Category: Logistics

Ghosts, lights & going postal

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The first time we came to an Arsenal match, it was during Christmas. We had bought a package that included hotel and match tickets for two matches, a Boxing Day fixture against West Ham (that ended up being postponed because of a Tube strike) and a New Year’s Eve eve match against Newcastle. Whenever we talk as a family about favorite holiday memories, that trip to London is always mentioned. We brought Christmas tree lights in our suitcase with the idea that we might arrange them in our hotel room in the shape of a tree, but the only electrical fixture that was usable was next to a mirror over a dresser. So we hung them around the mirror, prompting songs by our kids of “Oh Christmas Mirror, Oh Christmas Mirror!”

There was actually no need for anything special in our room because London is so beautifully decorated for the holidays.

This trip is the only time we’ve been back to London at this time of year, so my husband and I were both looking forward to seeing it all decked out again. My husband has been preoccupied with his parents’ move into assisted living in Florida, so I did some minimal planning for this trip. Minimal in the sense that every moment from 2 p.m. on Friday was planned, and not one thing was planned for Thursday (all day) or Friday morning.

I had seen information on a museum I thought my husband would enjoy, the Postal museum, situated at the site of an underground railway used for many decades in mail delivery. As a part of your visit, you can ride a train through some of the tunnels that accommodated the cars that carried mail. Unfortunately, it hadn’t occurred to me that the museum would be such a popular option. When we arrived on Friday morning after a delicious breakfast at Gail’s bakery in our neighborhood, all available visitor spots had been sold out for the day.

So we went back toward the Thames and had a leisurely lunch before the play we had booked, Ghosts. Ghosts was running in the Sam Wanamaker theatre, a small indoor space inside Shakespeare’s Globe theatre. The play is performed under the light of about 80 candles, which are laboriously lit at the beginning of the play by one character and laboriously put out at the end of the play by another. Candlelight aside, this was a very dark play about family secrets. Somehow we had considered dozens of lighthearted holiday productions and selected this one instead. Holiday fare it was not, but it was an excellent production and I’m glad we chose it.

We left to walk over along the Thames to a holiday light installation at Southbank Centre. Very cool.

In fact, you could also say very cold. Bone chilling dampness made my husband realize that we were very close to Gordon’s Wine Bar, so we crossed the bridge hoping to find ourselves in the cozy wine caves. Instead, we were offered outdoor seating which might not have fit the bill but turned out to be under a huge, very functional heating lamp.

After a very relaxing glass of wine and some warming, we walked back to St. Paul’s area for dinner at Krua, a Thai restaurant. Very delicious. And, because there are so many lights to see, we took the tube afterward into the shopping districts where some of the most fun holiday light displays are.

Our route back to the hotel took us over Tower Bridge, where the most fun light display of all is visible. The top of The Shard, the iconic tower near Tower Bridge, was fully lit in dozens of fun, moving & sparkly patterns. I enjoyed seeing it all over the city, but had the best views of it from Tower Bridge. Here are a few of the way too many pictures I took.

A packed day in a beautiful, bone-chillingly cold city.

I live by the river

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By virtue of the much-maligned (by many) but appreciated (by me) Arsenal balloting system, we find ourselves in London this morning with tickets to the Arsenal v. Wolves match tomorrow. By our calculation of odds we expected to possibly attend one more match this year after Manchester United. Maybe luck will be with us and this will not be our last visit this season.

I have moved into the hotel lobby to post this while my husband has his Italian lesson in our room. It’s a cold and damp in London and the lobby doors keep opening to the outside world, but I am in a cozy nook with a giant radiator an inch from my elbow. It’s lovely.

We arrived yesterday, taking the late flight from O’Hare to arrive at around noon. The flight here is the only part of the trip that I remotely dread, but I slept better than I ever have. I credit Ibuprofen, Benadryl, and a new neck pillow. We flew Basic Economy on United, so no seat assignments until minutes before the flight. We both got aisle seats, not together, but A-ok! The gentlemen next to me was mistaken by everyone as my spouse. He fell asleep immediately and, as far as I can tell, never woke up until we landed in London. I woke up once to two snacks on my tray, one for him and one for me, and on other occasions was left to speak for his snacks, meals, and drinks. I learned that he always wanted what I wanted two of. And that he never wanted what I wanted none of. What an odd coincidence. Once I woke up during the flight and there was a strange pair of eyeglasses on my tray. Seemed someone found them on the floor and concluded they were mine….or his. But my tray is your tray, at least until the flight attendant finds the person of the missing eyeglasses.

Our hotel this time is called Dixon Autograph, one of Marriott’s small hotels in the Tower hill area. We’ve stayed in Tower Hill quite a few times recently, but this one is on the other side of the Thames. Funny how it feels like a completely different neighborhood. And maybe more like a real neighborhood. Nice hotel, nice area with lots of pubs and restaurants.

