Hi, everybody! Greetings from London, England, home of the XXVII th Olympic Summer Games! In the States, they keep writing about “rainy London.” Balderdash! We’re having perfect summer weather, temps in the 80’s and sunny! One of the things I have noticed is that they’ve moved the Marble Arch. When I visited in 1986, it was eight blocks from our hotel. Today, it’s clear on the other side of town!
Seriously, these new hotels are hyper-modern, facing The Docklands, the air punctuated by only the merest hint of fish. Behind the Japanese screen beside my bed, I found a blank wall. We’re on the 22nd floor, which isn’t bad— a non-smoking corridor. The wind howls at night, shaking the panorama window. Using a walker, my 91-year-old mom takes the elevator everywhere she goes. The “In case of fire” signs are very pretty, but if the place gets torched, she ain’t goin’ nowhere. They offered to put us on the third floor, but with my canine sense of smell, if anyone has smoked in a room since its creation, my sinuses scream bloody murder.
The first time I visited London was in 1968 on a photo expedition with classmates from Moosegrave College. “Swinging London,” we stayed at a hotel under renovation, the bathtubs filled with chunks of plaster. I smoked cigs on the Tube, got clubbed on the head during an anti-war demonstration in front of the American Embassy and scraped a London taxi with our rental car. “Wha’s your bloody problem, guv’nor?” roared the taxi driver.
“Help! We’re SO SORRY!” I yelped back through the open window of our auto.
“Oh! Yanks!” he replied. “Try t’ learn t’ drive onna left side a the road, guv’!” he suggested, threading his way through the roundabout.
Reaching for still another cigarette, I was bathed in sweat.
But enough about me! You want to know about London! First thing Sunday morning, out of nostalgia, I took the Tube and a bus over to my old haunts. Russell Square! I knew I was in the right neighborhood, since every square inch of grass is covered in dog poo.
Even as I watch, a stolid matron, with Fido on a leash, stands waiting while he does his bidness. Giving me a haughty stare, she turns on her heels and leads him away, continuing their morning constitutional.
I duck into a local greengrocer to buy some Cadbury milk chocolate bars. It’s a “when in England…” thing. There’s only the one check-out aisle and about ten people in the queue. I’m busy fingering my British currency as I near the girl at the till. Suddenly, an Indian woman approaches, waving a bottle of dishwashing liquid. She pantomimes her desire to crash the queue. Smiling sickly, showing a mouth full of gold teeth, she gives me an imploring look. What the hell… I let her in.
“Daft bugger!” the tall man in a pin-striped suit, in line behind me, complains.
“She’s only got the one item!” I protest.
“Ho ho ho!” he retorts.
Approaching the counter, the Indian woman reaches under her sari and pulls out two oranges, a packet of crisps, a carton containing a half dozen eggs, a quart of milk, a six-pack of loo paper and a full-length floor mop!
“My bad!” I remark to the people in line behind me.
“If you don’t know the customs, keep outta the way!” a prim lass admonishes me.
I promise her I will.
– – –
The Olympics are my meat, I’ve had tons to do with them. My older sister Carol dated a U.S. Olympic kayaker named Helmut Schmidt in high school. You can imagine how my folks felt about our Jewish American Princess dating a kraut. Helmut did what he could to show respect. There was Carol, her nose in the air, parading around Oxburg, Maryland in 1963 in a “U.S.A.” sweatshirt from the Olympic team assortment. What a joke!
The 1972 Olympics were a big year. When the Israelis got murdered in Munich, it only took me three weeks to crank out a cheap, fast novel based on the events. Stationed in Mannheim, Deutschland, once again I erroneously believed myself to be in possession of information no one else had: how Palestinian terrorists think, what it is to be a Jew, the German mentality. Hier spricht man Deutsch, I truly thought I nailed it. Totally worthless trash, no publisher would even consider my opus.
I was an official at the Police Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden in 1999 (full name, WPFG, World Police and Fire Games). The organizers paid us in signature clothing from the event, covered in logos advertising the games. For a week’s work, I got a T-shirt, a parka, a windbreaker and a pair of jogging trousers. They also fed us.
