Closing the Door

There are any number of quotes about London that come to mind as we leave.  But this best represents the sentiment:

"If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast."--Hemingway

London is the new Paris.

It was before seven in the morning a few weeks ago and the captain said we were landing at Heathrow. He said it in the way they say it, two words, Heath--Row. And my stomach was excited in a new way, all the thrill of going home coupled with the anticipation of being away.

We would only be in London for 10 days, some final clean up at the office, pack up the apartment, attend the Olympics.  And ten days later the call from the stewardess was "We are arriving in Dulles Washington" as she called it.  It didn't have the same appeal.

I’ve tried to identify the emotion we are experiencing.  Why can't I put my finger on what it was that I felt when I closed the door on that house and this year?

It is an ending.  It’s not a movie or a vacation or a restaurant we can return to.  It's most akin to the end of college.  

I can go back to Ann Arbor, but not as an 18 year old. I can walk down State Street but the bars are filled with different students making their own memories.  There isn't a Sammy house full of brothers, those aren't my books, my beer, my teachers or my first taste of freedom. They now belong to someone else.  Only the memories are mine.

So yes, we’ll go back to London.  And we'll even return to 9 Abbey Gardens, but not as a resident.  We'll never stay in that neighborhood as a neighbor.  And in the end that's what makes me long for it, as I did when I left anything for the last time and it was termed a Commencement:  Because you can go home again, but sometimes the home isn't there, just the house is.

Thoreau said when he left his cabin on the shores of Walden Pond: “I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."

And so we return to the common hours.

Small Town, London Town

The town is festooned in a pinky-red color that is officially magenta-pink or Olympink as they call it.

"It's a great time to be British" screamed the newspaper headline, "The Greatest Show on Earth" another shouted.

The world is coming to London and what they will find is a small town.  The little island that it is.

When Bradley Wiggins won the Tour de France there was discussion of him being Knighted, how much he should make and the pride of the country.  A cabbie remarked to me the other night on a ride home:  "You know Wiggo is from around here.  Just over by Maida Vale."  The Queen wrote him a note.  He is part of the family.

The context for the Olympic newscasts is based around the weather and the UK medal count.  There are countdowns and medal watches as the Brits claim their first medal, or the heroes that are born:  "This is the first gymnastics medal since Stockholm 1912."

It is all about Team GB.

There is pride at the Summer they have had with the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, The Premier League finish, a good run at the Euro Cup, and now the Summer Olympics.

After the opening ceremony all the Brits wanted to know what the visitors thought.  And inevitably non-Brits expressed their enjoyment of it, but questioned certain parts:  The bouncy hospital beds?  An ode to the NHS? The Arctic Monkeys?

The Brits enjoyed the confusion.  When you express your skepticism they smile and say, "Yes, it was all very British."

They are very pleased that London is the center of the universe.  Again.

The Warmth of the Crowd

What if they held an Olympics and nobody showed?

Earlier this week I switched tube lines because they threatened mass chaos.  They were on time and lightly traveled.

Sunday at Camden Market one of the merchants asked another: "This is the week of the Olympics, right?"


And then the real controversy erupted over empty seats that weren't dotting the venues, but covering vast swaths from football to fencing because "corporates" didn't show up.

Finally last night we got on a packed tube, crushed between the unwashed masses who crammed the train, walked among stumbling people who didn't know where they were going.  Finally, the Olympics were in full swing.

First Timers

You know it's the Olympics when you're late for dinner because watching the gold medal round of Men's Archery is more important.

You know it's the Olympics when you stand shivering in the cold at 11:30 at night watching bikini clad women play beach volleyball in the shadow of 10 Downing Street.  


Since there are no sandy beaches nearby, the Olympic Committee shipped in tons of sand and dumped them in a parking lot behind the home of the Prime Minister where we wrapped ourselves in American flags and screamed for Misty May to bring home the gold.


The location for the beach volleyball is the equivalent of playing on the South Lawn of the White House.


In the shadows of the evening we could see people walking on the roof of the Prime Minister's house.  This didn't seem odd to us, we'd watched for years as the White House was defended from above.  However, the announcer of the beach volleyball game asked all of us to wave at the man on the roof, because instead of carrying a gun he held a brush.  He was commissioned by the Mayor of London to paint the scene of the different venues and tonight it was us.

