Tag: London

Humor, London, Marriage

Long Distance

“A box of gorgeous flowers just landed on my desk and made me cry at work.  I hope you’re happy.”
– C.

Confession: I knew it was going to be hard to have J. move to London.  Even if it was just for a few months, I knew I would hate it; I’d feel lonely, bored, occasionally bitter, and all of this would war against my very real excitement for and pride in him.  But looking at a roller coaster and riding one are two very different things, my doves, and I’ve felt a little miffed by the experience so far.  Granted, I’ve got this marvelous cocktail of female hormones flooding my system right now, so that can’t be helping.

I’m not an overly emotional person, but I’ve never felt so weepy in my life as this past month.  Talking to him on Skype for the first time – stuttering in my throat.  When suddenly his face popped up on my screen (I don’t have a camera for my computer yet although he does, but we hadn’t been using it) – eyes watering.  Today when a box of beautiful flowers showed up on my desk – full on tears.

I married him and he turned me into a girl.  The horror.

But, ladies, everything I know about love I learned from this guy, so take my advice on this.  If a man stays up until midnight just to Skype with you because he, “likes listening to you talk,” run away with him.  Immediately.  Sooner if he’s got flowers.  Even if they make you cry.

And even if he goes to Hampton Court Palace without you.
Humor, London, Travel

The London Chronicles: To the Theatre

“I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.”
– Oscar Wilde

We did manage to cram in two shows on our hectic house hunt from Hades, and thank goodness otherwise I might have staged a minor revolt.  We saw “The Mousetrap,” because I’m a huge fan of Agatha Christie and “War Horse.”

Indulge me minions, but I’m issuing you an order.  If ever, ever you get the opportunity to see “War Horse,” do it.  Drop whatever amount of money, take whatever roadtrip necessary, hitchhike to the theatre if you must, but see this play.  It is hands down the best production I have ever seen in my life.  It is one of those rare productions that the acting was excellent, the plot was good, but combined with the creative, it was stunning!

It tells the story of a English farm boy and his beloved horse who is sold to the cavalry just before WWI (when tanks and machine guns were about to break the world apart).  The problem the producers had to solve was how to make a play where the main character is a horse when having an actual horse in a play is simply not possible.  The solution they came up with is spectacular: they employed the Handspring Puppet Company from South Africa to develop puppets for the animal, and even some of the human characters.

Before you roll your eyes and picture a bunch of cheap marionettes, you need to see what HPC came up with.  Here’s a TED Talk about the development and creation of Joey the War Horse, watch it and you’ll see what a feat they pulled off.  Out of plastic, wood, and some easy mechanics, they created a living animal.

Pardon my enthusiasm, but it really is that incredible.  It’s currently playing in London and New York (watch the previews to get a sense of the feel and creative of the play), but next year it’s going to start a national tour of the US.  Apparently Spielberg has bought the rights and is making it into a movie, which I’m sure will be the new Black Beauty, or whatever, but I think that books, theatre, and movies are entirely different mediums and hit different chords in our psyche.  Enjoy the movie, by all means, but if you ever get the chance, see the play.

It’s magnificent.

Grad School, Humor, Husband, London

The J. Files II

– J. gets to know the neighborhood and indulges his unending perplexity of all non-American sports. 

“Yesterday I wandered around my neighborhood for a while to get an idea of where things are.  Finsbury Park looks pretty nice; I’ll have to walk around there and see if what I can find.  From the road I saw the remnants of a baseball diamond.  Somehow I think they sully it with cricket.”

Home, Humor, Husband, London

The London Chronicles: My (Land)Lord and Lady

“I know that atmosphere of the Parisian apartment building with the twin menaces of the concierge on the ground floor and the landlord upstairs.”
– Roman Polanski

The house itself was fine, we met the landlady who showed us around, but we had to meet her husband that evening and pass inspection.  Landlady is a Swedish woman, a bit harried, and perpetually busy working on her various properties.  I’m not sure what I was expecting her to be married to, but it certainly wasn’t a short Brazilian man who answered the door wearing board shorts and nothing else.

Landlord then spend the better part of two hours trying to scare us out of renting with emphasis on how strict he was with cleaning, and tales of how he’d tossed various Germans, French, but mostly American students out on their ear for failing to clean the house to his draconian expectations.  He hated Americans!  Every American renter he’d ever had was awful and destructive.