In 2008, I fell in love with petite blond American gymnast Shawn Johnson, same as everyone else. Her picture was on milk cartons! No longer competing, she is covering the current Olympics for NBC’s TODAY.com.
I also remember in 2008 when Michael Phelps broke Mark Spitz’s record, winning eight gold medals in a single Olympic Games. Where do they get these guys?
– – –
I’m hammering on my laptop. All is not lost! Sunday afternoon, I went to Hyde Park and saw a performance by The Razzles, a drum ‘n’ bass Rastafari ska band from Jamaica. They played for an audience of 30,000 enraptured fans, the smell of weed pungently wafting through the air. Finding a pretty blond girl, I thought, “YES!” I sidled up to her in the crowd. “Hi!” I chirped.
“Hi!” she replied, giving me a radiant smile. Something about the accent…
“Where are you from?” I asked jocularly.
“San Francisco! You?”
Shit! I didn’t come to England to spend time with a Californian, no matter how pretty a young thing. After a few short sentences, I continue to wade through the crowd, blowing her off.
On my own for dinner Sunday night, I ate in a Chinese restaurant that is famous among journalists. This storefront cube with its plastic silverware and grimy tables has no British sobriquet. Its name is spelled out in three Chinese characters, in neon, over the entrance. In the window, a side of pork rotates on a spit, a side of beef rotates on a spit and a whole chicken rotates on a spit under the relentless glow of heat lamps. The wizened, toothless, bearded owner behind the counter speaks only Cantonese. Pointing and shaking one’s head, however, functions sufficiently to get him to slice off chicken, pork and beef, piling them on a greasy paper plate. He then scribbles in pencil on a scrap of Chinese newspaper the amount owed in pounds sterling. The only possible reason to eat here is because it is guaranteed the cheapest meal in London!
I found out about it in the 1980’s from my best friend, a journalist from Malta. He used to live in Brixton. Since retiring, he has moved back to Valletta, the capital of Malta. He insists on speaking solely in Maltese, a semi-Arabic language (think “Tunisian plus”). So we really have nothing left to say to one another.
– – –
Left to my own devices, I bundle my mom into a cab Monday afternoon and take her to Harrods. She buys four of those ridiculously elaborate gold-colored Christmas Present Gift Boxes with Harrods’ world-famous logo on the front for her lady friends back home. I buy two dress shirts. When in Harrods…
As soon as people discover I’m American, they want an explanation of James Holmes. Veddy British, they then lecture me about the prevalence of gun violence in “The Colonies.”
That night, at a pub, I mention to some university students who are deep into their lime-and-lagers how much I enjoyed Sunday’s music. I’m scraping by on ginger beer. “Wha’?” they ask me. “Sunday at Hyde Park? The Razzles? Blimey! Were you there? How c’n that be? We didn’ see you!”
30,000 fans, stoned out of their gourds.
“Yeah, yeah,” I assure them, careful not to let them spill any lime-and-lager on my new Harrods shirt. “I didn’t see you either!”
“Ya wan’ a go t’ Stonehenge?” they ask.
So, Tuesday, we go to Stonehenge, a “megalithic monument” from 2800 BC on the Salisbury Plain. A Druid astrological calendar built out of boulders, it’s a two-hour drive 90 miles southwest of London, on the way to Exeter.
– – –
Hello! Stonehenge. We rented a microbus and drove here this a.m. My young companions smoked dope and laughed all the way down the M3 and onto the A303. A cohesive group, even the ladies wore Leeds United football jerseys. Only a little terrified at driving on the left side of the road, it felt like old times. Student architects, my passengers’ school assignment was to chart “the ‘henge.” Being the wanker most steady on his feet, I did the pacing off. “That’s 128 steps!” I called out, the girls brandishing clipboards, the boys busy sketching on portable easels.
A rather strange, tall lady in a tartan coat, peasant skirt and brown leather boots, her yellow hair braided into pigtails, wandered in the opposite direction. We kept running into each other.