The Big O

In London there is great concern over their future.  But they love their history.

Throughout the opening ceremonies every quirky reference, every Royal mention, every obscure rugby scene was met with hoots and howls of recognition and appreciation.

Living in London you respect the quirkiness of their cleverness, even if at times you feel you aren't quite in on the joke. Watching the opening ceremonies with 30,000 people in Hyde Park was like sitting with a host of interpreters as they laughed and loathed each reference.  And if you eavesdropped just a bit, most of it made sense.

But this is modern day Britannia, not the place of Shakespeare or even Dickens.  So when Kenneth Branagh read an extended quote from The Tempest, finishing Caliban's speech:  "Ready to drop upon me/that when I waked/I cried to dream again."  The guy next to me yelled:  "F*ck Yea Bill!"

The town is bathed in sunlight and awash in pride over the Olympics. The media is caught up in the Team GB spirit which is why Mitt Romney got pummelled for even suggesting they weren't up to the task.  The country is in a double dip recession, the city is reeling from banking crisis to banking scandal and they want something to cheer about.  And right now there is no place more cheerful than London.

At Home...Temporarily

We are pattern-seekers.

I woke up on a Monday and walked Abbey Gardens to Abbey Road, to Langford to Loudoun to Grove End to St. John's Wood tube which took me to London Bridge.to King William Street, to Eastcheap to Philpot Lane to Lime Street.

I woke up the following Monday and took Burning Tree Court to Burning Tree Road, to GreenTree to Fernwood to Democracy, to Old Georgetown Road, to Edson to Rockville Pike.

They are both commutes.  One is faster than the other.  One involves a car, the other my legs and a Tube.

We had spent the previous weeks and months preparing the children for their re-entry.  Only in the wee hours of the night was there time to imagine what life back home would be for us.  All our friends implored, "nothing changed."  And on a grand scale nothing did.  But we changed, didn't we?

In a few days you are back in a rhythm, a routine of work, letters to camp, weekends, workouts, lunches, and meetings.

But as the days inch along the notion that nothing changed was a realization, not a warning.  Part of why we left was the change, we were eager to come back as changed people, do things differently, not as the same lemmings who left.


There was no comfort in "no change."  There was disappointment.

And then after a particularly industrious week of meetings downtown, up and back on the Metro, instead of the car.  After drinks with friends.  After a business trip and some meals at familiar places, the comforts of home.  You realize the phrases you'd been repeating to the kids, the concepts of resilience, challenges, mountains and molehills may have actually been a mantra for ourselves.

You are resilient.  Life back home was pretty good.  You're gonna be OK.

Penultimate

We left London in stages, the final one yet to come.  But for the last 10 days in June it was just me and the youngest.  A gift really.  We had 10 breakfasts and 10 swim practices and 10 nights of homework and 10 walks home and 20 play dates and a weekend.

There were tears when Mommy and the others left.  But then there was the build up to the end of school, the final projects, the last dance.

A couple nights after the others left as I was putting her to bed it started to sink in:  "So Josh and Jessie will never sleep in their beds again will they?"  No they won't.  "They'll never be in this house again?"  I closed the door to the two empty rooms and didn't open them again.

Midway through the final stretch she and I were home from swimming, having dinner and doing homework and I said something to the effect of how nice it was, getting all this done, nobody else around.  But she gave me a look.  She knew.  It was weird to be in a half empty house.

And as the final days ticked down each night she put up a brave face, kissed me goodnight.  But I could hear the tears through her pillow.

One night around eleven I went into her room.  Even two floors away I could hear her sadness.  And I stood by her bed and she looked up with red cheeks and in her eyes she was asking me what had she done wrong?  And I had no answer to the question of why it hurt so much when she did everything right.  She embraced it from the start, did everything we asked and yet, it hurt the most.

And then there were going away parties and the last everything: Last swim practice, last bus ride to Queen's Grove, last dinner with Olivia, Maddy, Darcy, Georgia, Franny, Lior.  And the last trip to Westfields.

