What a difference a year makes. In May 1996, I was preparing for my first trip overseas, a solo adventure to Prague, Czech Republic. A trip prompted by my angst over my disintegrating family unit, dread at the approach of age 30, and hope that I could turn a constant feeling of loneliness and despair on its head by doing something (uncharacteristically) brave by myself.
It worked, at least for a while. I had some great experiences, and my efforts to keep the afterglow of the Prague trip from fading worked for a couple months or so. As the summer ended, I began to experience what clinically depressed people (more about that in a sec) call "crashes"--periods of intense anguish--more and more frequently. These were most often brought on by work-related stress, interactions with my estranged parents and, well, let's face it--damn near anything. I wasn't sure I'd see the end of the year, let alone Europe again.
After the worst holiday season of my life, I promised my mom, who was having enough problems of her own, that I'd quit talking about checking out and go see a doctor instead. Dr. Schlitt diagnosed clinical depression, symptoms of which include a general lack of interest in work, exercise, and sex; change in sleep patterns (I slept more); and change in appetite (I ate less). He prescribed Paxil, which he said wouldn't "make me happy"--it would treat the chemical imbalance in my brain that kept me from being happy. Being happy was therefore still up to me. I could go on about how selective seritonin reuptake inhibitors work, but this is supposed to be about London, and I'll get to that in a minute, promise.
Anyway, suffice to say Dr. Schlitt said the medicine would start working in three to four weeks. The pharmacist told me four to six weeks. I started to feel better after one day.
Right around then the pressure at work eased off a bit. And I started thinking maybe a return to Europe might be possible after all.
In early spring, Mom began talking about taking a vacation to England. A revised version of the trip Mom, Dad and I were all going to go on some day. A celebration of how she'd made it through the traumatic events of the last year, changed but more or less intact. Did I want to go with her, she asked? Is a bear Catholic? Does the Pope shit in the woods?
Off Mom went to the travel agent. She and I would stay in London for a week, I'd go home, then she'd join a tour group in Paris and see the northwest of France for another week. Excellent!
Wednesday April 30/Thursday May 1--I met Mom at the British Airways check-in counter at San Diego's Lindbergh Field. The flight was totally non-eventful--we stopped once in Phoenix, took on more passengers, and flew on to Gatwick Airport outside of London.
Upon arrival, we dragged our bags to the Gatwick Express platform to catch a train into London. Sitting across from us on the train were an Indian man in his fifties and his twentysomething son. The conductor--an Englishman of Indian ancestry--came to check tickets and informed the Indians they'd bought the wrong type. The older Indian flew into a rage and began berating the conductor in broken English: "Your name please and number!"
"Gandhi," replied the conductor.
The Indian began to laugh hysterically. "Gandhi! Gandhi! Ha!" He turned to me, gesturing at the conductor. "Ha! You believe this? This, Gandhi! Ha! Meet Gandhi!" I smiled politely and wondered if the man was carrying any weapons.
Finally the Indian calmed down after the conductor gave up and left--though every minute or so he'd bark, "Ha! Gandhi!" to no one in particular, then lapse back into sullen silence.
We arrived in Victoria Station, our first historic landmark, huge and bustling. We took a cab through the West End to our lodgings, the Mountbatten Hotel. The weather was warmer than what we'd left in San Diego. Plus, it was Election Day and the Labour Party was poised to deal the Tories a blow that would make the Republicans' defeat in 1992 look like a dead heat. You could just feel the energy.
Unfortunately Mom and I weren't able to tap into it. Thoroughly jet-lagged, we walked a bit around the Covent Garden neighborhood, had dinner at the Two Brewers, a pub just down the street from our hotel, and crashed early, missing the all-night celebrations triggered by Labour's and Tony Blair's victory.
Friday May 2--Mom and I watched the BBC as we got ready to go on an open-air bus tour of the city. We sat on top of the double-decker, and there we met Anne from New Jersey. Her husband had come to London on business and she was doing some solo sightseeing, so we invited her to hang with us.
From the bus we saw Trafalgar Square and its great stone lions and statue of Lord Nelson; 10 Downing Street, where a much larger than usual crowd awaited the arrival of the new PM; the Houses of Parliament and its world-famous clock tower--"Big Ben" is actually the name of the tower's bell; Fleet Street, where London's newspapers used to have their offices; and the Tower Bridge across the river Thames.
