EPISODE 735: JOURNAL FROM LONDON

This is BBC One.

I am spending a week in London getting a little vacation. Here’s a couple little things I’ve been thinking along the way.

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Heathrow is as silent as a tomb as we all shuffle through getting our passports checked, our luggage.

And the city is like that, too. I walked through Hyde Park on a blustery late afternoon yesterday, rain on the way, and though I certainly saw some people, it felt as though I had the all of London to myself.

Today, Saturday and sun shining, there are people everywhere. But for the most part their voices are hushed, like we’re all a part of something special, something we would not wish to be responsible for disturbing.

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This morning  I watched a small group of elderly people cross a quiet street, tentative and weaving like a column of baby ducks.

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What is the collective noun for a group of elderly people? An age or era? A perpetuity sounds too big. An elder, maybe? Or a grey?

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There are so many birds here. Ducks and swans and pigeons and seagulls and mallards and these little black birds with white nose guards that suddenly leap up from underwater.  They honk and squawk and cheep and kree and crawk and chibble and groat while little children dance around them tossing bread like confetti/rice at a wedding.

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After spending some time watching them up close I am pretty sure that swans are animatronic machines.

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In the years in which I was in the process of moving ot Australia, people would always wonder why. It always struck me as a funny question on one level. Why? Why not? But I would try to offer one of a number of partially true explanations, things about the kindness of the people and the beauty of the land and the power of certain experiences I had had there.

But in some ways it was a simple as, they have the most extraordinary birds.

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When the wind sighs through the trees here wistful, nostalgic on an overcast day the sentient trees of Tolkien make so much sense.

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This old tree, its leaves scattered around its legs like a reception hall after the wedding.

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Baby carriages today are the SUVs of the sidewalk.

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There’s something unique about vacationing by yourself in another country. It’s like suddenly all these things that have been waiting for your attention rise to the surface. And you think, why now? Why not when I was in the midst of that thing that is suddenly now rearing its head? The answer is, Because then I was just trying to survive it, and now I am trying to live.

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I made a conscious effort upon arriving to always walk on the left side of things—sidewalks, passageways. That’s always been the way of things in Australia, and it fits. Both countries drive on the left, have their up and down escalators on the left.

But so far that ‘s proven a complete disaster. Everywhere I go people are walking wherever they want. I can deduce no pattern at all. I wonder, could it be that they’re all tourists and don’t understand? What is going on here?

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The collective noun for a crowd of pedestrians in a big city is a nightmare.

I have just walked through a nightmare of people.

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I wander through Waterstones, finding books I’ve never heard of and then feeling ashamed as I copy down their names and prices to check on Amazon, waiting for a clerk to throw me out. “Excuse me, sir, you cannot do that here.” “I just don’t have any room in my luggage,” I practice saying again and again.

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England is the only place I have ever been where I make a point of going to the nature section of the bookstores. Somehow whenever I’m here I always find some extraordinary exploration of the deep life of England or an elegy to trees.

I walk out with a book of nature sketches by Jo Brown. It’s gorgeous.

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Do other countries have chain pubs? It feels so wonderfully British.

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At a bar last night I met a guy who introduces himself to the group I’m with as “BBC Nigel.” He is a “continuity reader.” When I say I have no idea what this is, he comes up right next to me and whispers in my ear, “This is BBC One. Next up, Doctor Who. At 8:35, The Great British Bake Off.” He is very drunk.

While I wait for him to leave I decide the collective noun for a group of drunk continuity readers is a Nigel.

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My room is 12’ by 6’. It looked larger in the photos (though not all that much). When I first looked in I Had to take a hard swallows. “Usually my niece lives here,” the Airbnb renter tells me. “Where?” I wonder.

But then within a few minutes it’s such a relief to be somewhere with so little. I daydream about going home and giving away all of my stuff.

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The collective noun for swans is a simulation. (Seriously, they just don’t move right.)

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I fly back from London next Sunday, so no new newsletter next week. But I’ll be back at it the Monday after.

Have a great week everybody!