London Calling

First off, massive shouts to my boy Kwaku who keeps leaving comments on ye olde blog here. While I don't believe this to be any kind of ground-breaking, earth-shatteringly prophetic prose, it's nice to know someone's reading. As for the rest of y'all .... *waves hand dismissively*

Of course, I'm kidding. I'm far too egotistically invested in this blog now to pretend it's not
verging on the literarily masturbatory. Waxing poetic and all that ... *cringes at own bad joke*

So ... Monday, bloody Monday. The trip to London this past weekend was a bit of a smashing success, if I do say so myself. There were 3 distinct groups of friends I had to visit, each one offering their own special brand of fun. Most of them I hadn't seen in a decade. The others I see entirely too rarely, and miss them terribly, so the weekend as a whole was long overdue. After listening to a 14 year old American tourist lament on the absence of Starbucks in Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport, and watching my colleague walk through security with not one, but TWO lighters in his pants pocket, I felt sure the weekend held wild and wacky times ahead.

Times were not so wacky and not so wild, but they sure were fun. My friend K.M. (initials to protect the innocent!) from the good ol' days at Southside High was visiting her sister with her brand new baby son. If ever there were a linebacker in the making, K.M.'s son is it. That's the happiest, most energetic child I've ever seen. Cousin Daphne - two weeks his junior - was also in attendance to represent pure joy and baby loveliness. The day was actually hot and sunny (the first I've had in a while!) and Queen's Park was abloom with new life.

Then it was on to sidewalk noshing in Notting Hill with my boys and kind, hospitable hosts J. and S. (J&S used to be one of these cafeteria-style buffet houses throughout the south. The kind that offers vats of deep-friend everything and yeast rolls in a tidal wave of butter. My step-mother calls them all pork-pie palaces, but I digress.) Highlight of the meal - besides the BANGIN' Scorzetta - was the sighting of Johnny Depp. It's actually unconfirmed as to whether or not it was actually the Depp-man, but I'll be damned if he wasn't a dead-ringer. Nappy in his seersucker trousers and panama hat .... ummm ummm ummm. My friend Truck will never forgive me for not having video conferenced her in immediately. I will forever grovel for her to regain her friendship.

Then on to a mini-reunion with some UWC classmates. I was incredibly nervous en route. I know it's silly, but after 10 years, I was consumed with the idea that we'd have nothing to talk about. Reminiscing about the good old days - a decade ago when you were all wide-eyed, naive and pimply teenagers overcome by your own sense of self-important stupidity - can only last for ... oh, I'd say about 10 minutes. After that, there's the ever-loving fear of staring stupidly at one another while you find 18 different ways to talk about the weather. But that didn't happen! I was totally fascinated to see that these people who had managed to be amazing at the impossible age of 16 had grown into even more amazing adults. I've often said that you couldn't pay me to "go back and do it all over again," and this evening solidified that for me. It's lovely to have gained that distance from your childhood and share a good laugh with friends as you glance back critically over your shoulder.

For the uninitiated, the UWC is a network of boarding schools around the world that's centered around the International Baccalaureate. I and my classmates attended the one in New Mexico, where 200 international students converge like world-weary locusts to learn how to be the kind of global citizen you read about in the pamphlets handed out by well-meaning interns on the subway. I'm obviously being snide for entertainment, but it is the kind of place where they take a bunch of 15-to-16 year old kids, who have no idea who they are or why they're here (and I mean why they're here in the "Great Questions of Life" kind of way) and throw them together with 199 other teenagers rowing a very similar boat down an equally muddy stream, and force them to try and figure it out. As horrifying as that sounds, it actually works! Hence, my amazing friends.

Now - before this gets so saccharine you suck your teeth in protest - I'll move on. Suffice it to say, it was a fantastic time. Arriving "home" last night around 9pm, though, revealed the source of London's nickname "The Great Smoke." Now I live in New York, so a dirty city is nothing new, but needing a chemical peel to remove the layer of city grime from my face was more than I had signed on for. Yuck yuck yuck ...

Anyways, there's some random shots below. My brand new, fancy-schmancy camera arrives from the States this week, and I can't wait. If it's all I hope it is, you may very well never be subjected to my idle patter again. I'll just post pictures and leave everything else up to your imaginations.

The Erotic Gerkin:
Learning to Be Still:












Please take good care of this band:
Night Blooming:
A Light on the Town:











Holla If Ya Hear Me: Cyber Stalking: