Now I Live in London

So far it's terrible

Now I live in London. My friend, the now Tony-award winning actor Josh Malina (the mazelest of tovs to him), chided me yesterday over text: “You seem to be on permanent luxury vacation.” I told him he was overstating the case wildly. “Discount luxury,” I replied. We are, indeed, on a long sabbatical from a world that doesn’t much miss us. Our kids have their own lives, our dogs, under the care of my son, are content without our company, and my industry is basically shut down. So why not? Why not escape the world for half a year?

Those of you who will glower in my direction for my “privilege,” or who wish to deploy a bitter “must be nice” have every right to do so. Yes, I am able to leave the world for six months but I will return to it with an empty bank account and very little idea of how I am going to make a living moving forward. I feel a bit like one of those titled aristocrats who put on a good front during the day but when night falls, they can be found in the kitchen eating soup right from the can. So, yes, we are privileged and we are fortunate and we are also broke-ish. Feel free to judge accordingly.

As for our new digs, we landed last night in a tiny one-bedroom flat on the third floor of a converted townhouse in the Maida Vale neighborhood of West London. I’ve barely seen the area yet, but it seems to have a vaguely Park Slope, Brooklyn energy about it; fresh-scrubbed kids, good coffee shops, and not much litter (or “rubbish,” as we call it here) on the streets.

This is about the size of my flat.

We thought we weren’t going to make it here at all yesterday. Our flight was delayed for over an hour taking off from Rome because Copenhagen, the city of our transfer, did not “have enough air traffic controllers.” Apparently this is an everyday occurrence in Copenhagen, a combination of too many retiring air traffic controllers, no doubt with fat socialist pensions, and not enough young ones to replace them. As a result, by the time we finally arrived, wheezing and flush, at the gate for our flight to London, it was well after the plane was supposed to have taken off. It hadn’t, though, because there were not enough air traffic controllers for outbound flights, either, so I guess things balance out.

(A quick note about SAS, the Scandinavian airline we flew: they gave out delicious little boxed lunches. On the flight to Copenhagen, a cold smoked salmon salad, and on the flight to London, a smoke chicken breast salad. Both served with tasty rye crackers and a little box of fancy chocolates. Neither flight had screens on the seat backs, which should really be mandatory at this point because we cannot possibly be expected to endure a flight of any duration without entertainment that doesn’t involve reading or conversation, but the meals were great.)

After an exorbitant taxi ride from Heathrow, we arrived at our flat and then had to drag hundreds of pounds of luggage up two steep and narrow London staircases. I am not a fit person to begin with and perhaps I could have handled a single flight without too much trouble, but my wife packed enough to sustain Hannibal in his campaign over the Alps and by the last suitcase and the final flight of stairs, my legs were buckling. Heaving, I turned on the air conditioning in the flat only to discover there is no air conditioning. This is London, after all, and the British choose not to cool their homes in the summertime, preferring to pretend that they are still living in a time when the sun never set on the Union Jack. Well Jack, your empire is long gone, climate change is upon us, and I sweated my balls off until the outside air had cooled enough for me to close my eyes. I went to sleep thinking, “I hate it here.”

Because they do everything backwards in England, the sun rises in the west here, and we awoke to a bright sunny morning. My mood improved, we threw on some clothes and strolled to the closest of those good coffee shops I mentioned, a vibey place called Toast. Of course, we were extra careful when crossing the streets, looking right, then left, then right again, then left again, then up, down, and then behind us. It’s very difficult for Americans to avoid getting hit by a bus in London, and while we accept that this is how we will die, we didn’t wish to do so on our first morning, or at least not before a fortifying cup of tea and some pastry.

Both were good!

Now we are back in the flat, no bigger or nicer than a suite at a mid-priced businessman’s hotel. I have to unpack. I have to shower. I have to figure out what the hell I’m going to do with myself for the next couple of months. As I said, I have no particular plans for my time here in Londontown, other than avoiding those little mayonnaisey prawn sandwiches that the people here pretend to enjoy. After months of pasta and pizza, I plan on eating Indian food, shawarma, and greasy bags of chips with malt vinegar. I have no interest in seeing any of the London sights. I’m not going to ride the big Ferris Wheel they’ve got set up here, or watch the guys march in furry hats, or look at the famous clock.

Martha has all sorts of plans for herself. Mostly she wants to look at gardens. God, she loves gardens. I have visited enough gardens with her over the years to know that I have no interest in botanical species of any sort. No interest in hedges. No interest at all in an activity whose primary function, so far as I can tell, is to make me sneeze. I also contract dermatitis if I touch anything green. Gardens are terrible places and I shall not be accompanying her to Cotswall-upon-Avon or Upper Chiggums or whatever ridiculous place she plans on traveling.

No, my days in London will almost certainly be filled with reading, strolling, occasional card playing, whinging about my accommodations, and suffering indignities of having to live a sabbatical of discount luxury instead of the full-fledged luxury which my sense of entitlement demands. We are indeed fortunate to escape the world for a little while, but good fortune has never stopped me from complaining. I will leave the stiff upper lips to the British. I prefer good old-fashioned American bitchiness. Must be nice, indeed.