Thursday, January 20 ---
--- Went off to work again today, and rather than let me sit all morning growing cobwebs at my desk, they send me out on a big assignment! I am officially (for today) the Daily Express’ man on the street. Their eyes from the alleys. Their brains from the backways. The head honcho from the highways. Their -- well, you get the picture.
So I leave the office, grab my trusty Tube map and figure out where exactly it is that I want to go. It’s going to take a while to get there as I have to switch lines twice. I walk for twenty minutes to get to the station and it’s pretty dern cold out there. My nose is starting to feel number than the heart of a jaded billionaire, so I pick up the pace a little and hop on the Tube.
After several switches and stops I arrive at my destination and get ready to begin my search. The assignment is to go to the house of the Dome treasurer (the big, extremely expensive and rather ineffective monstrosity that is garnering so much negative press over here). When I arrive at her flat, I am to look and see if there is any construction going on because there was a scandal regarding a huge increase in her salary and now they want to know if she’s spending it before the public can change their minds and demand the money back.
I wander, carefully perusing my map of the city looking for the blooming street that leads into her section and I end up passing it twice. I don’t know if I would consider this passage a street -- more like a narrow crevasse. The cholesterol-plugged blood vessels of a fat person could fit more through them than this sorry excuse for a street could. I squeeze myself through the gap and begin wandering her neighborhood, searching for any signs of work.
As I continue, edging ever closer to my final destination (and towards this woman’s house, not just the end of my life) I begin to get a little excited. I pretend that I’m an undercover cop scoping out a neighborhood. I saunter along, carefully eyeing people from a distance, then casually avoiding their gazes when I come upon them. I take note of addresses, of the cars lining the street, etc.
As the addresses descend, I begin to get more cautious. I hide behind trees, I run in and out of stairwells, I jump under cars when people are coming. In short, I’m having a great time. This could be the big break that I needed for them to accept me! (Or it could be the big break I needed to get thrown in jail for suspicious behavior, but whatever...)
Peering out from behind a giant beech, I see by the addresses that hers should be the first one around the corner. Steeling myself for my big score (blast! I wish I had a cellphone so I could call them right away with the news so we don’t get scooped by the Godforsaken Daily Mail) I take a deep breath and prepare to turn the corner.
I jump out from behind my tree, run round the corner, visions of cranes, dump trucks, and scaffolding stretching to the sky running through my mind, and I see -- nothing. No people, no cement trucks, no jackhammers. Nothing. I walk right to the front door of her flat and see that everything is normal. The only interesting thing going on here is that she’s got a giant, bright red door for the front of her apartment. That’s it.
Slightly pissed off (alright, seething) I make my way back to the Tube station. I’m very cold now, very mad, and can’t seem to get my mind around why they would send me halfway to Paraguay unless they were pretty sure something was going on. Why the hell didn’t the person who sent the tip in get off his couch and check it out first? Then I could have come here to see just how much construction was going on, not to see IF there was any.
Really angry now (I fog up the windows on the Tube with all the steam pouring from my ears) I begin walking back to work. To make matters worse, it begins to rain. So now, not only am I cold and cranky, I’m also soaked. (Hello, pneumonia!)
I finally make it back to work, take off my rain coat (which was just a normal fabric coat at the beginning, but now the predominant item of its make-up is rain, so we must call it that. No false advertising suits for me...) and they finally ask me, “So, what did you find?”
The sound of my grinding teeth almost drowns out my response -- “Nothing. Nothing but a big red door.” Their reply, “Huh.” And off they return to work. No “Sorry, dude. That sucks you had to take two hours to travel to the edge of the globe just to get rained on and cold to find a red door.” Nope. Not for these bleeding hearts. I sit back down at my desk, hands clenched into fists, jaw locked, and bad, bad thoughts running through my mind...
---After I cool down a bit and finally leave work, my day begins to brighten. Tonight we’re going to the theater! (Two nights in a row, baby!) Tonight we see the play called Inspector Calls, and boy, is it different. It tells the tale of a woman who is killed by an unknown assailant and the inspector comes calling to the house of this family. The stage is a really cool one, equipped with a large replica of the outside of a house that the people walk around in and an eerie, rain-soaked street scene that surrounds it. It’s just like a snapshot of some old time London road. Very cool.
The man talks to all of the members of the house, all of whom ended up having some tie to the girl, and the mystery is who, if any of them, killed her. The fun thing is, none of them do, but the real message to the play is that every little encounter you have with a person can drastically change their life. From not giving them change on the street, or firing them from a job, or even giving them a dirty look, these all can have unknown and drastic effects on this person’s life. You just never know, so the play was saying for everyone to treat others well, because to treat them poorly could result in the worst. Very interesting. It required more thought than I expected (or would have liked after a long, fun day at work), but the symbolism and unique style of presentation made it a very interesting experience.
Friday, January 21 ---
--- The fun planned for today is to go to the ultra-touristy changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. It starts out with a sea of tourists standing around the gates to the Palace, watching the old guard wander around and yell things at each other. This session of ogling is carefully broken up by people rudely shoving past you to get a better view even though the ceremonies haven’t really begun yet. (I actually had an old lady come up to me and grab my arm, forcibly spinning me out of her way. I was shocked. A) that she would actually do something so egregious and audacious, and B) that she probably would have pasted me to the cement had I complained.)
