In January B. and I are going to spend four days in London, UK.
I lived in London for a year when I was nine, and hated just about every minute of it. London and me, we started out on the wrong foot. I had a terrible attitude about the metropolis from the start; London was the destination of my family’s first big move since I was a baby, and I hadn’t wanted to leave Toronto and my school and my friends. In London we lived in swanky Hampstead, in a funny house with a winding stair rising up from the floor and twisting up into a hole in the ceiling. It didn’t even have a real banister, just black metal rods that stretched from top to bottom. You could hold onto the rods, but they felt dangerously flimsy. At my posh school I played four-square and elastic at recess, opted for choir practice over gym class, and did everything I could to avoid having to eat school lunches. Really, I could describe more moments that I remember, but overall it was a lonely and tedious year, and even just thinking of typing up all those little memories to posterity makes me feel tired. Suffice to say I was quite pleased when my parents announced we were moving to Switzerland.
I think I have been to London only once since then. It was a family trip. I was maybe 16 or so, and every minute spent with my father, stepmother and two little brothers was an exercise in torture. I walked ten steps behind them so I could almost pretend to be exploring London by myself. We stayed in my uncle’s apartment; he was away somewhere. One day when we were out, not seeing museums or exploring neighborhoods, but visiting Harrods department store, I must have spilled something all over my pants, because I remember leaving Harrods with my stepmother on a mission to buy new pants (rather than going back to the apartment to change). We wandered into all the little boutiques in the area. Finally, we returned to Harrods to meet my father and brothers. I was now wearing unflattering, matronly and incredibly expensive off-white leggings (with stirrups). Even before the leggings, London made me feel soft and naive. The other young people I saw seemed ages more mature, more fashionable, more attractive. I didn’t fit.
So those are my London experiences. Why am I going back to London? Despite it all, I want to redeem London. It might even redeem me. And somewhere along the line I must have inadvertently swallowed anglo-tainted water, because the city holds a romantic promise, even still. I missed it twice before. Maybe I’ll find it this time, now that I’m 34, now that I’m more or less as cool as I want to be (most of the time), now that I’m going with my lover and now that I’ll be hanging out with friends I’ve collected from all sorts of places and stages in my life. Maybe I won’t find the romance. Maybe it doesn’t exist. Maybe I’ve been brainwashed into some kind of admiration of empire, despite my anarcho-socialist leanings.
I will say, though, that when I say London holds a romantic promise, it really isn’t about Jane Austen or black cabs or even E.M. Forster (though I liked Howard’s End). It’s more Zadie Smith and M.I.A. and narrow streets and crowded markets. Old bookstores and Indian food and many, many languages. The big city experience of theatre and dinners out and public book readings. How much can I find in four days?
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