Duration: 2 days
Population: 13,879,757
Nickname: London Town (I guess)
Back to London and the Nice hangover is strong. Dragging our suitcases out of the Tube in Notting Hill, the pristine row houses just aren't as pristine. Things only get worse when we finally find our spot: An AirBnB disaster du jour.
Our host greets us and asks us to leave our shoes at the door. That was fine until we saw her floors: scratched up, worn and littered with hair, both from guests and her kitty named Karma.
The lady was in her 50s and had an undisclosed number of people living with her. There was something in the neighborhood of two sons. Perhaps one partner, a woman her age. Stu also heard her welcome another AirBnB victim later. There may have been more. We never got a good headcount. The halls turned corners we didn't look down.
Techno music pulsed through the house. During the daytime. From a woman in her 50s. "Want me to turn that down?" she asked, her hand adjusting the volume two notches out of thirty.
Stu and I passed the Capitalism is Evil poster in the hall, took our room and shut the door. It was one of London's only two-bed options within our price range (and still more than our palace in Nice). Stu was scheduled to fly out the next day, but I was locked in and paid for two nights. After witnessing some drug dealing/use outside our window that night, I left with him. He was going to Heathrow. I was bound for the Best Western.
Not that this is London's fault. It's more of all of ours for propping this place up as such a global treasure. London in the summer, I now believe, is to be avoided. The weather is perfect, yes, but is that really London? Shouldn't it be foggy and cold and British? The 15-minute wait to buy a Tube ticket with all the other tourists tells me I'm in the wrong place.
There was that run in Hyde Park. And dinner with our old friend Wickham who came all the way from Oxford just to say hello. The city has its charms, it just helps to make 50 grand a year more than I do to experience them.
The real London is for them. The pinstriped suits and stilettos that crowded the sidewalks beside me. Our feet moved in the same direction, but they were going some place further. Down corners and into private cars not waiting for me. Doors shut and off they went ahead. Some place in the distance, just out of reach.
Back in 1999, dinner with these two was a weekly occurrence. Good to see the Master Wick C again.
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