Tea &c.

I fell asleep last night watching a real estate show on the BBC. Can’t imagine why…. Shows about buying and selling houses have been very big over here the last few years, and I have to confess a strange train-wreck sort of fascination with them. Anyway, my other choice was watching a retrospective on “Alive!”, and I’m a vegetarian. I managed at least six hours’ sleep before my Yank Time body clock rang the alarm on me, and by 0600 Real Time I was up and making tea.

However mean the accommodations in this country, I’ve never seen a room that didn’t come with a kettle. The alternative would clearly be barbarism. Knowing I’d quickly exceed my hotel-provided tea ration, I picked up some tea at Tesco last evening: Thompson’s Punjana for day, Tick Tock Rooibos for night.

Rooibos, or Redbush, tea is an African tradition I first became aware of while reading the abovementioned (28 March) books by Alexander McCall Smith. I’ve never seen it for sale in the U.S. except online, but over here one can bring it home from the supermarket. Africans have apparently been brewing this stuff off the bush since the discovery of fire, but it’s only been about a hundred years since it’s been available for the rest of us. It’s quite tasty, caffeine free, and loaded with antioxidants. Just what I need right now.

The first thing I often do after arriving here is catch a cold, which is not surprising given a 9 hour plane ride with several hundred strangers in super-dried recirculated air, then stepping off into a world of viruses one’s body has not yet been introduced to (Yes, I ended that sentence with a preposition. Sue me). One man on the plane – not Asian, strangely – wore a face mask the entire flight. To be fair, he did look a bit delicate, but it was only as we were deplaning that I saw his protective facegear in good light, and it appeared to have been sewn from an old washcloth, and exceedingly grubby. Hard to imagine what it might do for him besides making him look like a total git. Being somewhat less of a git, I brought along some Emergen-C, a couple of daily doses of which should keep me cold-free until my immune system can bluff it out with the locals.

Stepped into the breakfast room this morning and was assailed by country and western music, the popularity of which in the U.K. can probably best be attributed to the awfulness of mainstream British Pop. British Pop, in turn, seems to owe a lot to British advertising jingles, which are likewise pretty dire, even when not accompanied by animated bulldogs. The Geico gecko emigrated to the states so he could do better ads. You knew that. Breakfast in digs of this calibre consists of corn flakes and toast, juice, and your choice of weak tea or horrible coffee. If I’d been willing to pay £20 more a night I could have landed at a place that gives you a boiled egg on top of all that, but it hardly seemed worth it.

Following breakfast I walked up to Gloucester Road, since that was close to the first letting service I was visiting, then attempted to take a tube to the second. That went something like this: “Ladies and gentlemen, due to a security alert at Bayswater there will be no Circle Line service to that station. If your destination is Kensington High Street, Notting Hill Gate, Queensway, Bayswater, or Paddington, please take the District Line train to Earl’s Court and change there for the Edgeware Road train.” Still with me? Okay. Fade to Earl’s Court: “Ladies and Gentlemen: If you are waiting for the Edgeware Road train to go to Kensington High Street, Notting Hill Gate, Queensway, Bayswater or Paddington, please get on the train that’s on the platform now and get off at Gloucester Road and change for the Circle line.” I was afraid I might end up doing this all day, but this time the train I needed was running from Gloucester Road, all so I could show up and be told that nothing could be done within my budget at that particular service. So tomorrow I’ll revisit the first service if I don’t find anything in LOOT, the local rentals paper. They, at least, were more encouraging, though I may have to stay further out and still pay more than I wanted to. The problem is that I’m not staying six months – Worldcon gets in the way – and short-term lettings are rarer and more expensive.

Spongebob sez: Welcome to Kensington!

The plane lifted off about 8:15 and arrived at Heathrow a bit before 3 p.m. local time. I had copped a 4 ½ hour block of sleep between movies and breakfast, which is why I feel nearly human right now. The usual long passport check queues, but Customs was a matter of walking through an exit while bored customs employees stood about chatting. I sprang for a £40 taxi ride to spare myself the experience of taking three pieces of luggage on a bus (no tube service from Terminal 4 until September) and two trains, followed by a walk of several blocks from the Earl’s Court tube station to the West Cromwell Hotel.

This was the cheapest hotel deal I could find for an ensuite bath in central London, and while quite clean and not exceedingly dismal, it is the smallest hotel room I’ve ever seen, reached by way of the smallest lift I could have imagined. I used to make jokes about the size of the lift in the Elysee Hotel in Bayswater, where I’ve stayed several times over the years, but this one is half that size, and I was barely able to cram myself and my luggage inside for the trip up to the third floor (that’s the fourth floor to all you Yank types). I knew I had made the right hotel choice when I walked in and saw the Spongebob coverlet on the bed. It’s like being in the guest room at a friend’s house, or – given the size – perhaps the guest bath.