The three of us got off the bus at the Tower of London. The 900-year old fortress didn't appear so sinister on this beautiful day. However, once inside and equipped with headphones and guided tour recordings, we began to hear about the Tower's grisly history. We walked past the Tower Green, where the most "favored" prisoners were executed (most of the executions actually took place on nearby Tower Hill); two of Henry VIII's wives were killed here.
The Crown Jewels were impressive; most date from 1661 and the coronation of Charles II. One of my favorites was a jeweled Orb with a cross on top of it. I told Mom, "That's the ball you always see the Kings and Queens holding in their portraits." Mom's funniest comment of the day had come earlier in the Royal Armories: we were looking at a huge suit of armor made to fit Henry VIII's considerable girth. Mom pointed out the large metal codpiece and said, "Looks like he thought quite highly of himself." Way to go, Mom.
We left the tower, ate sandwiches in the shade and hopped back on the bus, then got off again at Westminister Abbey, where coronations take place and monarchs, knights, politicians, clergy and poets are memorialized. For example, Elizabeth I and her sister, "Bloody" Mary I are entombed together in the Henry VII Chapel.
Mom and I said goodbye to Anne and returned to our hotel and dressed up (I traded my shorts for Levis and Reebok hiking boots for Doc Maartens) to see a play. Here we were in the West End, just walking distance from the theatre--pretty cool. We passed up "Miss Saigon" and "Les Miserables" for something less obvious: "An Inspector Calls", an intriguing mystery and morality play. Afterward we dined at the hotel restaurant, then called it a night.
Saturday, May 3--Mom and I took a cab to the Frames Rickards coach station for our day tour to Bath, Stonehenge and Salisbury. On the long coach trip down the motorway to Bath, we stopped at a British-style rest station, complete with grocery store, TraveLodge, restaurant, arcade and more--we Ugly Americans immediately began making comparisons to our own Stuckey's stores.
The City of Bath is extraordinary: crowds of tourists and streets jammed with coaches can't eclipse its beauty. The fronts of all buildings must by law be constructed with a special stone, giving the city a clean, unified look. We stood on the banks of the Avon and marvelled at the contrast between the soft gray buildings and brilliant green hills, topped by a light mist, and wished we had more time to spend there. But there were other sights to see: the Roman baths that give the city its name, with their eerie green waters, and the Bath Abbey. Before we knew it, we were back on the coach, discussing the paradox of quick tours like this--it's great to see the things we did yet in nearly every case the tours left us wanting more.
We cruised along the Salisbury Plain, gorgeous open country, toward the sight I'd most wanted to see in Britain: Stonehenge. I'd reduced my expectations a little as friends had told me you couldn't walk amongst the stones any more--you had to stand behind a fence. But visiting Stonehenge was a dream come true: you could actually get pretty close to the ancient monument and were separated from it only by a rope barrier. Lines from Spinal Tap's opus "Stonehenge" echoed in my mind as I circled the monument: "Stonehenge! Where the demons dwell/where the banshees live/and they do live well!" Though evidence of human sacrifice has been found at Stonehenge, no one really knows how it was constructed: "the tryptichs are twenty feet high!" I got a laugh out of Mom as we got back on the bus--I told her, "I don't care what anyone says, this place was built by aliens."
On to Salisbury and its great cathedral. Our guide told us unlike many of the other cathedrals and abbeys throughout Britain, Salisbury Cathedral is "of a piece," that is, it was constructed during one particular period, not amended or enhanced during later centuries. Also, the cathedral isn't tightly closed in by other buildings like the others we saw, so we were better able to get a sense of the size of it.
We returned to London and had dinner at what I assumed to be a unique Italian restaurant until we walked back to the hotel and saw two more of the same chain on the way. Later, I took a solo walk around Covent Garden, checking out the happening places. Outside one bar a Bobbie was trying to patch up an Aussie bloke who looked like he'd been hit in the face with a bottle. I also discovered that in London, grown men do not walk around the city at night in shorts, unlike a certain "Ugly American."
Sunday, May 4--I slept in a little and woke to true English springtime weather: cool air and a bit of rain. Mom and I walked through Trafalgar Square past the stone lions and live pigeons. We took the "tube"--the London Underground--to the London Museum, on the tip of a cabbie we'd met the day before. The London Museum is amazing: here, you can experience half a million years of history in three hours. We saw exhibits that took us from the ancient Roman city of Londinium through William the Conqueror's victory and Oliver Cromwell's time up to the "Swinging London" of the 1960's and the thriving city of today.