After we dropped our stuff off at the hotel we had lunch at The Ivy. One of the things I forgot that I love about London in December is that so many of the restaurants have special menus for the Festive period. The Ivy specializes in British cuisine and whether they always do this or only during the Festive season, they were serving both lunch and tea at the hour we arrived. We just had lunch but it was fun to see the tables being served with giant, multi-level tea trays full of yummy-looking stuff. Including one item at the top that seemed to have dry ice in it. The steam coming off it was spectacular and I never saw a tea tray set on a table that was not duly photographed by the recipient. It could not have actually been dry ice, could it? I guess we’ll never know.

I had a smoked gin drink that came under a glass dome, dramatically unveiled by the waiter, and a delicious butternut squash dish with feta, pomegranate seeds, cranberries, and a spicy sauce. My husband had a scallop risotto. I had cream tea for dessert because the scones it included came with clotted cream. I cannot resist that even though there was also crime brûlée on the menu. I have never before passed up crème brûlée.

By the time lunch was over, it was already dark. We had to hurry to walk over to St. Paul’s for the Evensong service at 5 p.m. Recently, my daughter and her partner took a trip to London and she asked me to share the Don’t Miss things to do in London. One of the things I recommended was Evensong, the music-focused service held in many churches here at twilight.

I once attended a performance of Rachmaninov Vespers at an outdoor venue near Chicago. It was a fully moving experience hearing music intended to celebrate the movement from day to night while literally experiencing this change. Clouds overhead, trees swaying, the sky going from bright, to pink, to dark. It’s kind of like Fall. I love Fall; it’s my favorite season. I love the colorful leaves and crisp, bright days. But it also makes me feel melancholy. Leaving a season of warmth and light and heading to a season of cold, dark. Pretty sure all of that is why I love the tradition of Evensong.

Given my advice, my daughter tried to go to St. Paul’s when she visited London but they were doing a different service that night. She ended up going to the Church of the Sepulchre, and loved it. I wanted to go to the Church of the Sepulchre but they don’t have services on Thursday, so St. Paul’s it was. Have been to church services there, but never Evensong. It was lovely. The acoustics are terrible for the spoken word and great for the kind music sung there. Beautiful music in a beautiful cathedral.

We walked over to the Somerset house to see the pop-up ice rink there and then over to Trafalgar Square to look at the lights and briefly visit a Christmas market. London is beautiful with all the lights and decorations. But it was cold and we were jet-lagged. We took a bus back, sitting in the top front row hoping to enjoy lights. The window was iced and fogged over but I enjoyed taking pictures of the lights through the ice.

If you look carefully, you’ll see a weird version of St. Paul’s cathedral in the one above.

Acts of Hope

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We woke up relatively early and headed out to our favorite breakfast place in Tower Hill, White Mulberries. It’s just a coffee shop with typical coffee shop options (I always choose the yoghurt and granola), but the basics are beautiful, and it’s on St. Katherine Dock. Yesterday, we sat outside and enjoyed looking at the flowers and boats.

We had not done much research on what there was to do in London this weekend before we got to the airport, but while at O’Hare, I looked a bit and saw that there were a number of events around London associated with the Greenwich + Docklands International Festival. Last year we happened to be in town for the festival and enjoyed it a lot. Mostly acrobatic performance art, or at least that is my recollection. This year’s theme was “Acts of Hope.” Anyway, we selected a few things that looked interesting to attend and, after breakfast, headed over to Greenwich on the very fast (and, it turned out, a bit splashy) Uber boat.

That was a tactical error, because it turned out that, while there were many events around town this weekend that are part of the International Festival, the festival at Greenwich was, in fact, last weekend. This was readily apparent when the boat (which held very few people for a Festival weekend), pulled up to a subdued and relatively empty dock. We regrouped a bit and visited the Greenwich market before planning how to get to a play called Sliding Slope which was over at the Royal Victoria Dock, no place close. After a long bus ride over to the O2 center, we walked over to the cable car entrance where I first understood that we were actually going to take a cable cars to get across the river. I am desperately afraid of heights, but I was more afraid of missing the performance, so cable cars it was.

Sliding Slope was interesting. Marginally based on the North Sea Flood in 1953, it depicted a group of people gathered on a submerged rooftop living out their final days as seas rose due to climate change. Dark content for a (mostly) sunny day, but thought provoking and interesting.

After a brief respite back at the Doubletree, we took a bus over near St. Paul’s where we found a cute pub built by Sir Christopher Wren, The Old Bell. It was supposedly built as living quarters for the stone masons completing reconstruction after the Great Fire.

We had a quick pint before heading out to Sir Christopher Wren’s possibly more famous project, St. Paul’s Cathedral. This was to be the site of another Greenwich + Docklands International Festival event, Resurgam. We had attempted to see this the day before, but with the train delays we experienced, we arrived only as the performers were taking a bow at the end. Resurgam is a vertical dance performance by an American company called Bandaloop, starting high on the South side of the cathedral and ending at the bottom. The performance, Resurgam, was named for the inscription that appears on that same wall, meaning “I shall rise.”

What can be said about this? It was beyond magical. Beautiful dancing, beautiful music, on a beautiful building. It was not lost on me what a coward I am for being afraid of the cable cars, when these dancers were doing this. My hands were wet with sweat in some form of solidarity. Solidarity, that is, if they felt any form of nervousness. They did not appear to.