J. and I assured him calmly we’d do our best to change his opinion of American tenants.

But look!  He dragged us to the bathroom where he shoved the corroded remains of a bathtub tap beneath our noses.  The water here was practically acid!  And if you didn’t scrub the whole bathroom down after a shower, the mold would grow overnight, smother you, and you would die.  Surely we would reconsider living in such a place.

Not at all we said pleasantly, making a mental note to rely on bottled water for drinking.

While we were waiting, three other potential renters turned up and we had to move fast to assure him that we wanted the place while he threatened teased us with the possibility that maybe he would just rent it to someone else instead, ha!  Half an hour later we’d convinced him we were serious, and half an hour after that the papers were signed.

Immediately, Landlord became the soul of amiability.  He and Landlady regaled us with tales of their travels and adventures, with heavy emphasis on more cleaning and domestic disasters.  By nearly 10pm we were fast friends.

And I’m insanely jealous that J. gets to listen to all of Landlord’s stories while I’m stuck back in the US because I’m sure if I could turn anyone into a book, it’s this guy.  He has engaged in such epic housing battles that the council knows him by name.  He single handedly was responsible for the crackdown on prostitution in the Brazilian quarter.  A scooter he once owned was suspected to have been used in a murder mere days after he sold it.  You can’t make this stuff up, I just want to follow him around all day with a voice recorder!

Grad School, Humor, Husband, London, University

The J. Files

– J. reports from the London homebase on learning the language (more importantly on the switching of Z’s for S’s and the including of U’s in words previously without).  Fate and I combined will turn this man into a Brit yet!

“My first two classes are the two that everyone has to take:  Corporate Finance and Financial Reporting.  The two classes for my specialization are International Finance and Accounting in the Global Economy.  The two that I have to wait and see if I get in are Leadership in Organisations Theory and Practice, and Financial Risk Analysis.  The former is an organisational behaviour (look at me spell!) type of class on what makes good leaders and the latter is a class analysing (again!) risk using statistics and math (never gonna add an “s” to that).”

Home, Humor, Husband, London, Travel

The London Chronicles: House Hunting

“I want to know what the devil you mean by keeping coming into my private apartment, taking up space which I require for other purposes and interrupting me when I am chatting with my personal friends.  Really one gets about as much privacy in this house as a strip-tease dancer.”
– P.G. Wodehouse, The Code of the Woosters

The school website told us to allow two weeks to find a place to live.  We had to do it in six days.

We’ve been living in the same place for over 2 years now.  That’s two years without having to worry about finding flatmates, divvying up utilities, spending all available time setting up and meeting appointments to view small and dingy rooms that look nothing like their photos online, and trying to determine exactly how much Ramen you’ll need to eat in order to make rent.  Two years of knowing where all the local shops are, having transportation sorted out, and a settled routine of laundry, shopping, and housekeeping.  Two years of being settled.

In other words, I – at least – felt woefully out of practice.  But we dove in with gusto.  Every morning we got up early and made our way to the school library to take advantage of the free internet and spent hours combing through university housing website.  We sent off dozens of emails and counted ourselves lucky if anyone responded.  We set up at least three appointments a day (which inevitably turned out to be on opposite sides of London, requiring an hour’s travel time a piece).  And time after time, someone got there before us, the landlord wanted to rent to females and neglected to inform us beforehand, the residents didn’t want to live with an “old married man” (not even 26, mind) who didn’t want to go clubbing and drinking with them every night, or just found somebody else instead.

I won’t lie, both J. and I were starting to have visions of him starting grad school living in a hostel with raucous German roommates, unable to set up a bank account or phone service without an address.  But then, on Friday, my second to last day there, the heavens opened and we found a place.

It’s in Zone 2 and only about 30 minutes  by tube from the school.  The tube station itself is a 10 minute walk from the house, as is the High Street with all the local shops.  The house itself is privately owned by a pair of eccentrics (more on them later) and shared between three students – a girl from China, a British guy, and now J.!  Each have their own room (which was larger than our hotel room, incidentally), the rent is half of what we’d initially budgeted, and utilities are cheap.