And then the last day of school.  And she sat on the steps waiting for her bus and drinking Perfectly Clear, her fave morning beverage.  And she looked up at me and said:  "Daddy, I wish I could just bottle the air."

On the final night she wanted to go to the High Street and get Gelato Mio.  Her wish was my command.  And then we walked home and watched the tourists stop traffic as they tried to get their pictures on the Abbey Road cross walk.  And then, just like a tourists, she borrowed a pen and wrote on the wall, thanking this place for the best year of her life.

Heartbreaker

I am 13 years old and riding in the back of a beat-up relic somewhere in Eastern Maryland.  I am in the middle seat, on either side of me are Ronnie Schwartz and Eric Nederlander, my roommates at nearby Don Budge Tennis Camp.  I am holding a Mickey's Wide Mouth, my first beer.  The bottle is green and in the shape of a barrel.and feels like a grenade in my hand.  We are headed to the Merriweather Post Paviliion, July, 1981, on our way to see Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.  Our counselors are in the front seat pounding their hands on the dashboard in rhythm to the cassette playing "You don't have to live like a refugee.."


It's 30+ years later and my 12 year old jumps out of a cab in London to meet her middle-aged father at the Royal Albert Hall to see Tom Petty on his first European tour in 20 years. The place is populated by aging rockers wearing concert t-shirts that are older than she is:  the Rolling Stones 1982, the Who 1980, Tom Petty 1981.  Instead of a Mickey's Wide Mouth we sit in a small bar in the basement of the hall eating popcorn and drinking sparkling water.  Surrounded by diehard fans, mostly American, she asks in a loud sweet voice, "Who are we seeing again?  Tim Perry?"  This gets more than a passing glance from the rest.

To my disappointment there is a warm up band who isn't even introduced.  I only learn their names because they are selling Jonathan Wilson t-shirts at the stand.  I thought we'd be home by 9, but the Heartbreakers don't come on until then, Petty in a three piece suit moving in cowboy boots like he's walking across an icy lake, but the voice and the guitar riffs don't disappoint.  At least they don't disappoint me.


At 10:30 we are home eating chicken wings over the kitchen sink and she tells me she thinks it will be fun bringing her kids to a Justin Bieber concert one day.  "I think it would be fun to bring them to see who I liked as a kid.  Maybe I'll take them to Usher too.  Well, no, he's already 40, by the time I have kids he'll be dead." 

434,880 Minutes

Sixty percent of the family headed home for summer planning, camp and far off teen-tours.  They left 302 days after arrival.  There was symmetry, there was arc, there were tears.

On August 19th I found a middle child who hated the blank walls of her room, crying on her bed next to a pile of un-opened duffel bags.

On June 15th I found that child sitting on her bed beneath a wall of paper butterflies, the room stripped bare, a pile of fully-baked suitcases in the corner, crying alone about how hard it was to leave.

I found the son who wanted two years from the start, wanting more.  He was standing alone in his room, stuff everywhere, as if not packing would make the clock stop.

And the wife who couldn't bother with emotion when we arrived, her only concern her children, their school, their adjustments, their activities.  I found her behind large sunglasses and without mascara having solved her tear duct defect as she said goodbye to her London life.

Il Capo in Firenze

My friend has been to more Bruce Springsteen concerts this year than I have been in my whole life.  I'm a fan mind you, been to a dozen concerts, but I've never been to the Stone Pony, I've never driven more than a couple hours to see him, and I can't remember the first time I heard Rosalita.

I asked him what he loves about the shows, why he still goes and he said it's no longer just about the concert "it's about who I'm with."

Springsteen has been around long enough to be generational.  People can trace their life along the tours they've seen. Everything from the bootleg their older brother introduced them to, the first time they brought their wife, assuming they didn't meet at a concert, to the time they dragged their kids to the insanity.

But for me it's still about the selection of those 30 or so songs he plays and where they take me.  Yes, I'll remember Florence and Stadio Artemio Franchi and the way the Italians sang words they didn't know, the way most Jews chant prayers on the high holidays.