We walked over the Millennium bridge afterward with throngs of happy people who had enjoyed the performance toward our first stint, at Shakespeare’s Globe, as groundlings. The play was As You Like It. And what can I say but I will never try to experience a play at the Globe any other way. We were standing on the left edge of the stage with our arms resting on it. Yes, we stood for about 2 hours, but there was nothing tiring about it. We were in that play, seeing every twitch on the faces of the actors. Loved the play, loved the music, loved the experience. I even collected an apple from one of the actors, shown below.

And though it had been a big day and quite late when we returned to the hotel, I couldn’t begin to settle down to sleep. Maybe the plane ride back to Chicago?

New tricks

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I concluded my last post by commenting that Arsenal tickets would be in short supply next season and that turned out to be accurate. The historical source of all of my tickets except one—a season ticket held by a former colleague in the London office of my former employer—dried up this year. Too many people wanting tickets from that source. So we turned to the club and got “Red memberships.” This allowed us to participate in a lottery for tickets to home matches. New Trick #1. We’ve entered the lottery religiously for every match, and found success for only one so far—this week’s match against Manchester United. We’ve never before attended this match.

We’ll be in the “Clock End” this time. Our former tickets were in the North Bank, opposite the Clock End. I have mixed feelings about this. Arsenal has often been more productive in the second half, right in front of the North Bank goal. But we’ll be in the stadium, no?

News of getting the match tickets came late, about 3 weeks in advance. Flights were more expensive than usual and we ended up flying on United, a later flight than normal, closer to natural bedtime for someone living in Chicago. Maybe we would be able to sleep on the plane.

And, we selected a new hotel. Last year, there was something that made me long for familiarity. Maybe it was due to coming off the pandemic. We visited several hotels we had been too before, revisited many restaurants we visited before, and visited several attractions we had visited before. This year, time to mix it up. Our hotel this time is the Doubletree Tower Hill. Yes, a neighborhood we’ve stayed in many times. The hotel is nothing special, but location is great. The photos I’m taking are dominated by the Tower of London, the Shard, and Tower Bridge.

Because our flight was late into London, we checked into our hotel later than usual and had a shorter first day in town. That allowed us to be EARLY to a place we’ve never before been able to get into: Gordon’s wine bar, supposedly the oldest wine bar in London, which may make it the oldest in Europe. New Trick #5 (or maybe we are up to 6 by now). Gordon’s has operated since 1890.

When we arrived we were told there were no available tables in the wine cave, but were given a number on the waiting list. #1. Can’t beat that. We ordered at the bar while waiting for a table. I had a small glass of amontillado, having no idea what it was. The bartender promised it was “meaty” and had high alcohol content. I selected it because of the Edgar Allen Poe short story and because it actually did come from a cask. In googling it today, I understand it’s a sherry.

When we were seated in the very cool wine cave, I somehow convinced my husband to try the British Sharing Board, a board of Stilton, cheddar, a scotch egg, and a pork pie, accompanied by cornichons, jam, bread and butter. A scotch egg is kind of like a hard boiled egg in a ball of sausage. I’ve had one before at the Borough market. Warmed, on a bed of arugula. This one was served cold. I love love love cheese. However, the acquisition of the Sharing Board is a New Trick unlikely to be repeated. Somehow, I married a guy who is just not that into cheese.

We left Gordon’s and took the bus over to the Serpentine South gallery in Hyde Park to see an exhibit called “Webs of Life,” by Tomas Saraceno. The draw for me was seeing art made via—ok, they called it—a “collaboration” with spiders. Put your head around that for a moment. It was extremely beautiful and impactful. Intricate, varying spider webs beautifully backlit in a dark room. I desperately want to share photos of the exhibit, but we were required to check our phones before entering. This was to acknowledge the damage to human and animal life of materials and processes producing lithium batteries, which was also a focus of the exhibit. We were given the card below “from the artist” in exchange for checking our phones.

We took a long and fruitless train ride to view another attraction, arriving just a bit late. We will try again on Saturday.

Exhausted, because even the flight that leaves Chicago at about our natural bed time still requires sleeping sitting up, something we have consistently failed to successfully achieve, we went back to our hotel. Where we could be blissfully horizontal, a decidedly old trick.

The day’s findings

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When I arrived in London this afternoon, I realized how differently I travel now than I used to. I didn’t know whether my husband had made it to London, didn’t know his flight number, didn’t know where my hotel was located, and, although I had a perfectly good electrical outlet in my seat on British Air, I arrived with my phone barely charged.

My husband had been in Italy for the week doing research for his novel and was to travel back to London today. He called me yesterday afternoon to tell me that a national strike had been called in Italy that was going to start in 15 minutes. His train from the small town in which he had been visiting back to Rome was certain to be cancelled; we didn’t know at that time that the strike also includes air traffic controllers. Last I had talked to him, he was pretty sure he could hire a driver to the airport, at no small price.

