When I first arrived in London the city was gritty, grotty and groovy. It was love at first sight. I was running away from the bourgeois, the bland and the boring. A lifetime has gone by since that first flutter of excitement, the raw feeling of raw power. Everything about London was untried and I wanted it all. I wanted a Mini Cooper, a Mary Quant tartan skirt, and Birken’s bangs.
She was not yet a handbag, just a leggy girl with a gap-tooth smile and world fame ahead. (Years later living in Paris and in the midst of a high drama and rudderless love affair I wanted, needed, a Birken bag to go with it. I got one. It now sits on my London windowsill. Aware of its accrued value –Birkens are heirlooms and appreciate like vintage cars or fine Bordeaux- I am afraid to take it out lest I am purse-snatched leaving my only heir with a much diminished inheritance, the result of disastrous family management and even more disastrous South American politics).
C’est la vie.
After a long-winded circuit through five countries and three continents I am back in London and it is nothing like that first time.
The city is awfully clean, bordering on the aseptic, and money rules which takes out most of the fun.
The buildings still stand but have undergone less than fortunate transformations. The gallery on the corner of Royal Avenue and The King’s Road which use to house a smelly, funky shop selling tie-dye shirts hanging from the ceiling in a swirl of hash sold by indolent young birds draped over bean bags is still there, but it is now a MacDonald’s.
London is well organized and full of recently acquired foreign talent with a knack for sales and services.
They will sell you anything, look after your every need, and provide you with exceptional online retail; you can now go broke without ever leaving the comforts of home.
What was it that Napoleon said about the England? “A nation of shopkeepers”.
The English quarantine is both highly civilized and ruthless, which describes rather well the foundations of Imperial Britain. We had to take 4 PCR tests to get into the country: one in the US, one here on Day 2, another Day 8, and an optional “Early Release” on Day 5. At 200 dollars a pop if the virus doesn’t get you, the debt will.
We are presently at the Day 5-stage and so far have received two phone calls from unfailingly polite agents -with rigorous Gestapo-like training- after every other sentence I was questioned on whether I felt comfortable with the conversation or preferred to stop. On one of the calls I could hardly understand a word –it was probably made from a call center in Mumbai- so I kept agreeing with everything, regardless, “Most comfortable, yes, please go on” (“Knock yourself out, dude, have no idea what you are saying anyhow”). Then an agent came to visit yesterday. Was totally uninterested in me, just wanted to check my spouse, who duly lowered his face mask and showed passport –they are not allowed to enter the house or touch anything. Good. That is why this is working.
The social distancing is no problem since the English have always kept each other at arm’s length, all that kissing (very Continental) and hugging (mostly an American thing) has no place in their everyday lives.
Since we have come for an indeterminate amount of time –exhausted by the hating, the unraveling and the sheer stupidity of a region set on destroying itself, every opportunity thrown to the wind, every sane project destroyed, instead bent on robbing people of their hopes and their money- I feel I must take sides and become, albeit unconvinced, a Brexiteer. I feel more at home when I embrace the home grown story line and stand together with the locals.
So there I am: a convinced Francophile going full blast Rule Britannia.
The world is round which means you can finish exactly where you started.
I believe we can freely roam everywhere as long as we understand we are masters nowhere. One place is as good or as bad as the next. A place is special not because of its monuments or natural beauty. It is because of what you learn from it, it is because you happened to live and love in that particular place and went crazy with hope or grief.
A place where you left your heart becomes a place where you can go back to find it.
"The long and winding road
That leads to your door
Will never disappear
I’ve seen that road before”
The Beatles, 1969.
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