And I'll remember the rain and the sprint to the car, and the aborted McDonalds' run, and the three pizzas Joe found for us at midnight and how we ate them as they closed the hotel bar and the sauce spilled out of the slices, which I ate Tony Manero-style, onto my new Wrecking Ball t-shirt just above the Born to Run album cover.

It isn't because it was Italy, or even Florence a place where I have only good memories.  Or that we went with friends on the spur of the moment on a weekend when we had a million other obligations, but in the end it was because of Bruce.  When I am at a Bruce Springsteen concert I am an 8th grader at Birney Middle School the week The River album came out.  I am a freshman in the Markley Dorm at Michigan listening to Born in the USA.  I am at the Sammy house singing Jungleland at midnight with 20 sweaty guys and girls who I'd give anything to have a night out with again.  I am a senior in college trying to convince my poetry teacher that No Surrender is poetry.  I am newly married and shopping for our first house when Ghost of Tom Joad came on the radio.  I am on the train coming home from New York listening to the Seeger Sessions.  I am driving home from Deep Creek with three sleeping kids in the back seat listening to E Street Radio when Bruce explains the origins of the song Freehold.

A Bruce concert doesn't take me someplace new, it brings me back to all the places I've loved.

"Well, we busted out of class,

Had to get away from those fools

We learned more from a 3-minute record, baby

Than we ever learned in school."

The Queen's Jersey

Jerry Seinfeld had a joke about modern sports.  He used to say that with all the players changing teams, "You're actually rooting for the clothes, when we get right down to it.  You're standing and cheering for your clothes to beat the clothes of another city."

It is only slightly broader than that.  Often you are rooting for your town, your home town, your roots, your sense of place.  That is why we cheer for our home town team long after we left.  In England your football team is chosen before you are born.  It's generational, it's human, it's mythic.

We saw two displays of it this weekend.  The first lasted four days, the second lasted four hours.

The four day weekend of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee had everything British, from the Royals, the weather and the wave.

"Proud to be British" screamed the Telegraph, "All for one" cried the Metro, the television anchors were criticized for their giddiness,  the Daily Mail could be converted into a souvenir tea towel.

The four days were filled with pouring rain, cold temperatures, impenetrable crowds, concerts on the Mall, parties on a every street and one million people came out to see the Queen wave from her balcony.  Why do they do it? Country pride. It's their Queen, their heritage, their country, their team. And some day it will be another Royal, same jersey, different person.

Taking the Eurostar two and a half hours East and we found ourselves at Stade Roland Garros for the best match of the French Open.  But it didn't start out that way. At first the world's number one Novak Djokovic made quick work of hometown favorite and Frenchman Jo Wilfried Tsonga, who lost the first set six to one.  But then something happened that gave Tsonga the strength to push on until he had the world's number one down to his last point.  And that was the crowd.  They cheered every time Tsonga won a point, every time he took a drink, every time he got a serve in, every time Djok hit the ball wide.  On that day and that court everyone was French.

The enthusiasm for Tsonga was no different than that for the Queen.  They were rooting for their flag, for their colors, indeed, for their jersey.

Diamonds for the Queen

Amidst a double dip recession and with the Olympics a mere two months away, the entire city of London, in fact the whole country and the ones they own, will shut down for a long holiday weekend. Not a Memorial Day three-dayer, but a full-on four day, Friday-Tuesday weekend to celebrate a symbol as much as a woman, the Queen.

Is the Monarchy the story of a dysfunctional family, a cold Queen, a dunce Prince, a beautiful princess killed by a sinister plot.  The only thing I know for sure is, they LOVE their Queen. The Royal Family, the cost, the castles, the embarrassing anachronistic displays may put some people off, but this is their Queen, for many this was their parents' Queen and for most this is their children's Queen and she will be celebrated.

Imagine a figure in America that you'd put on Mount Rushmore.  Whose image might be printed on our money.  Whose birthday we celebrate with a National Holiday.  Now imagine if that person were still alive, walking the streets, making news and impacting the world.

The Queen is a part of England and this Queen in particular, who took the thrown at the young age of 25 and has been a centerpiece of the country since the 1950's.  No other public figure in the world has been around for anywhere near that length.  And even as a Royal, she is only the second to have a Diamond Jubilee, the last one being Queen Victoria during the time of Lincoln.

