Some things are worth the wait. Is my first blog from Europe one of them? Only the seven minutes or so it takes you to read this post will tell.
On May 16th, kid Sister Stacy and I boarded a plane for Chicago and then we sat in the Chicago airport waiting for another plane. After some disgusting pizza (shame on you Wolfgang Puck) we saw the bird that would carry us to Fairy Land.
Staring at those glowing red letters I was tempted to take it as a cosmic sign. The amber light reminding me this was the last time I’d be home in more than a year. Maybe I was supposed to think of America as a Motel 6, “We’ll leave the light on for you.” If I were a character in a Paulo Coelho book, that’s what I would have believed. The harbingers that I recognize, though, tend to roost in a nest of logic. So when the letters on the plane spelled out AMERICAN instead of VIRGIN ATLANTIC or KLM, I took it as a sign that seating would be cramped and we’d have to pay for alcohol.
When I awoke in London, hurtled forward through space and time (zones), the sun had already risen on a new day. Stacy and I emerged two hours and two trains later on the streets of East London, determined to find my friend Chris’s house without the aid of a map.
By the end of the day we had ridden atop a doubledecker bus (though the locals only go up top when the bottom’s full), been to a street fair, swam in a pool, and cooked gnocchi. While only a quarter of those activities sound British, rest assured there was never a moment I forgot where I was.
The next day Stacy and I decided to explore the city without Chris and his girlfriend, Danni. On their recommendation we took the tube to Westminster. Before we had even made it ground level, Big Ben loomed above us. From all the films and pictures I had seen, never did I guess it was so impressive. Much like footage of New York skyscrapers and bridges, I had to see it in person to care.
Perhaps you are better able to appreciate the correlation between real space and two-dimensional renderings.
As we made our way around the Parliament building, two media storms were brewing. The first was unavoidable.
Winston Churchill looks on as thousands protest the government bombings in Sri Lanka.
As we walked on I noticed that journalists were gathered on a nearby lawn. Rather than point their cameras at the protests, though, they aimed at the House of Parliament. In the days following I learned I had been there the day that virtually every representative had demanded to Speaker of the House’s resignation. This was the first time in the governing body’s 300 year history that this had happened and it would have happened one day earlier if it weren’t for the fact that the Speaker ran the meetings. When representatives called a point of order demanding the resignation, the one they were trying to oust declared it wasn’t on the docket that day. Peace finally came when he started the next morning with a 30 second resignation speech.
Having bore witness to history, we spent the rest of the day doing touristy things.
Bangers and Mash is truly a smash.
