The Long Post About London Rain

Day 2 of Mommy’s Trip to London:

And then I had hours to kill, so I wandered down to Marble Arch and boarded a Big Bus Tour. This tour cost 24 pounds and takes you all around London, with either a tour guide or a recording that you listen to with headphones. You can get off at any stop to check out the local attraction, be it a true tourist attraction like Madame Tussaud’s or a shopping or theater district.

I didn’t have a lot of time, so I had to choose wisely. I stared wide-eyed around me as the bus made its way around the gray city that was heavy with clouds and threatening rain all day. I did not worry, because I had a teeny tiny umbrella in my purse, and I was ready to use it. After all, it hasn’t rained in Los Angeles in a very long time, so long that the idea of rain is like magic to Kyle, who can’t wait to use an umbrella for the first time, and to stomp in puddles.

Two hundred and fifty seven steps up a winding nautilus of stairs, I came out on a ledge that rings the interior of the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral. The “whispering” part of the gallery refers to the fact that a whisper on one side of the dome can be heard 300 feet across on the other side. I’m not sure if that’s actually true, because I did not try it. I was too busy remembering that I am afraid of heights, while also being dazzled by the artwork inside the towering ceiling. One can climb up to the tippity top, but like I said, afraid of heights.

I found the bus again and continued snapping pictures of places I’d like to see later with my Palm Treo camera phone. When I get back to the States and put my American life back together, I will show them to you. And when I ever come back to London, I will visit those places.

I chose to get off the bus again at Buckingham Palace. From the bus point of view, it was nothing much. Just the side of a drab building and a golden gate. I couldn’t visit London without seeing something so iconic as the front of the palace with the marching guards, so I hurried up the street to the gates and watched them clack back and forth like wind-up toys. It was growing cold and windy, so after I caught the next bus I rode back to Baker Street (famous location of Sherlock Holmes’ house) and walked back to the hotel to get ready for my shoot.

The unknown of London had intimidated me because it is so far out of my comfort zone. When I was making my plans I wondered about everything: the different currency, the odd electrical plugs, how I would get internet access, do they have irons in London? But now that I am here my resourcefulness and curiosity have come back a thousandfold. I am thriving, but I realize that I am helped along by money (it’s very expensive here, and I am lucky that business is paying for most of it, and that I don’t have to worry about the rest. Well, not too much.) and by the support of my husband who is home with the kids and undoubtedly keeping the house from actually falling down around them if not keeping it clean. At all.

Being here, anonymous, apart from my everyday surroundings and unable to make a quick cheap phone call to family, I am free to be simply Myself, and all that comes with it. Mother does not leave me fully – all day I saw families with young children and I suddenly missed my own with a physical longing that is making me spend too much money on presents for them. Alas, I did not find a cowboy hat for Kyle’s big head, but I did find a fluffy soldier hat at Buckingham palace.

So then I had the night to myself, although it was too late to go see a show and I was too nervous and tired to walk far and roam around like the previous evening. I chose a local restaurant on James Street in a row of restaurants that bustled with people and voices and accents from all over the world.

I sat in a corner reading my book and enjoying some wine and an English chicken and ham pie (I’d forgotten how I used to love frozen pot pies but I had stopped eating them because! The sodium! It will kill you! But how can a homemade English pie be anything but wholesome and fulfilling?) and I was happy as a clam and very entertained when a group of children came scrambling into the restaurant wearing Halloween masks and crying “Trick or treat!”

I looked up at the one by my table, who was literally thrusting a cup into my face, and said “What? Am I supposed to give you money?” And Oliver Twist himself lifted his mask to reveal a pathetic and precious little face and said “Yes! It’s Halloween!” So I got out some pence to drop into his cup and as I did so the waiters piled the children into one group and shoved them out the door, apologizing to me, the only sucker in the joint, saying “They’re not supposed to do this. They’re VERY cheeky!” And I was amused and not at all ashamed that I had been suckered because I was so pleased to have heard the word “cheeky” in a conversation.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning 1806-1861

The novel is a richly crafted tale of what it meant to be a servant in that day and age. I had gotten far enough in the book that I was turning pages furiously, eager to see what happened next. Browning herself does not come off looking so noble in this tale, as her treatment of the loyal maid in times of need is less than just. But my reaction to those things is colored by my personal paradigm, which includes living in the 21st century and not knowing at all what is like to have servants of any kind. Don’t count my cleaning lady. I am HER maid, and you all know what I am talking about.

The tour guide on the bus said that in the 19th century one quarter of the population of London was a servant of some kind to a richer household. As we drove through the residential streets, the guide pointed out that the row houses, many that are now divided into several flats, were for one family each with the kitchens and sculleries below ground and the servants quarters all the way at the top in tiny rooms.

He also pointed out, early in my first leg of the tour, that the church where Elizabeth Barrett married Robert Browning was in this street. I remembered from the novel that the church was not far from where she lived. So last night during dinner I flipped through the book with my little London map next to it, and discovered that I am staying blocks, mere blocks, away from the house described in the first two years of the story.

Stay tuned for Day 3: in which I interview the Big Movie Star, but not before nearly throwing up because I was so nervous.