While Mom and Aunt Carolyn ventured to London from a quick
visit to Edinburgh, Ellen and I arrived in the city on an early morning flight
and had hours to kill before we could check into our next hotel. This marked
the worst day of my Contiki Cough which Ellen and I both noted was far more
‘enthusiastic’ a cold than anyone else had.
“That’s because you coughed it directly into my face.” I
told Ellen who disregarded that statement. I will note here that I have never
before had more snot circulating through my sinuses. Blowing my nose resulted
in astonishment from anyone within earshot. I pleaded with Ellen to let us
slump in a café with a hot cup of tea and so we found a warm little spot where
we ate breakfast and let the morning slip away.
It was chilly in London, a refreshing change from the hot
Mediterranean air and I retired my green snappy towel to the depths of my dirty
clothes bag.
I was elated to see Mom and Gigs hop out of a taxi in front
of our hotel. We hugged and giggled and filed up to our hotel room where
everyone sat to read the information booklets and leftover magazines from plane rides past.
We went from darting around a new city each day to inching
along crowded sidewalks while Mom mulled over stopping in each store. Having
discovered Moms’ budding interest in trinket shopping a few years ago when we
flew all the way to New Zealand for her to buy a coffee cup, I had mentally
prepared myself to move slowly and be relatively uninterested. What it lacked
in adrenaline it made up for in verbal prose but I’ll get to that later.
The upside to London is the multiple visits we’ve all made here
over time. Snobs aren’t we? We did not need to see the sites or wait in the lines
and instead we spent our first day with no destination in mind and set out to
the streets like seasoned pros, like locals with no plans for that day.
Our second day of London was a ticklish kind of day where we
had high tea in a fancy hotel and then took a cab to the West End to see a
play. Snobs aren’t we? Once linked up with Mom and Giggles, I imagine Ellen
felt a myriad of things. Sometimes she would barrel many yards ahead of us and
when we finally caught up to her she would have already mapped out a route or a
plan for our next few hours. Other times she was plugged into her cell phone or
resigning herself to the back seat of our group and would offer no opinions on what she wanted to do that day.
I very much enjoyed being a bystander to Carolyn’s creative
inner-workings. Gigs takes in a scene with a sharp eye and a quick tongue. To
you, he may be an old man hobbling down the street with a cane. To Gigs, he’s a
retired ship captain on his way to meet a haggard steward wench for pint. She
concocted the tale of Snotty Snotkins and a few other fun characters.
At some point she wound up sitting next to this man on the subway.
She eyed him slowly, her stare lingering on his feathered hairdo and without
hearing the first peep of Carolyn’s thoughts, the four of us choked back tears
and laughter. Snobs aren’t we?
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