“Sláinte!” she offered.
“I don’t know what that means. Are you looking for a stairway to heaven?”
“You’re the cropper!” she laughed. “Want a tumble?” Gad! I just noticed the blood-red fingernails, the creaminess of her skin, her hazel eyes.
“What?” I teased. “A quickie behind the monoliths?” She couldn’t be serious…
Freud would have a field day!
She let that pass.
When my classmates completed their drawings, we cracked open the hamper and brought out the chicken sandwiches and bottles of brew.
“What are you drinking?” asked Penelope.
“It’s Fentimans Ginger Beer. Very potent stuff!”
She snickered.
I went to my wandering waif and asked her to join us. “What’s your name, by the way?”
“Willow, by the way,” she blew into my ear, her pointy white teeth nibbling on my earlobe, a hand exploring inside my leather jacket. By the time I backed away, she had unbuttoned three shirt buttons!
“Hey, everybody, this is Willow!”
“Come eat!” they chorused.
When we finished, they rolled and lit more joints. It was obvious how they intended to spend the afternoon!
“What are you doing out here?” I asked Willow, the two of us wandering off by ourselves.
“Ah, but that would be telling!” she chuckled, hanging onto my jacket lapels with both hands. “Naw, I’m here with my fiancé. Big painter named Stig.”
Huh? “So where is he?”
“He’s out on Salisbury Plain painting the ‘henge in its entirety.”
“In its entirety.”
“In its entirety,” she repeated, pulling me down on top of her on the grass.
“You have to stop doing this!”
“Otherwise… what?” she croaked, smirking, her eyes huge, only an inch from my face.
“I’ll eat you alive!”
The Salisbury Plain is mucho flat. People could see us from every whichway. Cars on the road. Tour groups!
Never-the-less, I was mightily aroused.
Willow was three steps ahead of me. Her busy, sure hands made quick work of my apparel: Jacket, shirt, tee, belt, fly, pants. She peeled me like an onion. “Where’d you get that shirt?” she asked. “Harrods?”
“Yes… Right… Harrods.”
“Eh!” she grunted. “I was attempting a stab at humor.”
Not bothering to answer, I kissed her fully on the mouth, our tongues wrestling for dominance.
“You’re the sharp kisser!” she noted. “You taste of chicken.”
“You taste like honey,” I told her truthfully.
“I sucked a mint,” she smirked, mounting me adroitly.
We did the down and dirty right there among the stones, barely hidden from view. The wind kicked up brown dust. Rutting like dogs in heat, I was a little too engrossed to consider whether a school class of children might wander upon us, whether we might receive a visit by the law or some other such cal. Mercifully, nothing like that happened.
“Now you can say you completed a pop pass at Stonehenge!” Willow chuckled. I felt my heart flutter. “I’m not bawdy, I simply have Druid blood,” she explained.
“You have very nice blood,” I corrected her, nuzzling her golden hair and biting an ear. I loved her pointy, British nose.
“Aren’t you the one!” she drawled. “I think I’ve awakened a kraken!”
“I know what that is!” I exclaimed. “That’s a sea monster!”
Dragging me with her, we marched across the plain about half a mile to her fiancé Stig. He was busy at his easel, painting. Your usual bearded bohemian, he was a dynamite painter! I was duly impressed. “Damn good!” I marveled.
“Didn’ keep you from doin’ my missus,” Stig growled, eyeing me balefully.
“No.”
“No, what? No, you didn’t? Or no, you did?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I’m afraid I did,” I told him sincerely.
Long pause. A grimace. “No bother!” muttered Stig.
Willow guffawed. Yanking my arm, she called, “We’ll be at the parking apron. Leastways I will!”
“I’ll see you at the car!” replied Stig, painting madly in the afternoon sunlight.
“C’n ye ag’in?” Willow asked me, reverting to Scottish, breathing happily in my ear.
“Let’s try the floor of the microbus. I think the seats fold down.”
I’m telling you, this I never expected in Merry Olde England, moments before the Olympics.
I get the feeling this country is playing games on me.
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