Mom had tea and I had a Coke at the museum café, then we tubed back to the hotel. As twilight came, we met up with a tour to explore the haunts of one of London's most infamous residents: Jack the Ripper. Again Spinal Tap lyrics played in my head: "You're a naughty one, Saucy Jack/You're a haughty one, Saucy Jack." In Jack's time the East End of London was a fetid slum; today it's still a little dodgy. Some East Indian boys walked past our group and slung a few taunts. We made it safely to a pub called the Alfred, where I sampled some much-maligned English food: a beef and vegetable pie. It was delicious!
Monday, May 5--Neither Mom nor I were bothered by dreams of Victorian-era murderers. In fact we just got up in time to have breakfast and make it back to the Frames Rickards coach station. First stop on our eastbound journey: Leeds Castle in Kent, one of Henry VIII's homes. The outside is more impressive than the inside, and the setting is magnificent: sheep graze on the rolling hills and swans swim in the sparkling lake. The county of Kent is known as the "Garden of England"--indeed it appeared more green and hilly than anywhere we'd seen in the West.
We arrived in Canterbury and found it filled with tour groups of bored, snotty French teenagers, all of whom seemed similarly unimpressed by Canterbury cathedral. Mom and I enjoyed it, though--the spot where Thomas à Becket was martyred is tastefully marked and quite moving.
After lunch in Canterbury, it was back on the coach and on to Dover. Chilly winds blew off the English Channel; good thing I was wearing shorts again. We stopped at an old bunker and looked out over the Channel. Alas, it was too foggy to see France. However, we did see the famed White Cliffs, the outside of grand Dover Castle, as well as the ferry dock, where a hovercraft started up and headed into the choppy waters.
If you've read this far and are still waiting for a first-hand account of London's late-night scene, I might as well tell you now: I didn't stay up very late. After getting up at 8 a.m. and cruising all over the city (or the country, for that matter), the last thing I wanted to do was check out the Ministry of Sound at 3 a.m. Maybe the next time I go to London, I won't get up before 2 p.m. and be able to write about live bands and techno clubs. Until then ...
Tuesday, May 6--Mom needed to do some laundry and found the hotel's prices about equivalent to purchasing an entirely new wardrobe. Our pals Nick and Greg at the concierge desk gave us directions to a coin-op laundry in Covent Garden, just a few blocks away.
We were in for a treat. There were a couple of other tourists there too; at least I assumed they were Americans because I hadn't seen many English folk wearing meshback caps with pictures of trout on the front. Mom and I got change from the aggressively attractive woman working the laundry, who wore her jet-black hair up in an askew bimbo-spout. She also sported a nose ring, a thorny-vine tattoo around her arm and an attitude out to here. She told us we'd have to do our own damn clothes, she was too bloody busy. She gave me a stern lecture on what coins to use and not to use, then rolled her eyes and muttered "blankety-blank Americans" when I had to ask her help in getting the washing machine started. Once she got the coins in and gave me a look that dared me to inconvenience her any further, I asked her, "Will you marry me?" A huge grin split her face and she warmed to Mom and me at last.
"You wouldn't want to marry me, I'm a real bitch," she said with a laugh. Her name was Claire and we chatted about London and San Diego for the next hour or so. We took photos with her and told her to look us up if she ever made it to California.
After dropping our clean clothes off at the hotel, we had lunch at a chain restaurant/coffee shop called Pret à Manger, which I presumed to be the Starbucks of London. Good sandwiches, though! Next we met up with our guide for our tour of The Beatles' London. The guide had been a film editor on "Magical Mystery Tour" and had remained friendly with the Fabs. The tour began at the original Hard Rock Café, where I marvelled at, and yes, actually touched, one of Jimmy Page's red Gibson doubleneck guitars. The tour took us past Abbey Road Studios (where I got Mom to take a picture of me on the crosswalk), the old Apple Records building, John Lennon's house and Paul McCartney's offices. We also saw such landmarks as Mick Jagger's Chelsea street, Jimmy Page's scary old house and the block where Jimi Hendrix choked on vomit. Way cool!
Mom and I had dinner at the Hard Rock--the prices were the same, just in pounds, not dollars (ouch!). Then I left Mom in the hotel room to hang out for a while in the Two Brewers pub. I'd been warned off mixing alcohol with antidepressants by Dr. Schlitt; however, I risked a pint of bitter and enjoyed every drop.