As soon as I arrived at Heathrow, I realized I didn’t know what airline he was to take from Rome, and texted him, with no response. The only place I could guess to meet him from my location near the Border was the baggage claim for flights with British Air. Two flights seemed to have come recently from Rome, a hopeful sign, since I knew he was supposed to arrive within 20 minutes of my flight. I scanned the travelers waiting at the carousel, seeing no one who looked like my husband. I decided to use my time figuring out how to get to the hotel. Thankfully, my husband made his appearance just as I was thinking about texting our kids to see if they’d heard from him.

What was I doing since yesterday, when I heard that my husband was at risk of not making it to London, other than carefully mapping out details of contact, hotel, etc.? Well you can bet I made sure I printed duplicate Arsenal v. Crystal Palace match tickets of the ones my husband had taken with him to Italy!

We took the Tube to Liverpool Street stop, and with many false turns found our hotel, the Bull Inn. It’s not exactly a hotel, more like a bunch of rooms above a pub/wine bar by the name The Hide. Together, The Bull and The Hide. It’s affiliated with Hush Heath Winery. Finding how to check in was hilariously weird. It turns out you have to go up to the bar, which was swarming with the Friday afternoon/evening pub crowd so common in the City. As is typical, throngs of people stand outside to bar with drinks and smokes, in this case, more convenient because the entrance is facing an alley on which cars can’t travel. 

Friday-after-work at The Hide

The pub and hotel are located on land that was formerly the site of a home owned by the William Cavendish, 2nd Earl of Devonshire, who has been rumored in a few quarters as writing some of Shakespeare’s plays. According to a placard in our room, the Devonshire Suite, he died of “excessive indulgence in good living.” May we all so indulge!

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We dropped off our stuff and headed out to find a pint and dinner. Our own home pub, The Hide, had a lot of nice-looking wine, but for beer, Amstel light. We left to find something we can’t buy at Safeway in Sunnyvale. After some walking we found a restaurant/bar called Alice where I had the Camden Hells lager and my husband had Meantime lager. The barkeep directed us to a table that was clearly marked as reserved for George. (We were not George.)

I had beef pie, naturally, and my husband had Chickpea, spinach and sweet potato curry. We left the table, still anxiously awaiting the arrival of George.

Then we made a pilgrimage for ice cream, losing our way many times.

In summary, today we found:

  1. Each other
  2. our hotel (twice!)
  3. how to check in at our hotel
  4. London beer
  5. dinner

What we did not find:

  1. George
  2. Ice cream

Tomorrow is another day.

As I settle in to sleep, the party at the Hide is at full swing down in the street outside our window on the third floor. I do not expect it to bother me.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

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I’ve written before about the statues on the grounds of the Emirates. Just behind the statue of Theirry Henry, there is a giant objet d’art, a wall depicting every Arsenal team member–we assume–since the beginning of people taking pictures of teams. One team picture morphs into another, from ancient to modern. The left half of the image depicts players in black and white film, and somewhere in the middle the teams are depicted in color. They are, naturally, wearing the red home jersey.

emirates-stadium-arsenal-thierry-henry-statue-1466711685
Photo by Football Ground Guide….because I can’t find mine.

The message is clear–all these players–they are the Arsenal. They have each taken their place in the team and in the wall.  And after a time, far too short or too long or just right, they left the team and were replaced by others. While “the team” was still “the team” after they left, if you think about how teams are formed, a departed player leaves a gap that must be filled. Not just a position, but possibly a gap in some form of artistry that might easily be replaced like-for-like or might require many different changes.

From the first moment I saw the picture wall, that time we came for a “once-in-a-lifetime” pilgrimage to the Emirates in 2012, I was captivated by how it must have been made, and how difficult the upkeep must be as the team keeps changing.

It turns out there is no upkeep. If my googling of the art is correct, that particular installation depicting the players who rolled on and off the team was replaced, in my absence from the Emirates, by this:

theirry-original
Photo by Arsenal.com.

This is also a historical depiction, of “iconic goals and celebrations,” according to Arsenal.com. It’s nice, and to gets a similar point across, but it’s not quite the same point. The original piece was a celebration that contained some darkness: “Things come to an end, don’t get comfortable. It may end well, or not.” The new art is a bit too cheerful.  I’m reminded of what my husband, who grew up Catholic, said about attending my Methodist Easter services: “I can’t stand Easter at your church. Everyone is too damn happy.”

The upkeep of the original art, if ever that was the intent, in the past two years would have been very difficult indeed because the team has almost completely turned over. Jack Wilshire, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Olivier Giroud, Theo Walcott, Laurent Koscielny, Carl Jenkinson, Kieran Gibbs, David Ospina, Santi Cazorla, Danny Welbeck, Gabriel, Aaron Ramsey, Francis Coquelin, Nacho Monreal…..all gone. Alexis Sanchez is so gone that he’s already left the club he left us for. Petr Cech and Per Mertesacker are both retired (though our BFG has a coaching gig with the club).

Really, only Granit Xhaka, Mesut Ozil and Hector Bellerin are still on the team. Xhaka, to my questioning eyes, has become a regular starter, presumably undroppable. But Ozil and Bellerin–neither of them is even making the bench. Bellerin because he’s coming back from serious injury, Ozil because, well, no one seems to know.

