Actually, I dialed London. Almost everyone was home. Happy to report transmission clear, clever, literate and just about as good as it gets.
Like my first foray into the city some 24 years ago, my knees go weak at first full glance, but with trip #206, I'm grateful by the time I board Madame Eurostar back towards la ville lumiere.
I live for contrast.
The English, like the Irish have the gift for gab, their oratory skills verily intact, even if the cockney threatens to go extinct, as dialects do.....my Italian mother-in-law's limonese may soon only accommodate a dinner for 8.
It's the diversity of London, more than my itinerary, maybe, and their modern reaction towards globalization that's worth a blessay. It's called the Lisbon Treaty.
The Irish, though naturally friendly with the French, have made this all past tense. All the tax breaks have been doled out and no one understands the dole like they.
The EU experiment or the need for it is receding as quickly as the sucking sounds increase from China and India, not to mention the quiet and canny ways of Putins Place, thus replacing the need to leverage trading blocks against the US.
And, no one wants another government to tell them what to do, even if Brussels does very little by way of dictating, contrary to how much Peter Hitchens screams about it. Those Hitchens boys are so angry all the time, inciting the crowds, couple of killjoys.
The EU as political force is pretty untenable and I quite like Nigel's explique over lunch, "we can all feel the sneaky hand of Europe wrapping its arm around the UK via Ireland.
The visual inspires me to combine highbrow with low as Jo informed me the following day that VIZ magazine no longer features the fat slags so maybe the English are getting all coy, OY!
And the treaty itself, Unreadable. So what's the debate to be about, exactly.
With all that said, EU still means no war, for this and my fellow pacifists, it's all good.
Per previous post, when dialing Dublin, I find news is grim cuz their boom, like Seattle and Silicon Valley, like Londonistan, must all go bust. Cycle of life financial.
Also, London is not ringing a very englishy accent these days. All the Eastern Europeans have followed on the footsteps of the Indians, Arabs and Chinese. Now almost all the citizens want to leave and have been for some time, for Spain, Malta, France, Dubai, as have we, in a way. They resent the change, it's no melting pot like the ole US. I could feel the tension, softly coded racial remarks surround me on the train, the inflation mounts as the economy fails to rebound from con men desirous of making a dishonest pound of sterling.
Still luv it lots though, all my friends, all luvvy like. I was an Anglophile long before I promoted myself to Europhile. And those friends make the stay worth the next.
First stop Trafalgar Square. Tube deposits me amongst the pigeons so i can scale Lord Nelson's shaft and lock lips with the Admiral. I do this not to entice with sexual metaphor but rather to amplify the deep gratitude I feel for having dodged all those sprinters that don't mind the gap. I was almost run over twice in the underground, so delicate am I.
Later in the week, whilst depositing luggage temporarily at Euston station men were racing like MAD I tell you, their pink faces all aflush. Give me the gentile randomness of an Italian or French train station anyday, si vous plait. Grateful, that's me, almost all the time.
So safely, on this day, I take in the National Gallery and waltz across the street towards the IoD, thee destination for all those entrepreneurial. All bizness types playing virtual office, laptops and gadgets strewn about, caffeine in multiple flavors, gratefully inhaled so they can keep playing office, meeting and greeting in their pinstripes and pantsuits.
The Lithuanian receptionist graciously allows me to pass through and I readily locate my date, my dapper Nigel avec pocket watch and he whisks me away to Quaglino's, the classic restaurant on Bury st.
Upon entry, I find I've been here before and like last time I want to belt it out like Babs in Hello Dolly. I keep it all in and stay as dignified as my host as we make our way down the grand series of gold steps onto the lower floor. We discuss market trends and then accurately assess the results that will embarrass the Irish politicians wishing to play in the euro sandbox.
Then a few hours later we part ways at Paddington and I fast train it to Henley on Thames, towards friends of friends, a most interesting power couple. They're all business, most of the time, but not here amongst the genteel environs of their retreat, so far removed from the zoo that is London. I'm picked up and transported to a relaxed and quite blessed country home with at least 16 horses roaming about to accommodate their Polo habit.
Ya wanna know the best part. They have a Teepee. After dinner, after much information and advice is bestowed upon moi we take a leisure stroll at sunset and damned if there isn't a huge Teepee suddenly right in front of me. It was gorgeous. They said they could fit 25, I believe 'em, the dark wood, the space, so surreal.
Then, sadly enough, it was time to train it back to the zoo for more of the same in the land of strange accents everywhere. By early evening I've rented a car for another sojourn into the 'country' and brave the M1 North to see old friends. The husband has suffered a collar bone incident while playing polo so his arms in a sling and I'm tickled that Polo plays such a part in my little post, but sorry for the accident, certo.
I crash at their little castle and they let me play yummy mummy with the two kids the next morn. We threw the wee ones into their little car seats and take them to the next hamlet adjoining their quaint Adstock, to a very posh school in the middle of fairy tale land, all woods and thatched roofs like their place, only for kids.
I'm grateful to play understudy for a second, but hey, pandemonium everywhere, miniature creatures running amock, in such random fashion (except for Thomas Henry who kissed me so sweetly good-bye, and Caitlin, that's why I give her gifts, ) but there were just so many of them, girls in identical frocks and boys with scarier hair-dos than my own in the morning, a million little rooms for 6 little people each.
So nice to invite myself to play in their lives but time to get back to my own drama and tales, like my novel, where I get to channel Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. But unlike Dorothy I find a better place than home, a spiritual home, one that shifts shape and creates contrast. Mio marito, my not so little italian drama king creates balance and drama from within, while our two little totos help us uncover and demystify the wizard.
I love this gig called life. After seeing my beloved Muv leave it, minute by minute, after assimilating her strength and accepting the fact my mother is long gone, a natural process, the sadness passes into acceptance. She did make sure to set me apart from the fools and for this I am eternally grateful for the truth and say, praise the gods and pass the idiots to the past, finally, gratefully, release….
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