29/30 April : And Miles To Go Before I Sleep
Insanely smooth travel connections. Breezed through SFO check-in in twenty minutes – only sign of “increased security” embodied in two National Guardspersons shivering like whippets beside the baggage x-ray. “Can’t America afford to turn on the heat?” Fellow passengers also preternaturally sensible looking – no stiletto heels or tube tops, no water skis alleged to be carry-ons, no vestments of fancy religions, the children well-behaved and the seniors not inclined to chat. Flight of the Polartec Fleece Jacket in Muted Colors. Uncanny. It wasn’t until I was struggling down the aisle toward window seat 21F that I saw anyone who made me think, “Bingo.” A frizzy redhead in brown Indian print gauze and the cloudy blue gaze of a fanatic – my seat partner. Her silvertone goddess necklaces clanged as she rose to let me wriggle past into my own seat. I feared a discussion about Nostradamus was in my future.
Thankfully, she settled into Castle Rackrent, an endearing choice of book, but better her than me. I cracked open my du Maurier, The Scapegoat. It turned out to be an excellent choice – a solidly written, none-too-taxing story of an English teacher who has his identity stolen by an impecunious French nobleman and decides to take up the Frenchman’s life in return. I was happily awaiting my honeyroasted peanuts when I noticed the gianormous wadge of Kleenex in my seatmate’s lap… and that she had halfway filled a barf bag with used tissue. My seat mate had a cold.
Recoiling as far as possible onto the cold outer wall of the plane and turning my head away to avoid breathing her exhalations, I tried to resurrect my compassion. “Wow – it must be terrible to be having a cold while traveling. She must really need to make this flight, poor dear. And if she gives me her goddamn cold, I’ll hunt her down and have her killed.”
We got off on time and without incident (though the pilot had apparently gone to the Charles Nelson Reilly School of Elocution – “The tailwinds tonight are faaaaaabulous!”) Truly execrable dinner – some chickenoid object in moribund, indecisive sauce (“Do I want to be sweet? Do I want to be savory?”), granite dinner roll – when I tell you that the iceberg lettuce salad with Italian dressing was the best thing on the tray, that’s all you need to know.
Our faaabulous tailwinds meant that we were going to get in an hour early – who ever heard of such a thing? – so I decided to try and make it without sleeping – it would only be 1am by my body’s time when we got in. The last couple of hours, I got terribly fidgety – there was nothing on the video channels except Spin City re-runs which, once you checked out how much Michael J. Fox was twitching in 1999, were not terribly interesting. I had finished my du Maurier, and didn’t want to be starting Martin Chuzzlewit in the grey light of dawn. Chuckie boy over the PA also informed us that although we had arrived an hour early, we were stacked up in a holding pattern over Heathrow and would end up landing barely on time. Hell.
Anyway, eventually we reached that magical moment when you break through the clouds and see the tiny cars glinting silver along the threads of highways, and the plane’s nose dips, and you think, “This is wrong. This is unnatural. This is a stupid, stupid, stupid idea.” Especially when you are over the wing and can hear the hydraulics grinding open and shut – they never sound as if they’re working correctly.
Sailed through immigration and customs. My bag was third off the plane. Got money and some essentials – bottle of water (I was so dehydrated that at breakfast, I was seriously thinking of tearing open the carton of milk that came with the cereal and licking the interior to get a few more drops of moisture), box camera and London A-Z. Gee, do you think they could tell I was a tourist?
It was raining – lightly, but the dirty, soupy air had sent my lungs into a histamine tailspin. Decided to hang the expense and get a cab into the city -- I could just see myself struggling up through the Underground on 20% of lung capacity and walking blocks in the opposite direction (see previous sabbatical diary, entry “Via Dolorosa” ). I got into a cab, and then the nightmare began.
London traffic. We spent 20 minutes in the Piccadilly underpass alone. I nervously watched the meter, praying it wouldn’t go higher than the amount of cash I had on me, trying to gauge how much farther we had to go. We reached St. Margaret’s in Bloomsbury with twenty pounds to spare.
Signora was most welcoming. I had requested a room at the back, which had views of the Duke of Bedford’s private gardens. Signora explained that the only single room that met these requirements was on the third floor. I was young, and the exercise would be good for me, she said. Seventeen thousand stairs later, we were at room 50 – a nice rosy room, but I was having second thoughts about the stairs, given my wayward gams. I peeked out the window into the fabled Bedford Gardens – which turned out to be an uninteresting expanse of lawn surrounded by beds of unglamorous shrubs. I hiked downstairs to pursue other options. Eventually, I landed in room 27A on the first floor. The ceilings are 15 feet, with moldings and a floor-to-ceiling window opening onto a balcony – that closed the deal. I trundled back to Heidi’s attic to retrieve my bags and made the Kraft Macaroni and Cheese suite my London home.
For the bed was covered with a brilliant, primary Caltrans orange sateen coverlet. The walls were pale, buttery gold enlivened with an 18 th century engraving of St. James Park tinted in saltwater taffy tones. The upholstery and curtains could best be described as “hotel Miro”, with the ubiquitous beige vinyl padded headboard over the bed. The furniture had seen better days, but was perfectly serviceable and scrupulously clean – a little on the shabbier end of the shabby genteel spectrum, but for less than 50 pounds a night in central London, you should be happy not to have slimy cold rat tails snaking across your face all night. This was perfectly hospitable.
The hotel as a whole, which was several townhouses conglomerated together, was a bit of a warren – it took me a few trips to orient myself to which stairs take you to the breakfast room, which to the reception desk. The door to the right – the Lady, the Tiger or the Toilet? After washing American Airlines off myself, I prowled around the lower lounges (one for TV, one for quiet – yeah, tell that to the screaming yellow and green carpets). Finally laid my weary bones down around 2pm – fully twenty-four hours since I woke up in San Francisco.
The fire regulation card in the room requested one “not to prejudice your safety by staying to collect your personal belongings.” God, I love the English.