LONDON CALLING!

           

We arrived, safe and sound, after an hour spent sitting on the tarmac at Dulles while mechanics “just did a few last minute adjustments” to the plane.  You know that any sentence that includes the words “adjustments” and “last minute” in reference to the gigantic metal container that’s going to rocket you through space and time can’t be good, particularly when the pilot helps pass the time by imparting bits of information, like the fact you’ll be flying at 30,000 feet above the surface of terra firma.  Makes you want to stick your head under the hood right along with the mechanics to make sure that everything is screwed tightly back in place because if airplane mechanics are anything like today’s modern urban auto mechanics, the chances are pretty high that some essential something is inadvertently loosened or removed during the repair of another essential something.  You have a vision of the mechanic standing on the tarmac, holding a long wire and mumbling, ‘uh-oh, where did this come from?” as the plane unsteadily takes off. 

            But no airborne disasters occurred.  Instead, the flight was a blessed vacation in and of itself.  You know your life has been stressful when it’s a downright pleasure to sit in a cramped space with pipe- in air surrounded by strangers because you’re not doing any pre-departure preparations.  The experience of sitting, without making lists or implementing them, was such a novelty I was nearly in tears.  I read a novel.  Watched a movie on the teeny tiny screen. Had myself a screwdriver.  Took a nap.   It was bliss, I tell you, bliss!  As far as I was concerned, I could have just flown around for a few days.  It was infinitely preferable to the panting pace I’ve been keeping for the past few months. 

            But we landed and collected our brand new suitcases stuffed to the gills with the brand new apparatuses – apparati? – that will make our 4-month sojurn through Europe a little easier.  We’ve got the two new netbooks weighing under 3 pounds each, and the wireless mouses – mice? – to go with them, and even the eensy beensy printer that’s 10 ounces in weight and uses heat and perhaps magic to print onto special paper.   We’ve got a Kobo and a Kindle and a Kamera. We’ve got raincoats that roll up into tiny squares and packing cubes into which our undies are stuffed and shirts that double as pants that double as socks that double as reusable kitchenware . . . .  we’ve packed light, baby!  Of course, add up the multiple-use clothing that’s a kicky little skirt by day and a floor-length evening gown by night, and the printers and netbooks and cameras and this and that and by GOD, those damn suitcases are heavy!!!  We packed light if we had the muscles of sumo wrestlers and the stamina of mountain goats.  I for one plan on shipping stuff back by the end of the week. 

            Our London  house exchange partner, Felicity, whose very name exudes the kind of personality trait one wants in the perfect stranger who will be occupying your home for the next 2 weeks, arranged for a cab to meet us at Heathrow and ferry us to her home.   After we stood around for 20 minutes, he arrived and as he drove us to Notting Hill, he asked about these house exchanges.  When we told him that you arrange for a person you’ve never met and never will meet to occupy your home with no supervision or limits on what they could possibly do, with full access to everything in your house, he – surprisingly – voiced some skepticism.  He proceeded to tell us, with evident relish, everything that could go wrong.  First it was the predictable warnings about stealing things from our house, but when we told him we have – sad to admit this – basically nothing of value in our home (except for Max’s framed 2^nd grade art, and anybody touches that and I’ll hunt them down and kill them.)  Aside from a 7 year old’s rendition of Monet’s “Water Lillies,” there’s not much they could steal that we’d really care about.  Warming to the subject of what could go wrong, he then dove into full-scale larceny.  By the time we entered London proper, this guy was vehemently insisting that our house exchange partners would find our private financial papers, rifle through them to unearth our mortgage (good luck getting through my ‘filing’ system), take the mortgage information to a bank and get a second mortgage on our house.  All this in the space of a one to two week vacation in Washington, DC.  Not bloody likely, I thought to myself.  We just re-financed our mortgage and it took a month, a case of Maalox and a few minor strokes to get the paperwork done and the mortgage completed.  If some enterprising visitor can find their way through my files, locate a lender willing to re-finance a loan in the midst of the banking crisis in America, and get the deed done before their visa expires, then I think they deserve our house. 

            Bidding Captain Catastrophe adieu, we entered our house exchange apartment in Notting Hill.  It’s fine.  It’s sort of an upside down apartment, with the living room, kitchen and bath on the street level and the bedrooms downstairs in a sort of English basement – which is really authentic, come to think of it:  where better to sleep in an English basement than England?  What’s interesting is that Felicity and her two kids and husband are of Indian or Pakistani heritage, and the apartment is decorated with a bazillion statutes of that multi-armed goddess, whose name I of course don’t know  being nothing but an ignorant fallen Catholic.   She’s everywhere, little miss multiple appendage.  Her serene countenance looks down upon us in the bedroom, on the bookshelves, even in the wee back yard.  Staring at her in the midst of jet-lagged sleeplessness, I coveted her arms.  How useful to be able to scratch your back, hold a phone, stir a pot on the stove, wave hello, comb your hair, and tie your shoes at the same time!  She’s the goddess of ultimate ambidextrousness.  The princess of hands, the duchess of digits. 

            But the location of the apartment is fabulous.  We’re two blocks off of Portobello Road, which is wonderful to wander along.  It was packed on Sunday, which was sunny and warm, and more manageable yesterday.  It’s everything you want in a cool urban neighborhood:  funky independent stores selling hand-painted purses and groovy clothes and art and all sorts of interesting items.  One place is a men’s clothing store in a long building with big floor-to-ceiling windows and they’ve built narrow wooden shelves on which are displayed hundreds and hundreds of beautiful old sewing machines, with lights mounted below the shelves to illuminate the next row.  It’s stunning.  You walk into the store and it’s Singer Sewing Machine central, with old movie lights dispersed among them.  There are also fabulous funky cafes and restaurants – it’s Adams Morgan with a San Francisco vibe and a New York groove. 

            We’ve been out and about exploring and doing errands.  We went to Victoria Station and picked up rail cards I’d pre-ordered for Max and Jeff and I that save us lots of money and give us discounts to various venues.   We went to Covent Garden and had a glass of wine and listened to street musicians while Max went nuts in a store selling the little Lord of the Rings figures he adores.  And we saw “Wicked” last night, which was a great production. 

            Having trouble adjusting to the time difference and recovering from the pre-departure exhaustion.  Complicating general sleep issues are the 3 cats who live here.  I tell you, the differences between a house exchange and a hotel are myriad.  We went shopping in the local grocery store and explored a neighborhood we’d never otherwise be able to spend so much time in, if we were staying in a hotel, plus had the added pleasure of waking up to a small black cat literally sitting on my head, purring and peering down solicitously at me.  I did a Muti-Armed Goddess move on the cat as I picked her up and dropped her on the floor in one smoothly choreographed movement.  Undeterred, she was back up in a few minutes, serenely purring and kneading the covers.  All right, kittie goddess.  It’s your house, after all.  I’m just occupying it . . . . . and trying to find their bloody mortgage file so I can get cracking on that bank loan application . . . . .