is great concern over their future.  But they love their history.

Throughout the opening ceremonies every quirky reference, every Royal mention, every obscure rugby scene was met with hoots and howls of recognition and appreciation.

Living in London you respect the quirkiness of their cleverness, even if at times you feel you aren't quite in on the joke. Watching the opening ceremonies with 30,000 people in Hyde Park was like sitting with a host of interpreters as they laughed and loathed each reference.  And if you eavesdropped just a bit, most of it made sense.

But this is modern day Britannia, not the place of Shakespeare or even Dickens.  So when Kenneth Branagh read an extended quote from The Tempest, finishing Caliban's speech:  "Ready to drop upon me/that when I waked/I cried to dream again."  The guy next to me yelled:  "F*ck Yea Bill!"

The town is bathed in sunlight and awash in pride over the Olympics. The media is caught up in the Team GB spirit which is why Mitt Romney got pummelled for even suggesting they weren't up to the task.  The country is in a double dip recession, the city is reeling from banking crisis to banking scandal and they want something to cheer about.  And right now there is no place more cheerful than London.

My Wife and the Lord

We live at the outer edges of London and so the Tube stop is busy with people going down in the morning and coming up in the afternoon.  And so on a Thursday I was surprised to see the queue going the wrong way.


Even the escalators were both coming up, only stairs for those going down.

The universe was in reverse.  Usually this means a problem with the trains.  It wasnt the train, it was the first day of Cricket season and we are just down the street from the home of Cricket, Lord's Cricket Grounds.
A place where they started playing cricket about the time America was founded.


Getting to Lords was on my list of things to do one day and so I followed the crowd, scalped a ticket and found myself in the midst of England against the West Indies.


The crowd is proper, all carrying baskets, wearing ties and hats, sports coats and salmon-colored pants.  The Test match will last through Sunday.
I watched for an hour or so, walked the grounds, saw the school children emulating their favorite players, amazed that a sport with such wide appeal is so foreign to me that I couldn't really follow the scoring.  


After a visit to the gift shop I headed back to the tube.  When I got home that evening I told my wife where I'd spent the first part of my morning.  


There are a number of reactions she could have had: "Maybe you shouldn't be playing hookey," or "Maybe if you worked more..." or some other retort that I would make had she told me she spent the day on a shopping spree.


But instead she said, "Why don't you do that more often?"


"Why don't I go to more Cricket matches?"


"I hope this is something we bring back to the States with us," she said.


Me too.

It Would be Different in America

What are some of the differences? 

They charge you less if you take away than if you stay in.  So my coffee at Café Nero is 25p less if I get it to go.  In the US, everyone would buy it to go and stay in.

They Queue for everything.  And if you get in on the wrong side of a Queue no one says anything, nobody yells at you.  They look at you and hope the staring will set you straight.  In America we are impervious to dark stares, we wouldn’t move if it gets us what we want, faster.

And finally, when there is traffic or merging of lanes, it is civilized beyond recognition.  No one makes the maneuver of trying to get to the head of the line and sneaking in.

One would think with all this politeness an aggressive American could make a lot of progress in this country, along with a lot of enemies.  But instead we’re cowed in by the politeness and we don’t want to offend.