Wednesday, May 7--Up early once again and back to Frames Rickards for our final coach tour. We motored through Richmond and to Hampton Court--a palace much more interesting inside than out, for a change. We saw many rooms filled with amazing artistry and were awestruck by one room in particular, decorated floor to high ceiling with stunning arrangements of pistols, knives, armor and other weaponry.
The coach took us to the banks of the Thames, where we boarded a boat for lunch and the journey to Windsor Castle. The river and the walk up the hill offer extraordinary views of the castle, which was originally built by William the Conqueror and expanded by his successors. Mom and I went into the cathedral and saw the simple, elegant tombs of Henry VIII and George VI--interesting how the resting places of the "big guys" were among the least ornate. Outside the cathedral, we took in panoramic vistas of the surrounding countryside. From the castle you could also see the backyards and alleys of a poor neighborhood. A long way down from here to there, I thought.
Back at the hotel, I had a message from my work-pal Rick, who was also in London on holiday. I met him and his friends James and Denise, ex-San Diegans who'd lived some time in London and were soon heading back to America's Finest City. We dined in a French restaurant in Covent Garden and talked travel and music (biggest laugh of the night came when James referred to San Diego rock-and-roll legend Country Dick Montana's recordings as an "oeuvre"). Then we hit a Victorian-style pub where I again braved a pint. Ironically, this was the one night I felt like I could've stayed up for a while; however, the pubs close around 11 p.m. Alas.
Thursday, May 8--Mom and I taxied to Victoria Station, bound for Brighton, "Queen of the Sussex Coast." Mom wanted to go there to see the Royal Pavilion; I was keen to check out settings from The Who's "Quadrophenia" album and film. Just out of the station, we passed the power plant immortalized in the "Quadrophenia" picture book and on the cover of Pink Floyd's "Animals" album. I watched the scenery pass by, drumming on my lap in nervous anticipation as Townshend's "5:15" blasted through my headphones.
We walked from the Brighton station through town to the Royal Pavilion. I thought it was a frightful mishmash of Oriental and Indian design, but Mom liked it. Queen Victoria came down on my side: she loathed the place. She remarked how odd it was "to be so near the sea, and see so little of it," and gave it to the people of Brighton.
Mom and I then bent into chilly winds and headed for the seashore. We strolled down the pier thinking we hadn't felt so cold in our lives--my long-sleeve t-shirt and flimsy Chargers jacket weren't cutting it. The sea was white-capped and appeared more frigid than the Pacific off San Diego ever had to me. We sought warmth in an Indian-owned restaurant and munched on fish and chips. Then I left Mom to look at pictures in a gallery while I went back to the shore, walked along the rocky beach, listened to "Love, Reign O'er Me" on my headphones, and imagined rival gangs of Mods and Rockers battling it out on bank holidays in the early 1960's. I was totally digging this!
We rode the train back into London and had dinner at the hotel. The trip could've ended there and I'd have been happy. But there was one more London landmark Mom wanted to see.
Friday, May 9--Harrod's. The biggest department store in the world. Don't even think about bringing your backpack in there; security is very tight. After paying Harrod's a pound to store my backpack in a building across the street, we walked in through the metal detector and start shopping.
Talk about room after room of stuff. Not cheap, though, in any sense. Mom resisted the urge to purchase but I blew more than a few pounds. There was an entire floor of food and candy; my mouth waters even now thinking about it. Adding to our enjoyment was the fact that no IRA bombers managed to get past security while we were there.
Later, we had lunch at an "authentic" London pub across the street from the Hard Rock and scoffed at the tourists waiting in line in the rain to pay $25 for a club sandwich. At length we took the tube back to Covent Garden and vegged out.
Saturday, May 10--Last breakfast at the hotel, then off to Victoria Station and the Gatwick Express. Mom was off to France for another week of fun. I was headed back to San Diego. Walking up the stairs to the jet in the driving rain, I thought, well, I've come a long way and I've got a long way to go--plane trip as a metaphor for my recovery.
I pondered all the stuff I'd seen in England that I'd have missed if I hadn't started to fight back against the depression ... and thought about how much there still was to see, and how rich I was to be able to enjoy the people I have in my life. So not only was my trip to England a success because I experienced things I'd dreamt about for years--I found out that sometimes you have to go a long way to see all that you have right in front of you.
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Chuck Vadun
chuck_vadun@intuit.com
©1997 Chuck Vadun. It's my sincere hope Pete Townshend doesn't happen across these pages, notice I've quoted his lyrics in my chapter titles, and sue me for all of my meagre wealth.