As time drags on, the crowd becomes restless (and increasingly stupid - case in point, one of the bobbies (policemen) tells people that they have to clear a path for people to walk through. He marks off where they can and cannot stand, and when they stare back at him, eyes glazed and drool creeping from the corners of their mouths, he backs into them with his horse. (You’ve never seen more people utterly terrified of an equestrian. Ladies are actually shrieking when the horse’s ass gets near them. (Knowing the pooping potential of these animals, I understand a little trepidation, but come on -- screaming? Maybe if you were sure it had a diet low in fiber and had gone on a bean-eating binge the night before, but for all you know the things just gobbling hay. How bad does dried plant stalk really smell?))
The crowd parts like the Red Sea as the people are scared to death of a simple horse (one idiot actually smacks the horse on the butt when it gets close. The policeman yells at this academic champion and tells them they just got exceedingly lucky. When you smack a horse on its bum, he informs us, it has the tendency to kick the offending nuisance that is pestering its posterior. He advised them that while fate had smiled on them once, to test her again would be foolhardy. The person looked at him blankly and had their hand hovering in midair as if to hit the horse again, then got pushed back when more people started panicking at seeing the horrible visage of the whinnying beast in front of them. The policeman trotted away and was heard muttering, “Idiot.” Hah! Who says cops don’t know anything?)
So anyway, the crowd has parted, but the minute the horse leaves, what happens? These mental monsters wait about 9.2 nanoseconds and then go right back to where they were standing before, plugging up the walkway and starting the cycle all over again. More screams, more smacking, more scolding, and yes, more stupidity. I was tempted to ask one of the crowd control officers whether they have to do this job everyday or if there was a rotation. I’d kill myself (and likely a few stupid foreigners) if that was what my life’s work was to be. Agh...)
The ceremony actually begins when you first hear the slight notes of music and the banging of a drum coming from somewhere off in the distance. The sounds get progressively louder and eventually a band comes into view dressed in their Royal Army get-up. They march through the gates (of course not the ones that we’re standing next to. They go through the ones to our left.) and then sidle next to the old batch of guards.
After shouting some more things, another band of Brits comes along, this time accompanied by a group of armed soldiers, apparently the replacements for the boys currently on guard. They swing through the crowd, marching ever so elegantly, and proceed to enter through another set of gates, this time immediately to the right of where we were standing. (I tell ya, my luck is just astounding sometimes.)
This causes the crowd to swell and sway even more, the excited chattering of the peanut gallery growing ever more energetic (this also causes the rude folk - and I hate to stereotype - but I must have gotten knocked around by over a dozen Asian folk in my time there. They’re all walking around with their Camcorders above their heads, carelessly pushing you out of the way to get a shot of the soldiers or hitting you on the head with their oversized backpacks (I swear, you’d think they’ve stuffed a year’s supply of clothes, dishes, and souvenirs in there judging from the size of ‘em) when they turn around to shoot something new. It’s really quite ridiculous, but somewhat funny, especially when they give you the dirty looks when your head disrupts the peaceful voyage of their elbows or backpacks.)
Then, a new batch of soldiers comes and swoops through on horses, and these fellows are dressed in bright red suits with the shiniest silver helmets you’ve ever seen perched atop their heads. They don’t seem to go anywhere in the courtyard - a confusing occurrence, but one that is quickly forgotten when the royal band gathers in front of the main gates and starts playing a mini-concert. They play over half a dozen songs, and the funny thing is they’re all rather peppy pop sounding tunes. (I SWEAR I hear a version of Livin’ la vida Loca in there. Honest.) No royal, regal marching tunes or symphonic sounds emanating from these boys, this is the 90s version of things - a swinging brand of royal funk for the hepcat in all of us. Once they’re done with this, the main gates open (FINALLY the gates we’re standing in front of do something!) and the old guard marches out. We see them up close and personal and marvel at the different sizes, shapes, colors, and shags of their furry black helmets (I’m looking into this to figure out what it all means. I’m sure it has something to do with rank, but exactly what, I’m not sure.)
As they march away to the sounds of the band again (this time it’s a more traditional tune, one you expect from the Brits; something along the lines of God Save the Queen. The band, coincidentally, follows the old guard to the barracks where they can proceed to strip off their strangely colored head gear and drink the bottles of grog they have stashed away inside them.) the crowd begins to disperse after a final flurry of rude jostling and shoving, cutthroatedly trying to get one last picture of them marching away. A thought pops into my head that makes me (and those around me when I voice it out loud, much to the dismay and ire of the nearby guard who overhears me) laugh out loud - when they’re walking away, the guards kind of look like coneheads with afros. It’s really quite funny - some have tall, skinny ones, some have short, fat, really poofy ones. What a gas...
Here’s some more background on the ceremony: It’s been going on since 1660 and the new guards that come marching in are from the Horse Guards Parade near Whitehall. The yellow flags that they walk around with are called The Royal Standard and these bad boys date back to the days when the King actually led troops into battle rather than getting fat off feasts and fornicating with the fiefs. He would be surrounded by the best soldiers (naturally) and when things got hectic and the men got separated, all they did was look for the yellow flags and run to them to protect their King. Now a question: does this sound like the soundest military strategy? -- Announce the presence of your most valuable target with a symbol that everyone can see, this time coming in the form of a bright yellow flag perched atop a ten foot pole. Boy, those Brits may not have the tastiest cuisine, but they sure do trump us in the Smarts Department...
After this and a leisurely dinner, we head off to do some partying with some pals in the group. We start by playing Scooby-Doo, the drinking game all my friends back home can tell you about. Needless to say, it’s fast, furious, and gets you rather funky. Fun stuff. We end the evening at the King’s Head, a lovely little joint right down the street from us; one of our increasingly regular stomping grounds. A little tired, a little sauced, and more than a little sore (that little granny can pack a mean wallop, I tell you what) I limp home to nurse my bruises.