Saturday we moved him in, unpacked, and stocked the fridge with food and wandered the neighborhood.  Turns out it’s the center of both a large Hasidic Jewish and a Brazilian community.  Apparently the only languages spoken in the area are Portuguese and Hebrew.  We saw a large number of men in large fur hats and black satin coats, accompanied by women in grays or black dresses meeting up and wondered what the occasion was, before thunking our heads.  Duh.  Saturday, it was Shabbat.  We found a Rabbinical and Hebrew school just down the street from Sainsbury and a Brazilian takeaway restaurant.  Gotta love London!

In spite of all the crazy we did manage to catch two shows in the West End and an afternoon at the Tate Britain, but this was primarily a working vacation and in the end we were able to land J. a place to live.  Vigorous huzzahs and appropriate sacrifices to the gods of flat hunting are in order.

Next time: the landlords!

Humor, London, Travel

The London Chronicles: Air Traffic Control

There is an art, or rather a knack to flying.  The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
~Douglas Adams, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

Our flights were uneventful and our luggage didn’t go missing (which was a major stress point, as J. had packed literally everything he owned into those two suitcases and one of mine).  But, as is so often the case, people were the main problem.

We flew from Washington D.C. to Iceland, Iceland to the UK.  The first leg of the journey was fine, the second was stressful on account of a passenger seated behind us who talked – nay, shouted at the top of her lungs from Reykjavik to London.  She is a grad student going to study in the UK, even though her research is on American military provisioning, for the next two years.  She’s 32, from Boston, former Navy, and divorced.  Really, if the flight had lasted to Hamburg I’m sure I would have learned her medical history and social security number too.  People all around her cast pleading eyes upon the stewardesses with meaningful glances in this banshee’s direction, but to no avail.  She wouldn’t shut up for love or money so I clutched my seat arms and tried to drown her out with my iPod, as I was frankly too tired and feeling too stressed about all the things we needed to do once we touched down to turn around and tie her tongue into knots.  So we sat there.  And listened to her defend her dissertation to total strangers all the way across the North Atlantic.

Unfortunately, her whole clan must be airborne this week because flying back (alone and miserable) another woman I can only assume is a relation was seated behind me on the flight home from Chicago.  This time I was treated to a expletive laden account of her recent life and troubles and her vivid hatred for the final destination, which therefore merited an explanation as to why she was going in the first place.

Ergo, I didn’t get much sleep on the trips and arrived both in London and at home looking pretty haggard.  I’ve written before of my hatred for That Woman On Every Plane who shows up at the airport looking stylish, comfortable and impeccably dressed, and the disembarks in the same pristine condition.  Well, I am not That Woman.  I am the girl who, no matter how many vitamins she pops, how often she hydrates, or how much moisturizer she slathers on, arrives looking like a plague victim.  You’d think a lifetime of travel would have helped, but it doesn’t.

In the case of the return journey, this situation was further deteriorated by sniveling and crying halfway to Chicago (on account of having walked away from my, you know, husband at Heathrow airport and leaving him alone in a foreign country).  Circumstances were not helped by the fact that I was self-medicating heavily with Cadbury chocolate for all of my meals.

Next time, the hunt for a home!

Grad School, Humor, London, Travel

Travel is Imminent, Repeat, Travel is Imminent!

You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.”
– Ayn Rand

Or, in my case, blog.

Floors: swept and mopped
Bathroom: reorganized and purged
Oven: oh dear…
Packing: commenced
Produce: nearly all eaten
Living Room: a disaster zone
Bedroom: not much better
Kitchen: let’s not talk about it
Dry Cleaning Pile: large
Bags of Clothes To Be Donated: three (so far)
Moping/Sulking: over with
Excitement Levels: rising
Stress Levels: ditto
Things Left To Do: legion

Ducklings, we went to work this weekend.  And, ducklings, we are tired.

J. has his final check out at work today, we have more things to eat so our fridge isn’t a possessed cesspool of rot and evil when I get back, and we can’t find a garment bag that we were sure was in a suitcase.  I’ve started deep cleaning everything so I have fewer things to worry about while I’m gone and things are more pleasant to come home to.  The living room is carpeted with piles of clothes and paraphernalia in and out of suitcases.  Also!  We cleaned the oven just for kicks and discovered [quit reading here, Mum] that the interior is blue instead of black.  Let’s not dwell on that.   Onward!