25 April – Heather Comes to London, Part I

I’m dangling 130 feet in the air with nothing to prevent me from plunging through the blue of the sky into the deeper blue of the sea, but a yellow piece of metal and a belief that today is not the day I die.  I am not happy about this, nor am I pleasant, reassuring company to my companion, who it seems shares with me not just a penchant for strong, black coffee, but a paralyzing fear of heights.  Yes – we couldn’t exactly move, so the paralysis didn’t matter, and yes it’s less the fear of heights than the fear of ending up page 27 of the 2009 edition of the Darwin Awards, but believe me when I tell you that riding the Super Booster at the tip of Brighton Pier is the surest way to get in touch with those elusive concepts like infinity, religion and your own very immediate mortality.* 

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Heather Comes to London – aka Swans, Gift Shops and Underground Stops, Part I

My darling friend Heather spent her birthday week with me in London.  It was a wonderful time, but I was unsuccessful in convincing her to join me in this ex-pat experiment.  Her journey did not get off to an auspicious start.  Her first plane was cancelled – her luggage decided it wanted to spend some quality time with cousins in Toronto – and in her first two days she was back and forth to Heathrow more times than some pilots.  Luckily, Heather is the kind of gal who can find the humour in such misadventures and even made a friend with her luggage-claim man, after a discourse on gender politics and other such issues that one often finds themselves needing to debate at the lost baggage counter.

The first night we met up with our friend Harald and celebrated Heather’s very existence at The Fulham Mitre,*** a great pub in rolling distance from my home, and chatted and laughed a great deal and made plans for the rest of the week.  Friday, Miss Heather explored The City –walked an estimated 627 kilometers up and down the Thames, was attached by a freak^ hail storm and learned that some of our countrymen really should not be allowed to cross borders.  You can see some of her favourite things here.

On Saturday, we started with a traditional English Breakfast at a sweet café called Mossa.  In addition to full and vegetarian versions of this heady morning meal and mighty fine coffee, Mossa benefits from a waiter whose general bearing causes instant melting and has eyes that could inspire legions of poets and lexicographers to devote their lives to describing both their shade of blue and their depth.****

Well nourished from breakfast and cute boy, we headed to Knightsbridge and to Harrods.  I love Harrods.  I love that there is a place where under one roof, I can purchase (or at least admire) hazelnut oil, a lamp and a mammoth tusk.  We ended up spending a great deal of time delighting in the wares of this finest of emporia, and thus did not make it to phase two of the day’s itinerary – either visiting the Victoria & Albert or the Natural History Museums.  Luckily – Harrods offers enough objet d’art and fossils that the day was not devoid of cultural or scientific stimulation – we just Americanized it a touch by adding a welcome commercial aspect and should perhaps even be applauded for our multi-tasking.

Lunch brought a fine little meal,  a baby-blue Ferrari (which Heather added to her mental to buy list, alongside the most darling pink washing machine that ere has been) and more thrillingly a story-book perfect double rainbow.  We have good rainbow weather here – it makes up for the bruising bits of ice that attack you unannounced from sunny skies.

Later that afternoon, we met up with another friend from New York, Meredith, who was in town for the London Book Fair.  We went to a fine pub near Green Park and learned that we should sit up straight with feet squarely on the ground because female pelvises are weak and cannot take the extra stress that counter-intuitively are caused by being comfortable.  The lady who so charmingly shared with us this fact would really not let it go, and our hearts went out to her husband who turtled at the other end of the table – his head only emerging only to share darting glances of regret and commiseration.  We escaped The Pelvis Avenger and met with Meredith’s colleague for dinner.  It was so nice to be in my new unfamiliar city with my lovely familiar friends.  I’m sure you have had similar experiences – seeing people outside their normal context vis a vis your experience.  I find it wonderfully comforting, but with a  looking glass twist.  It was just a wonderful day.

To be succeeded by a perfect one…

On Sunday, Harald took us to Brighton.  Brighton, you may know by its iconic pier.  It’s a seaside community about an hour outside of London.  It is heaven.  To make your own mental Brighton: take one part Coney Island and add a cup of a faded gentility, the kind that still puts on its Sunday Best for visitors; paint the sky with perfect puffs of cotton clouds on a canvas primed with cerulean.  Add a sun so bright and cheery, it seems a child’s drawing, complete with smiley face and a mane of triangle rays beaming and bathing you in warmth and delight.  Complete the picture with three companions, content, relaxed and meta-happy and there you have your Brighton.

Then again – we should have expected a perfect day, it was after all Heather’s birthday – and anything less would have been unacceptable.  We did the things one does for a 30-something’s birthday: A visit to the aquarium, a ride on the carousel, air hockey, mingled with a foolish hope that one of us might win something from those dang claw machines.  Heather and Harald won stuffed animals for games of skill.^^ Lulled by the sea air, sunshine and Pimms, Harald and I decided it would be an fantastic idea to ride the aforementioned contraption of death, but as you are reading this now, you can be assured that we survived unscathed.

Dusk’s bunting dressed the sky in pinks and purples as we drove back towards town, and still and quiet in the back seat, I mused on how lucky I was to have had such a perfect day with such perfect people, as the motorway and strains of Norwegian jazz lulled me into dreaming.

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*Please note – that we were not crazy – we’ve have the documentation on this – they kept us up there, tilting forward with nothing but the wild blue yonder around us**  for double a reasonable amount of time, as they let those sitting with a park view, tilting back (a less terrifying ordeal) off and on and off again while we clutched hands and made trembling chit chat over the din of our pounding hearts.

**and it is wild from that vantage point – stunning though; the second time we were aloft – after we had the enjoyable spinning bit and the harnesses had held – it really was an unrivalled view.  Worth it yes – but go in pairs with contrasting phobias.

***Or Miter if you speak-a and write-a the American like me.

****If this is being read by one Billy R. – fear not – you still hold the record for loveliest eyes.  I promise.

^So, we hoped freak – but not so much, as hail pelting us about became a motif, and thus the hail-free days seemed more the freak.

^^The UK seems to have a disappointing lack of Ski-Bal machines.  This means that until I’m back in NYC, I cannot expect much success in carnival games; it also delays my plan to go pro and travel the world on the Ski-Bal circuit.