This week-end there will be Jubilee Parties (Our street is having a Block Fayre of Pimms and Pastries), there are television specials, concerts, horse races and everything British.  Sales of Pimms, bunting and Royal gnomes have gone through the roof, as stores reported selling 1000 miles of bunting and more than 200,000 teacakes.

The high point of the festivities is the Jubilee Pageant when more than 1000 boats will assemble and the Queen and Duke will travel in a Royal Barge down the Thames.  And then on to St. Pauls with a final carriage ride to Buckingham Palace where the Royal Family will appear on the Balcony.

One of the most famous photos of this well-traveled Queen was during her Silver Jubilee in 1977.  That celebration is being remembered with a 100 metre-wide photograph of the Queen and her family on the Buckingham Palace balcony.  (You can see the amazing set up online).  The family looks happy, smiling and waving, and altogether regal.

The picture includes a very young-looking Prince Charles who was just months away from a first meeting with a 16 year-old Diana Spencer.  In the photo Mark Phillips, the Queen's son in law at the time, seems to have just told a joke to his wife.  It would be another eight years before he fathered a child out of wedlock with a New Zealand art teacher.  And prominently displayed in the middle is Earl Mountbatten, an uncle of Prince Phillip, who took a strong interest in Prince Charles, affectionately calling him an "honorary grandson."  Within two years Mountbatten would be assassinated when the Irish Republican Army planted a bomb in his fishing boat.

The Queen is 86 and while it feels like she has been around forever, Churchill was still Prime Minister when her reign began, they know that her day will come.  And so they will celebrate everybody's favorite "granny," because they know their history, not their future.

Football Season Comes to a Close (Part II)

We came to this country huge fans of soccer leagues with names like Stoddert, not Barclays.  We leave believers.  I am a cliche:  The American who comes to Europe and falls in love with Soccer.


We are American sports fans.  We stay up all night to watch the Super Bowl.  We set our alarms at ungodly hours to watch our teams in playoff action.  ESPN.com is the first thing we check in the morning to get the previous day's game scores.


But now there are new words, terms and names that are part of our daily lexicon.  Words that previously had no meaning.  A foreign language:  Chelsea, Bayern, Stoppage, Didier Drogba, Mancini, Tevez and Torres.


"Today we don't cry."

Those were the words of the players from Chelsea, which won the Champions League.


The words were similar in tone when Manchester City won the Premier League.


In European soccer there are many ways to win and many ways to lose.  Chelsea won the Champions League this past weekend making them the champions of European soccer.  However, you only make it into the European Champions League if you are one of the top four teams from England.  Chelsea was only the sixth best team, but by wining they guaranteed themselves a spot next year.  However, the team in fourth place, Tottenham gets bounced.


And I haven't even started explaining the confusing stuff.


Soccer enriches and defines the life of Englishmen. With a big game pending, I knew I could walk down any street, find any pub, join any crowd and be in the thick of football pain and pleasure.

What I will remember about my first season are the people and how they react to this, their most cherished pastime.

Wherever we travelled we tried to see a game and the memories of those places are some of the strongest.  The old men crying in Rome as they sang a love song to their team.  The cheers that rang through Old Trafford as Man U closed in on a victory.  The red nosed men at Stamford Bridge. 

Their stadiums have great old names.  Not unlike Wrigley Field, though it is still named after a consumer product, it harkens back to another era:  Old Trafford, the Boleyn Ground, Craven Cottage, Stadium of Light and Anfield.

And the sports pages write of nothing else.  Although understanding what they mean requires a local to explain: 

"Second half goals by Cisse and Mackie either side of a Joey Barton red card, had given ten-man QPR a shock lead."


I can explain that.

My Wife and the Lord

We live at the outer edges of London and so the Tube stop is busy with people going down in the morning and coming up in the afternoon.  And so on a Thursday I was surprised to see the queue going the wrong way.


Even the escalators were both coming up, only stairs for those going down.

The universe was in reverse.  Usually this means a problem with the trains.  It wasnt the train, it was the first day of Cricket season and we are just down the street from the home of Cricket, Lord's Cricket Grounds.
A place where they started playing cricket about the time America was founded.