Saddest of all, my hero, manager Arsene Wenger is gone. He retired at the end of the 2017 season, beating the team to the punch before they fired him. He got a nice sendoff that brought tears to my eyes, but it was bitter deep down. He’s been replaced by Unai Emery, a coach who looked promising at first, but now just seems like he’s not quite sure how to put it all together.

On that first visit in 2012 when I became captivated by the wall, we visited over the Christmas holidays, watching a cracking match against Newcastle United that ended 7-3.  My small son had been a fervent Santa defender. In the year prior to the trip, I had explained to him that Santa needs a lot of help from me: I had to listen throughout the year for what my kids wanted for Christmas, I had to buy presents, I had to wrap them, and I had to put them under the tree. My explanation didn’t leave much for Santa to do, but somehow my son’s belief in the power of Santa remained well intact. He was a smart kid; I can only assume that he really, really didn’t want to know. The machinations of a trip to London over Christmas fully exposed to my son the sad realities of Santa, but the trip remains one of the most fun Christmases we’ve had as a family.

That small boy left home for college this Fall. We dropped him off in Rochester, NY and won’t see him again until Thanksgiving. He’s having an amazing time. Our daughter is little more than a semester from graduation from College. I miss having them around and building my life around them and their activities. I miss their noise and mess and fun.

Since we moved to California, I’ve been to the Emirates only once, before my husband and son relocated from Chicago. The trip is much farther from the west coast and we didn’t really have the same support system for our son in California that we had in Chicago.

But did I mention he’s in Rochester, NY now?

This is a tough season. Arsenal have talent–maybe better than ever–but haven’t clicked as a team, not even close. There are some exciting young players and some excellent older players, but my feelings for them havent gelled. We now have David Luiz for heaven’s sake: excellent luck, or Chelsea Trojan horse? Xhaka–can he possibly be undroppable from the lineup with so many questionable decisions? Loanee Dani Ceballos–yes, he is a fan favorite, but when he throws a stepover with no one even defending him, I shake my head. The team doesn’t feel the same.

So this weekend, we are doing what must be done. I’m getting ready to board British Air in San Jose and head to the mother ship, the Emirates. We’ll see the new art, have a pint, and, most importantly, try to come to terms.

Suddenly I’m feeling good about it. In the very Uber I’m in, the driver is playing House of Pain’s Jump Around. (Not the “clean version,” I add.) Obviously a sign!

“Oh no,” you say, “That’s not the song played before the second half at the Emirates anymore”?

Fine. Fine.

Although our new players probably won’t find their way onto the wall behind Theirry Henry, they have a good chance of finding a place in our hearts.

The hand of God (not that one) provides direction

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As many times as I’ve been to London, often in the same neighborhoods, I still struggle to find my way around. The city is not laid out on a grid, streets aren’t always well marked, and without my less directionally challenged husband I’m sure I’d spend most of my time wandering around completely lost.

My husband’s flight back to Chicago on Thursday was much earlier than my flight, so he arose early and departed. I decided that I had enough time to try to find Le Pain Quotidien nearest me for breakfast, which happened to be near Borough Market. As I have explained, I have a weakness for this chain because they have delicious and reasonably priced scones accompanied by a giant glob of clotted cream, my not-so-secret weakness.

I have been to Borough Market many times, including twice on this very trip, but I still did not feel confident that I would be find it without mishap. I studied the map on my phone carefully, so carefully that I was running seriously short on time before I needed to check out of the Citizen M. I took a deep breath and strode out into the streets.

20170406_103414I was lucky and got lost only briefly, close to the shop. I was seated quickly, ordered my precious scone, and paid my bill immediately so I could run away as soon as I had the last yummy smidge of cream. It wasn’t the most relaxing breakfast, but mission accomplished. My only disappointment was that the clotted cream was not as giant as I remembered it. When the clotted cream was gone, I abandoned the rest of the scone and rushed back, again getting lost only once. I arrived at the Citizen M a minute after official checkout, rushed up and grabbed my bag, and headed out to the Tube to get to Heathrow.

The reason my husband and I didn’t fly back to Chicago together is this: I no longer live in Chicago.

During last season, I referenced in this blog BIg Problem A, a problem that I did not manage to resolve during the season despite my deepest desires and no small effort. I gave no detail on Big Problem A because it was the sort of problem that shouldn’t be shared on social media.

I was so obtuse in the blog that even my dearest friends and closest family members were not certain when they read of Big Problem A what it might be. Several people said to me, “Please tell me that I am not Big Problem A.” Even my dear sister, who has completely made my travel possible by taking care of my kids when I travel to Arsenal. For so many reasons, there is nothing Big Problem A about this woman. She is Big Solution A, B, C, and more.

Worry not that my husband or our marriage represents Big Problem A. This man is a prince and my marriage is healthy.

I’m still not going into great detail on Big Problem A, but I will share that it was a workplace problem. Although I loved my work, there was something going on in my workplace that was taking a small bite of my soul every day for more than four years. It reached its height right around the time my father passed away. The combination of Big Problem A and my father’s death arguably propelled me to take the share of Arsenal tickets. Life is painful so why not have some joy?