Later I walked down the block to the Tesco supermarket to pick up dinner (wheat rolls and brie, red grapes and cherry yogurt). I was beginning to realize I was in London by that time, but this is the first time that hasn’t seemed exceedingly strange.

Fly Time

I arrived at SeaTac this afternoon with a cool three hours to spare before my flight, only to find the inbound flight had left Heathrow late and the outbound flight delayed nearly another three hours, officially. Unofficially British Air tell us they’ll have us off the ground an hour ahead of that, and presented us all with meal vouchers. After checking in, I killed an hour in Borders and picked up The Sunday Philosophy Club, first in a newish mystery series by Alexander McCall Smith. If you’re not familiar with Mr Smith, he’s the author of The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency and five or six later books in that series, which features Precious Ramotswe, owner of the first female-operated detective agency in Botswana. Anyone who loves Africa, or even the idea of Africa, should rush out and buy these, by the way. They’re quite cozy, which is not really my usual style, but the masterful combination of simplicity, innocence, wisdom, and quiet humor won me over.

This newer series takes place in Edinburgh, and the protagonist is one Isabel Dalhousie, editor of the Review of Applied Ethics. I’m quite looking forward to whiling away the waking portions of my next 14 hours with her.

The terror has abated somewhat, replaced by wildly varying mixtures of excitement, resolve, and whatever feeling one calls it when one is saying “I have no idea why I’m doing this.” I have yet to identify this emotion by name, but I’m working on it.

All That Life Can Afford

"No, sir, when a man is tired of London he is tired of life, for there is in London all that life can afford." -Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

It's not like I needed to move again. I've moved a lot since coming to Seattle - from South Queen Anne/Uptown to Maple Leaf, to West Queen Anne to Hayden Lake, to Fremont, to another place in Fremont, to a stretch of Greenwood that Greenwood won't claim, and now to Beacon Hill. I can field strip and reassemble my bed in under five minutes. I am the Queen, the Empress, the Goddess of Moving. And I don't much like it.

I spent my childhood and adolescence moving frequently and on short notice, then did eight years as an army wife before I ever spent two years in one house, so all I really want is to find a home and settle into my comfy chair and be carried out feet first someday far in the future. This is my favorite of all the cities I've ever lived in and here, I determined, I would stay until they pried me from Seattle's cold, dead fingers. Seattle is perfect. It's not too cold in the winter, or too hot in the summer. It's green and lively and full of interesting people and places and things to occupy the body, mind, and spirit.

So why am I about to move to London?

I've had a rather torrid affair with Dr Johnson's city since my first visit in 1997, when I walked all over town for eight hours with my nose in a borrowed "A-Z." I got lost and found again any number of times. I saw Shaftesbury Square and Charing Cross Road and Nelson's er, column, and Whitehall and the Green Park and Buckingham Palace and everywhere in between. I walked the length of Hyde Park and made the first of many pilgrimages to Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, as any child or former child ought to do when in the neighborhood. I fell in love, and although I'm sure London does not return the full fervor of my affections it has always been kind to me. I've visited six times so far and my passion, at least, has not flagged. I have often thought of living there for a while, just for the adventure of it, but rents are high, and it never seemed possible.

So when, only a few weeks ago, my lovely daughter sent me a link to a page of quite affordable bedsitting rooms in central London I realized that the key to being able to have my adventure was to lower my sights and expectations just a few degrees. A small flat in Zones 1-2 costs about as much as a three-bedroom house in most Seattle neighborhoods, but I began to see that if one were willing to make do with more modest digs and a shared bath, one might be able to pull off an extended visit for little more than my current living expenses, and one might not actually starve to death (watch this space for real-world results of this theory).

I had received word that a film producer was ready to pay me an advance on film righs to a piece of short fiction I had published in 1994, so I was already planning on visiting the U.K. for a couple of weeks around Easter weekend. I can write and edit from anywhere, so I wouldn't need to be back in the U.S. until about a week before LACon. I could extend my visit to about 4 1/2 months. If I moved fast and seized the opportunity I could have my adventure.

And I was terrified.

Now I have my ticket and 24 hours from now I'll be cooling my heels at the boarding gate for British Airways flight 0048 from SeaTac to Heathrow. Yes, I'm still terrified, but that alone has never slowed me down much. To keep me from flying away tomorrow it would take terrified and an anvil.