More than like...
Today, I fell in love again with London.
It starts as another normal day. I'm running late - a usual thing that has plagued my life since childhood - and text the office. I am supposed to be in for an 8 am meeting. I am not built for 8 am. Nor 9. Nor 10. In response I get "Roger roger."
I nod my way through an hour of numbers and recession talks before a few hours of research and copy writing. As a way out into the sunshine, I volunteer to get my boss's lunch and he asks for something healthy ("soup with some kick") and something unhealthy to counter it ("like a cookie"). Those in the office explain how to get to EAT where these things must be bought from. I follow the instructions and end up going through the legs of something 5 stories high that can only be described as modern sculpture and enter a glass oasis of high end shops. Eat. Pret. M&S. Costa. All hidden away from the congested streets. Food bought, I head through the walkway of glass and glimpse a huge cathedral I'd never seen before. How could I have never noticed a church that big after living in London for 7 years. I look again. Yep. It's still there. Round the corner and it disappears behind the skyscrapers as if it never existed. I feel like a tourist all over again.
The day moves on to it's end and I'm off to an audition with a commercial agent. After having to explain the difference between a Canadian and an American accent (how do you REALLY explain how accents are different?), I'm back out in the sunshine. It's warm and windless and the city workers are jacketless, drinking pints in the street. I'm walking through the winding streets, through a leafy campus I've never seen before, past the halls of justice, over the waterloo bridge and down the southbank.
I settle on a bench across the river from the Houses of Parliment. As people head home to dinner and tucked in children, I pull out Steven King's "On Writing." It's a rare moment between rushing places and working and doing and I take a moment to read. My I-pod is in one ear and the chiming of Big Ben fills the other. After I read King's discription of the phone call telling him he sold his first novel and the joy it brought, I close the book and take London in. Jets cross the sky and leave trails of pink streamers as the buildings sparkle like discoballs bathed in firelight.
I love this place. If only I could hug London - how do you embrace one of the largest cities in the world? More than 7 years here and I can't think of any place I would rather be.
Today, I fell in love again with London.
It starts as another normal day. I'm running late - a usual thing that has plagued my life since childhood - and text the office. I am supposed to be in for an 8 am meeting. I am not built for 8 am. Nor 9. Nor 10. In response I get "Roger roger."
I nod my way through an hour of numbers and recession talks before a few hours of research and copy writing. As a way out into the sunshine, I volunteer to get my boss's lunch and he asks for something healthy ("soup with some kick") and something unhealthy to counter it ("like a cookie"). Those in the office explain how to get to EAT where these things must be bought from. I follow the instructions and end up going through the legs of something 5 stories high that can only be described as modern sculpture and enter a glass oasis of high end shops. Eat. Pret. M&S. Costa. All hidden away from the congested streets. Food bought, I head through the walkway of glass and glimpse a huge cathedral I'd never seen before. How could I have never noticed a church that big after living in London for 7 years. I look again. Yep. It's still there. Round the corner and it disappears behind the skyscrapers as if it never existed. I feel like a tourist all over again.
The day moves on to it's end and I'm off to an audition with a commercial agent. After having to explain the difference between a Canadian and an American accent (how do you REALLY explain how accents are different?), I'm back out in the sunshine. It's warm and windless and the city workers are jacketless, drinking pints in the street. I'm walking through the winding streets, through a leafy campus I've never seen before, past the halls of justice, over the waterloo bridge and down the southbank.
I settle on a bench across the river from the Houses of Parliment. As people head home to dinner and tucked in children, I pull out Steven King's "On Writing." It's a rare moment between rushing places and working and doing and I take a moment to read. My I-pod is in one ear and the chiming of Big Ben fills the other. After I read King's discription of the phone call telling him he sold his first novel and the joy it brought, I close the book and take London in. Jets cross the sky and leave trails of pink streamers as the buildings sparkle like discoballs bathed in firelight.
I love this place. If only I could hug London - how do you embrace one of the largest cities in the world? More than 7 years here and I can't think of any place I would rather be.
Today, I fell in love again with London.
posted by Heather "Tails" Taylor at 9:30 pm
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home