Now a lot of people might (and did) say, “Just leave that job,” but it’s not so simple. I have specialty skills and specialty interests. My job is important to me and a huge source of what propels and engages me. It is critical to my family; puts a roof over our heads and kids through College. It is at the intersection of two professions dominated by young people and men. Although it would not be hard to argue my virtues as an employee, If you think employers are lining up for people like me, well, they just are not.

One exceptionally dismal and tearful night after my father died and while Big Problem A was growing like a cancer, I finally fell asleep near morning. When I woke up it was sunny. I went upstairs to have my bath, and when I walked in the bathroom, on the frosted window, I saw a clear outline of a hand. It was not a creepy hand, but a healing hand. It stopped my in my tracks. It seemed like a sign from God: have no fear, be patient: this problem will be solved.

On closer inspection, because I am the sort of person who looks a gift horse in the mouth and questions even messages from God, I realized that the “healing hand” was just a reflection of the sun through the leaves of our neighbor’s tree. Still, the message had registered and I had to believe in it.

I worked actively to resolve Big Problem A last year, but was unsuccessful. There were some options I just couldn’t take. This past year, I got so busy at work that I didn’t have time to actively address it. Certain changes, including having a big, interesting project, caused Big Problem A’s trajectory to be altered. It was becoming a contained cancer, and I had hope that it was going to become a cancer in remission: It was starting to seem that Big Problem A could be solved without actually leaving my job.

Near the holidays last year, I got a call from a former colleague about a job opening up in her current company. Would I be interested in exploring this position? I was, but there was a very big catch: the job was in California, a place I never wanted to be. The other problem was that I was very, very busy working on the big initiative at work. I did not have time to devote to job acquisition. I barely had time to read my personal email.

As it worked out, interviewing didn’t require much effort or time on my part. I interviewed by phone late at night when everyone else had gone home, and the prospective company’s pace of organizing next steps seemed to match the pace I needed. When it seemed like there was no denying that this position would be interesting and I should look into it seriously, I flew out to California for an interview, missing one day of work.

IMG_20170114_071243_629My husband and I stayed through the weekend to check things out and experienced an Arsenal match on Pacific time zone at Jacks’s Bar and Lounge in San Jose. I had a resigned feeling when we stepped into the small bar at 7 a.m., realizing that they had no food….and my husband couldn’t drink because it was right before a planned, minor surgery. I was going to have to hold down the fort at the bar for our Arsenal viewing single handedly: What beer to have for breakfast?

The interview went well. I got an offer from the company on the second anniversary of my father’s death. It took a few more weeks to come to an agreement. I had a few weeks with a solid offer on the table to carefully measure whether Big Problem A had a realistic chance of being resolved while staying in place.

The decision was easy, as easy as can be.

The rest of it more or less fell into place, like when you get to the last 25 pieces of a 1000-piece puzzle. My husband and I made a few key decisions that simplified the relocation. My son was thrilled at the prospect of moving to California, somewhat unexpected because he is a sophomore in high school and arguably settled in his life. He found a high school that interested him and my husband found time, when I couldn’t, to travel to the Bay Area and locate an apartment in that district, quite close to my new office.

We got a lease, insurance, a bank. We handled a few curve balls that were thrown: a broken garage door, a refrigerator that stopped working, a car that sustained $6,000 of damage in an accident, which delayed our ability to ship the car to California.

Working through this normally drama-filled situation with, really, no drama is a testament to the team my husband and I have formed over many years. Where I drop off, he picks up and vice versa. It is hard to pinpoint when that happened exactly, but it clearly happened before this. I acknowledge that I dropped a ton in this situation and he picked it up handily and cheerfully.

There was some messy business at my old job, saying goodbye to people I loved and had worked with for nearly 17 years. It is hard to think of being far from my daughter, in College in Chicago. There was crying. Quite a bit.

But no looking back. I arrived in California three weeks ago and moved into that apartment I had never seen, three suitcases in hand and four boxes shipped. I bought the other things I needed after I arrived. I spent the first weeks sleeping on an inflatable mattress and am still using a TV box as a dining room table awaiting the glorious day furniture arrives. My son and husband will join me when the school year is over. Our daughter will join us briefly before school starts after a planned summer internship in South Dakota.

It feels very much like I just teleported into a new life. I started my new job right after I moved. It’s good so far, interesting. My new employer let me leave two weeks after I arrived to travel to London because they understand it is important. There is a fabulous Farmers market in my town on Sundays and I’ve tried fruits and vegetables I’ve never even seen before. I’ve been to the beach. Hiked high above the Bay and watched the sun rise. I started back in a yoga class and, in quintessential California style, even started working with a personal trainer. Poor man. Such a mountain to climb.

What will happen next season with these Arsenal tickets I have no idea. It is a 10-hour flight from Northern California to London. This last trip was tough. I worry about whether Arsene Wenger will survive and what the team will be without him. I worry about what they will be with him, whether they’ll still be Arsenal if our stars are sold.

