Saturday, December 30, 2006

The man who is tired of London is tired of life

Well, I would have updated sooner, but we were in the sketchiest hotel of all time and it didn’t have internet (or ensuite bathrooms. or window curtains that resembled curtains rather than huge ragged muumuus), so I could not. Now we are in London, the whole family, together again, making our way through the merrie olde capital of merrie olde England.

Which involves, in our case, lots and lots and lots of hauling luggage up and down flights and flights of stairs (especially on Daddy’s part). In the sketchy hotel, we were up three flights of stairs, and if we wanted to see each other, we had to go down three flights of stairs and up three flights of different stairs, because that’s just how the building was constructed. Cruelly. With cruelty in the hearts of the builders. Now we are in a flat that is up 78 steps; and my mother and father had to carry all the luggage up by themselves because my sisters and I were off seeing a play.

(We saw Wicked. It’s Idina Menzel’s last day on the West End, and it was great fun. I’m not going to say anything about my sisters’ gullibility because I don’t want to embarrass them.)

And my mum and I went to the British Library, where they had many fantastic things and I could read the letters in secretary hand but not very well because the light was dim. And there was this tremendous Waterstone’s near the sketchy hotel; its tremendousness was incredibly tremendous and extensive. I would have appreciated it more had I not been running up and down all the stairs there (London is not wheelchair friendly!) trying to locate my father and sister; however, I am not so dead to joy as to fail to appreciate it at all, and thus it gets a mention here.

And I have a nice new copy of The Ground Beneath Her Feet (thus far my favorite Rushdie book), and I am going to go and read it. Or else watch an episode of Friends. Decisions, decisions.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

But your sisters know so many instances of my own gullibility that they would not find it embarrassing at all if you were to email me and tell me all about theirs.