Getting to Lords was on my list of things to do one day and so I followed the crowd, scalped a ticket and found myself in the midst of England against the West Indies.


The crowd is proper, all carrying baskets, wearing ties and hats, sports coats and salmon-colored pants.  The Test match will last through Sunday.
I watched for an hour or so, walked the grounds, saw the school children emulating their favorite players, amazed that a sport with such wide appeal is so foreign to me that I couldn't really follow the scoring.  


After a visit to the gift shop I headed back to the tube.  When I got home that evening I told my wife where I'd spent the first part of my morning.  


There are a number of reactions she could have had: "Maybe you shouldn't be playing hookey," or "Maybe if you worked more..." or some other retort that I would make had she told me she spent the day on a shopping spree.


But instead she said, "Why don't you do that more often?"


"Why don't I go to more Cricket matches?"


"I hope this is something we bring back to the States with us," she said.


Me too.

The Beginning of the End

It starts with the invitation from a friend who asks us to a concert in September.  


Then the new issue of TimeOut Magazine arrives, advertising events that are too far in the future.  And we realize that soon the festivals and carnivals, events and every days will start happening in London, without us.  The things we looked forward to last year are still gonna happen next year, but it will be someone else’s Chocolate Festival at Borough Market, it will be their opening day of the Football season.

The final trips are being planned, the social engagements we’d been putting off get booked and the bucket list of items we needed to get done in London gets a re-write.

The real estate agent starts showing our house, we made an inventory of things we need to get rid of like the UK X-Box, the sheets that won’t fit on a bed at home, the trampoline in the back yard.  


There is un-opened roll of packing tape on the kitchen counter.


And the kids talk about their plans for a return visit.  And I wonder what it will be like when we come back.  Usually when you return to a vacation spot you want to do all your favorites:  That store you love, the restaurant you can't forget, the park that was so special.  But all the London things we'd come back for can’t be achieved in a day, recreated in a week or a month’s visit.  How do you replicate everyday living?

Two Seasons Come to a Close (Part I)

There is nothing like a child’s first love.  Not the one that breaks your heart once.  But the love that breaks your heart again and again your entire life.  In sports your first love is often the one that lasts.


He may not be able to get himself up on most school days without his mother and the promise of chocolate chip pancakes.  But he set his alarm and got himself out of bed at 2:30 in the morning for every hockey game the Washington Capitals played and watched until completion, whether that meant regulation or overtime, or double overtime, or triple.

All over England you can strike up conversation by asking which football club they follow.  And they always have one.  And when you ask why they answer that it was their father’s club.  Or their grandfather's or the place where their first house once stood.  “We’ve always been Arsenal fans,” they might say.  "My dad remembers the plane crash in 1958 and that's how he got stuck on United."

The previous evening my son went to bed with tears in his eyes after his team lost on a long day which ended well past 3:30 in the morning.  There was only pain in his heart.

The next afternoon we watched as the Manchester City fans wept in pain and then joy, the reverse for Manchester United.



The pain lasts and then fades and it's on to next season.


A few hours after the soccer season ended I was riding in a car with a Manchester United fan, whose team had been handed as heartbreaking a defeat as we’ve ever seen.  “Manchester City deserved it,” he said.  “I have to hand it to them.  They played the better football.”


That night I told my son I'd pick him up at eight o'clock the following evening.  


"Please don't say the word eight, dad.  It reminds me of Ovechkin and that the Caps lost."

A Good Stumble

"Not all those who wander are lost"  Tolkien


We don't stumble anymore, we search.


We don't look for old books in old book stores, we search online and find them and have them sent to our house.  I've been looking for a book about a guy who took his family to Paris and wrote about it.  I'd been to a few book stores, unable to find it.  Then a few weeks later I was in an old book shop I'd been seeking out.  I found the store, but alas they didn't have a copy.  They could order it, but I said "no thanks."  I still had an hour before my next meeting so I ambled across the road and found another book store, one I'd never heard of, and there in the travel section was one copy of the book.  Pure delight.