But we’ll see what presents itself next season and whether I can take it on. Taking the good things offered, no matter how outlandish, is a weird habit that I started two years ago.

It has worked majestically so far.

Second verse same as the first

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There are many songs I would gladly forget. That line from one of them was on my mind all day as we were headed to Hampton Court Palace, the country home of Henry VIII. Yes, the Herman Hermit’s song had nothing to do with the monarch Henry VIII, but what did it have to do with? She wouldn’t have a Willy or a Sam, but who would?

Some things are better left unexamined.

We  planned to take a boat down the Thames to get to the palace. The boat leaves Richmond at 11 a.m. and there isn’t another one until much later in the day. We had miscalculated a bit getting off the Tube at Kew Gardens instead of Richmond, so our walk was longer than anticipated. We struggled with data on our phones and couldn’t get a clear bead on whether we were headed in the right direction.

We asked several people for the directions to St. Helena Pier, and were met with mostly shrugs. When we finally got to Richmond, we understood why. St. Helena Pier is as anonymous a starting point as you could ever imagine. If imagining anonymous piers is your thing. (I do not judge.)

We didn’t have time to grab a bite, but we managed to get to the Pier on time. We boarded the boat and headed down the Thames, changing boats at Kingston. It was a lovely ride, and fun to see all the stately private houses and decks that were carefully constructed as peaceful places to watch the boats go by. There were many people rowing and sailing on the river since it was a school holiday.

We arrived at Hampton Court Palace, and made a quick detour to grab a quick lunch at the chain Pizza Express before returning to the palace.

Hampton Court was used by quite a few royals after Henry VIII, but we spent most of our time there focused on his use of the castle, visiting his living quarters, an exhibit about his life, his kitchens, and wine cellars. We walked through the church he attended as the head once he had left the Catholic Church, which had refused to allow him to annul his marriage of more the 20 years to his first wife. Also the “real tennis court,” which was indoors, to our surprise. Probably not to the surprise of anyone who knows the difference between tennis and “real tennis.” I can now count myself among them.

Henry VIII lived quite a train wreck of a life; it was a thousand times worse for his many wives who variously struggled to produce male heirs and to otherwise keep their difficult man happy (and themselves alive). Palaces are rarely comfy and cozy, but this one felt especially cold.

We had a bit of extra time so we spent some time in William III’s quarters and in his privy garden, which has been restored to its original state. The garden was in bloom with spring flowers, looking lovely.

We took the train back and met some friends at the Angel for a few beers. Several of us went over to The Sichuan and had dinner. Crispy duck, kung pao chicken, pork with cabbage, and wonton soup.

It was a feast Henry VIII would certainly approve, in a different time and place.

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Monday monday

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I find myself in crowds when I am in London, most notably as I am entering the Emirates. But I never saw a crowd like the one that was heading across London bridge and down the streets of City on Monday morning as we were making our way to find breakfast near 9 a.m.. Droves of people in suits, skirts, dress shoes making their way to work. An army of workers.

My husband said it reminded him of T. S. Eliot’s poem, The Waste Land.

A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,

I had not thought death had undone so many.

Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,

And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.

Literary thoughts are usually not in my head. I thought they looked like cows being herded.

 

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Undone by death, or cows? You be the judge.

We were planning to stop by the Borough Market and grab breakfast in our way to the Museum of London. However, the market was in the process of being set up. There were a few vendors ready to sell bread and croissants, but we stopped into Monmouth coffee shop next to the market and grabbed a flat white and a croissant from the bakery next door shop to hold us over until we could find breakfast.

 

We worked our way over near the museum, encountering St. Lawrence Jewry church, where there was to be a piano recital at 1 p.m. We decided to try to stop back there after visiting the museum.

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It tasted better than it looks

We stopped to have breakfast at Vital Ingredient, just up the street from the museum. It’s a chain in the approximate genre of Pret a Manger. I had what was called an acai smoothie, which consisted of some fruit ground up with acai sauce, topped with fresh fruit, yogurt, coconut, and seeds.

The Museum of London was fascinating, although I have to admit I hit the wall before I saw all of it. It covers the history of London, including from before London was a city. London has been a city for around 2,000 years, so adding on history before it was formed means we are looking at a whole lot of years. The museum displays tons of artifacts from every period, many of which were pulled from the Thames.

I tried to see it with a broad brush rather than in detail, which I think helped me draw some important, fast, and hopefully accurate conclusions: the river is the lifeblood of the city and always has been and big change comes in globs and often with outside influence. For example, there was really not much change in tools and household goods for hundreds and hundreds of years; but there was massive change in objects associated with the Roman invasion the first century A.D. You could see it blooming before your eyes. There was also tremendous change associated with the various fires across the history of the city. Much like a forest that burns, a city must regenerate itself, and when it does, it often does so in a highly progressive way.

We left and went to St. Lawrence Jewry for the piano recital. Such a surprise inside that cathedral. The outside had been dingy and dark, but the inside was as beautiful, light, and well-maintained as any cathedral I’ve ever seen. The recital that day was two sonatas, Mozart’s Sonata in D major, and Prokofiev Sonata No. 8 in B flat major, played by Antonia Suhanova, a young pianist working on her masters degree in piano performance. She was wonderful and the music was lovely; it was a nice midday treat.

