It was a dark and stormy night. We were heading to dinner on the other side of London, late, buckets of rain coming down from the menacing skies. Running to grab my Uber I got tangled in some low tree branches and my cheap umbrella folded over me dropping what felt like a waterfall on my ridiculously expensive blow dry; going to the hairdresser when a gale is in the forecast was never a good idea.
Our host lived faraway basically more or less north of Piccadilly and through the slanting rain I try to memorize the streets we are traversing, like some clever late-day Hansel leaving imaginary breadcrumbs just in case we get lost.
We arrive no longer fashionably late, just late, me looking like a wet cat. Dinner is warm comfort food, lots of bubbly and a lively host with an inexhaustible string of life stories; his life so colourful there is no need for embellishment.
After a long and fun après-dinner and way past my bedtime -which every year gets closer to sundown- we emit all the appropriate thank you noises and make our way out; the rain has stopped but we are greeted by a biting wind, the tail of the Arctic blast. Standing on the sidewalk with no time to dilly-dally, dry hair now whipping about my face and fading eyesight, I open the Uber app, scroll down for options and promptly click on our home address; a car arrives tout de suite. Sweet.
The ride takes forever and I fail to recognize at least one imaginary breadcrumb. The route becomes more and more foreign, wide avenues, blocks of Soviet-looking flats and dark commercial buildings, no Georgian houses, no Palladio facades, no bright lights just one big city.
Trying to make out the names of the streets I see a sign "Camden Town" zoom by. Forever logical I decide the chauffeur is being fuel efficient, this is probably just a better route, a way to evade traffic, or maybe some London périphérique I never knew about? The city grows bigger and bigger, each block emptier than the next. I am now sure we are going to be kidnapped. Oh boy. I had read about it, and now it’s happening to us.
Finally in the middle of a narrow street the driver stops.
“You are here”
“Here? Where?!!” I answer looking around the totally unfamiliar surroundings: the street is not bad, just pitch-black and certainly not home.
“Your address, Spring Place” says the driver showing me his phone.
Except we live in Chelsea and not on Spring but on Sprimont and this is not our house. Merde, alors. I immediately realize my mistake, scrolling down fast in the dark looking for an address was never a good idea.
We ask if he can take us to the correct and probably very remote address, but he says he lives four streets down and anyhow his shift is over. Best he can do is to call another Uber and have it pick us up at a better-known location.
And that is how we come to stand in front of the Kentish Town West (this last is very important) Tube Station next to a noisy bar filled with pierced and fully-tattooed patrons drinking pints. Girls in pink hair and torn mesh stockings pour out of the bar each time followed by a blast of heavy metal music, flotsam pass on their way to catching a train, somebody is sleeping on the sidewalk. Either sleeping or maybe just drunk, dead I am sure not. Still. The Tube information booth is closed, nobody of any authority around.
We look like aliens, dressed in our very proper evening clothes, shades of couture, me sporting the only real good piece of jewelry I own. Oh boy. Now I am sure we will not be kidnapped but robbed and strangled and left to die gasping in the gutter. My husband thinks we are perfectly safe, sweet lamb.
Time goes by, we are not getting any younger and still no Uber; my optimistic husband thinks he will find a cab (!) and stands in the middle of the road where he immediately risks being mowed down by a speeding car and still no Uber. Finally Uber calls to say they have arrived (!!!)
“Where r u”? (I speak Uber).
“In front but I can´t see you”. Takes us a while to figure he is at another Kentish Station not West.
“Can you please come here?” and in a supplicant’s voice and for the first time in my life I play the age card, “We are old people. We are lost and cold and afraid”.
In life you gotta do what you gotta do and use every advantage much as it may hurt. Some minutes later Uber appears to pick us up –we put on what I presume is a convincing elderly hobble- and delivers us to the safety of our home.
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