People have been writing about walking and exploring in London since Pepys.  In a city like London anything can be an adventure, or a chore, depending on your perspective.  Virginia Woolf wrote one of her great essays about her adventure to buy a lead pencil as she went "street sauntering" "street rambling" and "street haunting."


For me London is meant to be explored and all the difficulties of city life (the trains, the delays, the jostling, the dirt, the noise, the rain, the mess) is all part of the adventure.  An adventure that must take place on foot.  We have hoofed it from Abbey Gardens to Golders Green, Whitehall to Westminster, from Hampstead to Hampshire, Ealing to Edgeware, from London Bridge to Leadenhall and Lime Street.  No matter the sector of the city, if there are sidewalks we walk it to learn it, to know it, to stumble upon it.

I set out part of every week to walk London and find something.  And it rarely disappoints, finding the great new places which existed, always hiding in plain sight.

One my best stumbles is the English Restaurant.

The English Restaurant is my single favorite place in London.  I go in the morning, they have dairy free cake and tea and banged-up chairs, and knotty tables and funny young people making coffee and a steady stream of world weary walking through.

How I Stumbled:


-One day I went to see "Dickens in London" an exhibit at the Museum of London.  
-After the exhibit I looked through the gift shop finding a book called “Quiet London” which listed quiet places within the city, including libraries, gardens and coffee shops.
-The next week I followed the book to the Bishopsgate Institute Library.  A nice old creaky, dusty library, just North of Liverpool Street.  

-Afterward I walked down a side street until I bumped into Old Spitalfields Market, a Victorian market hall which is now filled with what can only be described as rows and rows of vendors selling bric-a-brac.
-Later as I walked back to the office I bumped into a restaurant called the Grenadier, which of course required me to stop and take a picture.  

-Next to the Grenadier I saw a coffee shop called the English Restaurant.  




As soon as I stepped foot in the place it grabbed me by the throat and pulled me in.  The people kept me there.  A constant stream of clever playfulness permeates this tiny space which to me is everything English.


It's run by a couple who keeps everything, quintessentially English.  The food is well-bragged about, though I've never had a meal.  "You've got to try the kippers with mustard butter for breakfast," they tell me, but I get the bagel and lox.  "Then come back for dinner the venison casserole and pan-friend Guinea fowl with steak and onion pudding is out of this world," and all I ask for is another slice of dairy-free cake.

English food and English service are legendarily bad.  They take pride in this.  However, in my English Restaurant I found only love for the customer and the food.  Food that will never pass these lips.

The Three Vs of Brighton

All of us are confined to a schedule, sometimes of our doing and sometimes not.  But there is a sense of strength, if that’s the right word, maybe it is freedom, that comes from being able to stand at a train station look up at the big board and know you can go anywhere the tracks will take you.   You have 24 hours and they are yours.

I chose Brighton.  Well, I really chose Liverpool, but the tracks were all messed up and a two hour ride was going to take me six.

Brighton did brighten my day, even in the cold and drizzle that has shrouded England for the past four weeks.

Brighton is one of those cities like Portland Maine or Seattle Washington that is heavy on the Three Vs:  Vinyl records, Vegan food and Vintage clothing.

A one hour, ten pound train from London takes you from the city to the seaside with stops throughout South London from Hassocks to Hayward's Heath, through Three Bridges, East Croyden, and Burgess Hill.  But Brighton has all the sights and smells of a beach.  Visually it looks like old-time Atlantic City with the Ferris wheel and the pier, the sound of gulls overhead and the smell of fish (and chips) all around. 

Brighton is on the south coast of Great Britain and like all things in this country has a long history going back to 1086.  It was a health resort kind of place even back in the day, then it went through some disrepair and is now back on the gentrification track with universities and high end stores.

But beyond the sea, the highlight is the visually magnificent Royal Pavilion.   And there are the North Laines, a shopping area like no other with bunches of zig zagging streets and hundreds of shops, none of which exist anywhere else on earth.  From records and turntables, vintage clothing and vintage cameras, from tattoos to typewriters, the streets, even on a rainy day are teeming with tourists and townies all looking for a bargain, a cup of tea and a piece of dairy/gluten free cake.