We had theatre tickets that night for Travesties, Tom Stoppard’s play about the lawsuit brought against James Joyce over a pair of pants worn by an actor in Oscar Wild’s play, The Importance of Being Earnest. We headed over to the theatre district and stopped in a Peruvian restaurant named Casita Andina, which serves tapas. We ordered a burnt orange salad, ocopo chips, avocado fritters, hake, tamal, panna cotta, and a chocolate bombe. I think that was my favorite restaurant experience in London this trip. The food was beautiful and delicious and fun, in a fun atmosphere.

I was full of trepidation that I would fall asleep during the play because I was still feeling jet lagged and I remembered that Tom Stoppard plays require some intellectual effort. I took the precaution if having a latte at the restaurant.

The play was terrific. I still found myself nodding off in the first bit once the lights went off, but the play was so lively, funny, creative and entertaining, I was quickly captivated and sorry when it was over. The big Tom Stoppard play playing in London while we were there was Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, with Daniel Radcliff of Harry Potter fame in one of the lead roles. I’m delighted it was too hard to get tickets to that. It would be hard to imagine we would have had more fun than at Travesties.

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The set of Travesties at the Apollo Theatre

In contrast with all those workers we swam against in the morning, it was a long and busy day of play, so we headed back to the Citizen M for our night’s sleep.

That latte which didn’t completely do its job of keeping me awake during the play did an excellent job overnight.

Man spread and the guerilla girls

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It was a long flight. I was situated between two men, both engaging in Man Spread, where they both helped themselves to their left and right armrests (translation: no arm rest for me, plus both have their elbows in my small space). They were also both spread down below, knees in my space. I didn’t sleep much, even resorted to writing a rare post during the flight. I think my typing woke them both up. (Good!) I topped it off with an epic nosebleed, during which I noticed they kept to themselves.

The Border at Heathrow was packed, and it took a long time to clear it. My husband was coming in from Rome where he had spent the week conducting research for a novel he’s working on while our son was on a Spring Break trip to Memphis and Nashville with his high school orchestra. My husband’s flight must have arrived 15 minutes before mine and I could see him three rows in advance of me at the Border.

Naturally, he was engaged in animated conversation with the person in front of him. My husband isn’t exactly an extrovert, but he does always seem to be able to strike up a conversation wherever he is. It makes traveling with him much more interesting than traveling alone; he gets us into situations. After we got through the Border, I briefly met his acquaintance, who happened to be a 21-year old rabid Arsenal fan from Perth Australia, in for the Man City match. They met on the flight from Rome. The Australian is now my Facebook friend. My husband, who has no problem friending everyone in real life, is not on Facebook.

It was nearly 6 p.m. when we got to our hotel, Citizen M Tower Hill. It is a hotel that would come in handy in the rain showers that often greet us in London, so close to the Tower tube stop is it. The requisite rain showers have not occurred so far. I do not complain.

My husband and I are divided on the Citizen M. It has a very cute lobby, but the rooms are very, very small, especially as I compare them with others we’ve had in this price point. My husband really likes the layout, especially in the bathroom. Although it is tiny, it has a fair amount of storage, notably a giant drawer under the King bed. It is similar to the Z Shoreditch we stayed in for our very first visit last season, in that the bed fills an entire alcove so the person on the interior side has to crawl over the person on the exterior side to use the restroom at night, but can’t turn on only the restroom light to be able to see where that toilet might be.  It does have more fancy amenities than the Z, such as an electronic “mood” board, which can be used to raise the shades, request a wake up call, and report one’s mood. My mood is good, albeit a bit cramped.

20170401_183122We headed out into the evening across the Tower Bridge to get a bite to eat, settling on Cote Brasserie on St. Katherine Docks. It is right across from a chain called The Slug and Lettuce. Although I’ve walked by this chain many times, somehow I’ve never chosen to eat there. At the Brasserie Cote I had roasted chicken with wild mushroom sauce and my husband had the Beef Bourguignon. Both delicious. We topped it off with profiteroles.

The Tower Bridge was lovely at night. The Shard also was looking beautiful on our walk home.

The next day, we woke up to a lovely, sunny morning. We had received many warnings from Arsenal by email that we needed to be at the stadium an hour early to clear Security given the recent terror attack in London. Since we got a late start in the morning, we decided to head over to the Tate Modern. Hard to beat a free museum when you don’t have much time to spend. I don’t know that much about art, and even less about Modern Art.  The only artists I recognized at the Tate Modern were Picasso and Andy Warhol.

In the same room with Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe study was some protest art from a collective called the Guerilla Girls, a group of female artists of the mid-80s addressing the paucity of female artists whose work was being displayed by the major galleries.

The Guerilla Girls must have been successful, because the Tate Modern is teeming with the work of female artists. I found it to be quite interesting, and I show some of it below.

If only the Guerilla Girls could take on Man Spread.